How Corrosive Is College to Religious Faith and Practice?

While Americans remain among the most religious in the industrialized world, it is widely observed that many of them exhibit cycles of religiosity, the most evident of which occurs in early adulthood. The young adult years of many Americans are marked by a clear decline in outward religious expression, which is widely thought to hit bottom during—and perhaps because of—the college experience. Data from 30 years of the General Social Survey pinpoints age 22 as the point in the life course when average levels of weekly or more frequent church attendance are at their lowest (17 percent). The climb back into regular or semi-regular religious practice—if it occurs at all, and it usually does—is often stimulated by marriage and childbearing (Stolzenberg, Blair-Loy, and Waite 1995). This barely needs retelling, as if a farewell to organized religion during the college years is simply part of the cultural script so many possess. But not all Americans check their religion at the dorm door. While much is made of religious decline, emerging adulthood is also a time in the life course when Americans are most open to religious change and growth. It is a phase commonly associated with religious conversion and thus targeted for considerable proselytizing by evangelical religious organizations. Waxing or waning, adolescence and early adulthood are certainly the most religiously unstable phases of the life course.