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Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Religious Commitment, Skepticism, and Struggle Among U.S.College Students: The Impact of Majority/Minority ReligiousAffiliation and Institutional Type

First published:

2 March 2011 Full publication history

DOI:

10.1111/j.1468-5906.2010.01557.x View/save citation

Cited by:

7 articles Refresh Citing literature

Correspondence should be addressed to Nicholas A. Bowman, Center for Social Concerns, 164

Geddes Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556. E-mail: [email protected]

Jenny L. Small, Nicholas A. Bowman

Abstract

Using a longitudinal sample of over 14,000 undergraduate student s, this study explores whether

and how students’ religious transformations during the college year s ar e associated wi th their

religious affiliation, religious experiences, and the institutional char acteristics of their college or

university. Hierarchical linear modeling reveals that students from religious majority groups (i.e.,

mainline and evangelical Protestants) generally experience increased religious commitment and

decreased religious skepticism as compared with students from reli gious minority groups.

Interestingly, though, students from these majority groups also report greater levels of religious

struggle compared to minority group students. Moreover, institutional religious affiliation and an

inclusive campus religious climate often attenuate the relationship between students’ religious

affiliation and their religious transformation. Environments at both the macro (campus) and micro

Volume 50, Issue 1

March 2011

Pages 154–174

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(friendship groups) levels contribute critically to young adults’ religi ous commitment .

INTRODUCTION

The impact of college experiences on young adults’ religious beliefs, practices, and self-

identification constitutes a growing topic of interest in the field of religious research. College

serves as a particularly important context for young adults to consider questions of faith and

purpose (e.g., Parks 2000 ). Recent debates have focused on whether college students exhibit

substantial declines in their religious participation ( Bryant, Choi, and Yasuno 2003 ;

Saenz and Barrera 2007 ) or whether college serves as a time f or students to reevaluate and

reformulate their religious beliefs and perceptions ( Mayrl and Oeur 2009 ;

Pascarella and Terenzini 2005 ). Another possibility is that students place their religiousidentities into a “lockbox” ( Clydesdale 2007 ), not thinking about or addressing that element of

their lives until the conclusion of college. Although a growing number of studies exist on this

topic, much of the research is methodologically flawed, so it is of ten difficult to draw definitive

conclusions ( Mayrl and Oeur 2009 ). Furthermore, despite an ongoing call from within higher

education for more research on students from marginalized religious groups ( Clark 2003 ;

Collins, Hurst, and Jacobson 1987 ; Love 2002 ;

Markstrom-Adams, Hofstra, and Dougher 1994 ), very little attention has been paid to how

religious transformation during the college years may differ among students from diverse

religious backgrounds.

The current study explores whether and how religious minority status and college experiences

are related to changes in religious beliefs and struggles at both secular and religiously affiliated

institutions. The study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it utilizes measures

such as religious struggle and ecumenism, which have been refined beyond indicators of

religious behavior and spiritual expression in previous research. This moves research beyond

external behaviors to a greater understanding of students’ internal motivators. Second, it

examines outcomes at multiple points in time, which reduces reliance on students’ self-reports

of change. Although self-reported gains during college are often used to indicate change inreligiosity and other outcomes, these measures are substantially flawed (

Bowman and Hill in press ; Hall et al. 1998 ; Pascarella 2001 ) and are inadequate proxies

for longitudinal methods ( Bowman 2010a, 2010b ). Third, the analyses contrast religious

outcomes of young adults from majority and minority religious denominations, while exploring

whether and how these patterns differ by institutional religious affiliation. The present study

makes these contributions using a three-year longitudinal sample of 14,527 undergraduate

students from 136 colleges and universities in the United States.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This research is situated within Stark's (1996) theories on the relationship between religiosity

and social context. When examining the impact of religion upon delinquent behavior, Stark

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found that religion encourages conformity within a group only when the majority of the group

members validate that religion as the accepted motivation for behavior. According to

Hill (2009) , this “moral communities” thesis explains that religion “works … when the

community upholds the religious justifications for conforming to certain behavioral norms”

(2009:517). Colleges and universities in which religious behaviors are highly integrated into the

social environment will legitimate religious practice for students ( Hill 2009 ). For example,

Roberts and colleagues ( Roberts, Koch, and Johnson 2001 ) found that both religious and

secular students with religious friends become more religiously active in college than do

students with nonreligious friends. Burdette and her colleagues ( Burdette et al. 2009 )

determined that normative behavior surrounding “hooking up” was impacted by institutional

religious affiliation, with students at Catholic schools most likely to engage in this behavior. The

authors surmised several reasons for this, including institutional facilitation of social events

designed to help students find romantic partners. We build upon these applications of the moral

communities thesis in higher education to examine the impact of alignment and divergence of

institutional and student religious affiliation, particularly as pertaining to religious minorities.

Literature Review

About 20 years ago, Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) reported that most research conveyed a

decline in college students’ religious beliefs and behaviors. The near-consensus of that time has

received further support from two recent national studies. In a survey of 3,680 students, first-

year college students were shown to become less likely to attend religious services, to pray or

meditate, and to discuss religion while in college ( Bryant, Choi, and Yasuno 2003 ). In a survey

of over 30,000 students, seniors reported becoming less religious relative to their peers since

starting college ( Saenz and Barrera 2007 ).

However, other work has questioned or qualified such claims. Clydesdale (2007) argues thatstudents place their religions into an “identity lockbox,” returning to their religious practices only

after leaving college. Although it may appear that students’ religious involvement has

diminished, researchers must be aware that students do continue to self-identify religiously. In

addition, a large cross-sectional study utilized students’ self-reports of change since the

beginning of college and found that students report, on average, slight increases in commitment

to religious values during the college years ( Graham and Cockriel 1997 ). When examining a

sample of over 4,000 students, Lee (2002) also found that students were more likely to report

a strengthening of their religious convictions during college than to report a weakening.

Moreover, an intriguing study compared changes in religiosity among young adults who did and

did not attend college ( Uecker, Regnerus, and Vaaler 2007 ). Decreases in religiosity, as

indicated by disaffiliation with a religious organization, diminished service attendance, and

reduced importance placed on religion, were greatest among young adults who had not

attended any college. Thus, even though religious commitments may decline during college, it

seems that attending college might actually reduce this overall rate of decline.

Refined Measures of Religiosity

Some research has begun to take a nuanced approach to studying college students’ religiousbeliefs and practices ( Hartley 2004a ; Pascarella and Terenzini 2005 ). For example, a

comparative case study of four colleges and universities found a large number of students

exploring denominational boundaries, developing an openness to religious diversity, and making

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use of a strong supply of religious and spiritual programs from which students could choose (

Cherry, DeBerg, and Porterfield 2001 ). Furthermore, a national survey found that college

graduates were much more likely than noncollege graduates to allow for the truth claims of

other religions ( Wuthnow 2007 ), leading the author to conclude that students may view

religions as interchangeable cultural traditions. Another recent review of the literature finds that

students are interested in being somewhat religiously involved during their college years, but not

at a deep level ( Mayrl and Oeur 2009 ).

We extend these lines of research by featuring an examination of the perceptions and struggles

that undergird the religious behaviors of college students. The outcomes measured include

elements that may explain why young adults believe what they do, such as that religion is

“personally helpful” or that the students feel “loved by God.” The outcomes also may explain

causes of struggle and skepticism, such as feeling angry or distant with God and never having

“felt a sense of sacredness,” respectively. Research that emphasizes these types of psychological

motivations can offer deeper understandings of the motivations for and meaning of student

behaviors.

Institutional Religious Affiliation

Of course, a simple association between institutional religious aff iliation and religious

commitment, for example, does not necessarily suggest that institutional type is related to

changes in religious commitment. Numerous studies have found that, compared with students

attending secular schools, students attending religiously affiliated institutions have stronger

religious beliefs and practices, along with greater gains in religiosity. According to a review of the

literature, students at conservative Protestant schools are the most religiously active and

committed ( Hartley 2004b ). According to a large-scale study that grouped into six religiousand secular types ( Gonyea and Kuh 2006 ), students enrolled in religiously-affiliated schools

(especially those considered “fundamentalist”) were more likely to engage frequently in

“spirituality enhancing activities” (described by the authors to include worship, meditation, and

prayer) and to have greater self-reported “deepened sense of spirituality.” The authors surmised

that this may partially be due to the types of students attracted to attending this type of school.

According to Hill (2009) , students at conservative Protestant colleges are socialized to attend

religious services, whereas this is often not the case at Catholic, other Protestant, or secular

colleges. In fact, he found that the participation rate of Catholic students at Catholic colleges is

no higher than their participation rate at secular colleges. However, students belonging to small“religious subcultures” may flourish in their religious identification through association with like-

minded students on campuses with religiously diverse student populations.

Clydesdale (2007) concurs that evangelical colleges have the strongest record of promoting

religiosity among their students, in part because they attract students who are already

committed to remaining religiously active during the college years. Bryant et al. (2003)

observed similar benefits for involvement in religious activities among students attending

Protestant institutions. Additional longitudinal research demonstrated that students at non-

Catholic religious institutions had greater gains in spiritual identif ication and increases in

eudaimonic well-being (living one's life to the fullest) than those at secular schools (

Bowman and Small 2010 , in press). Students at Adventist Christian colleges scored higher

than students at secular colleges on measures of commitment to the church, personal religious

commitment, agreement with life-style standards, and a grace orientation ( Dudley 1999 ).



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Finally, Lee (2002) noted that students at institutions with high average levels of religious

service attendance tended to have greater self-reported increases in their religious beliefs.

Differences between institutional religious affiliations are also ref lected in student behaviors that

are not explicitly religious. In a recent study examining sexual behaviors, Freitas (2008) found

that students at evangelical institutions of higher education utilized the teachings of their faith to

make decisions about their sexual behaviors. The Catholic and secular colleges in the study did

not display what Freitas called a “religious campus culture,” and the sexual behaviors of studentsat these two campus types were indistinguishable, even accounting for alignment with the

students’ religious affiliation. The behaviors of religious minority students (i.e., non-Christian)

were not examined separately, so it is unclear how such students fared at these institutions.

Therefore, based on this previous research on college student religiosity, we proposed the

following hypothesis:

(H1) Students who attend Protestant institutions will generally have increased religious

commitment and decreased religious skepticism and struggle rel ative to students who attend

secular institutions. However, no significant differences will be observed between secular and

Catholic institutions.

Previous studies examining faculty support of student religious and spiritual exploration

demonstrate that faculty endorsement of religious practice and exploration may intensify the

ecological impact of a college campus. According to a major study on college student religion

and spirituality conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), 39 percent of

students reported that their beliefs have been strengthened by ideas encountered in the

classroom, compared with 53 percent reporting no change ( HERI 2006 ). Analyses of another

longitudinal HERI dataset are consistent with these perceived influences; specifically, faculty

support for spiritual/religious development is positively related to students’ religiousengagement ( Bowman and Small 2009 ) and increases in spiritual identification (

Bowman and Small 2010 ). This led us to propose a second hypothesis:

(H2) Having college experiences pertaining to religion and religious similarity will be associated

with increased religious commitment and decreased religious ske pticism and struggle.

Majority and Minority Religious Denominations

The relationship between college students’ religious affiliations and their religious

transformation has received minimal research attention. This topic is critical because students

from religious minority groups receive relatively less support on campus ( Nash 2003 ;

Sax 2002 ; Speck 1997 ), and they may be on the negative receiving end of Christian privilege (

Seifert 2007 ; Watt, Fairchild, and Goodman 2009 ). We define students from religious

minority groups as those who identify with a non-Christian religion (e.g., Islam, Buddhism) or

with no religious affiliation at all. While religious majority students may feel fully comfortable in

continuing to express themselves religiously during the college years, religious minority students

may feel discouraged in such practices by the lack of support and attention from administrators

and faculty.

As one might expect, many differences in the beliefs and practices of students from different

religions and denominations are apparent ( HERI 2005 ). For example, Unitarians, Jews, and

students with no religious affiliation score highly on a measure of religious skepticism, whereas

Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists, and “other Christians” score much lower. However,

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these findings do not illustrate whether or how students’ beliefs and practices change during

college. Bowman and Small (2010) found that religious minority students have smaller gains

in spiritual identification than mainline and born-again Christian students, and these differences

are particularly pronounced at religiously-affiliated schools. Hill (2009) determined that

evangelical students have decreased religious participation at Catholic colleges, while Catholic

students have increased participation at conservative Protestant institutions, lending credence

to the idea that both institutional and student affiliation contribute to these outcomes (although

Hill did not examine the religious engagement of non-Christians). In our previous research (

Bowman and Small 2010 , in press), we found that students from marginalized religious

groups tended to have smaller gains in spirituality and well-being than students from majority

groups, particularly on religiously-affiliated campuses. Therefore, we proposed the following

hypothesis:

(H3) Relative to mainline Protestants, students who are affiliated with a non-Christian religious

group (or not affiliated with any religious group) will have dimini shed religious commitment and

increased religious skepticism and struggle. Furthermore, these e ffects will be more pronounced at

religiously-affiliated schools than at secular schools.

We expected that this predicted link between religious affiliation and student outcomes would

be driven, in part, by a lack of acceptance and support for religious minority groups (see

Bowman and Small 2010 , in press; Schlosser 2003 ; Seifert 2007 ) and a contrast with

environmental norms ( Stark 1996 ). This interpretation leads to the final hypothesis:

(H4) The effects of religious affiliation on religious change will be attenuated at institutions whose

students, on average, strongly endorse an ecumenical worldview (i.e., an interest, acceptance, and

appreciation of diverse religious traditions).

We believe the concept of ecumenical worldview will expand upon the idea of the “ de factopluralism” described by Hill (2009) ; in other words, the pluralism of campus cultures that host

a wide variety of religious groups enables students to have an interest in, acceptance of, and

appreciation for religious diversity.

METHODS

Data

Data from the Spirituality in Higher Education Project, which was conducted by the HERI and

sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, were used for this study (for detailed methodological

information, see Astin, Astin, and Lindholm in press ; HERI 2010 ). Colleges and universities

that regularly participate in the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman

Survey, a self-selected pool of over 1,900 institutions, were invited to take part in this project. In

the fall of 2004, an expanded version of the CIRP Freshman Survey was administered to 112,232

entering first-year students. These paper-and-pencil surveys were typically completed during

summer orientation programs before the beginning of the first year or during the beginning of

the fall semester. Along with the regular CIRP items, this survey contained numerous itemsregarding students’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors pertaining to religion and spirituality. In the

spring of 2007, a subset of the original sample was invited to complete a follow-up survey, and

these students received questionnaires in the mail. A total of 36,703 students were eligible for

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the second wave of data collection. Of these, 14,527 participants from 136 institutions

responded to the follow-up survey, which yielded a response rate of 40 percent; this rate is

similar to that of other multi-institutional surveys of college students (e.g., see Hurtado 2004 ).

We only included participants who responded to the item on religious affiliation (or lack thereof)

in the final sample. In addition, because the religious change of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) often

differs substantially from that of other young adults ( Smith 2009 ) and because this group does

not fit easily into any of the religious classifications discussed below, LDS students were removed

from the sample, along with the one institution that had a substantial majority of LDS students.

Therefore, the final sample in this study included 14,102 students from 135 institutions.

Compared with national averages, religiously-affiliated institutions were overrepresented in this

dataset: 41 schools were secular (13 public, 28 private), 34 were Catholic, and 60 were

Protestant. This sampling is ideal for the purposes of the current study, as the research

questions include differences in religious outcomes at secular and religiously affiliated

campuses.

A weighting algorithm was employed to make the data more representative of all first-year

students and institutions. A three-stage weighting process was used. A regression-basedapproach is used in Stage 1 to estimate the findings that would have been obtained if all

students had completed the questionnaire. Weights were applied using demographic and other

entering freshman data available on all students who had been mailed questionnaires. In Stage

2, these initial weights were adjusted to make the data representative of all entering freshmen at

the participating sample of institutions. Finally, using the CIRP institutional stratification scheme,

Stage 2 weights were adjusted to make the data representative of incoming first-year college

students at all four-year colleges and universities. These Stage 3 weights were then normalized

(i.e., they were divided by a constant to yield a mean of one) so that applying the weights would

not change the total sample size.

Measures

Dependent Variables

To convey the multifaceted nature of religiosity, we examined three distinct college student

outcomes: religious commitment, religious skepticism, and religious struggle. Religious

commitment was gauged with a 12-item scale (Cronbach's alpha = .97); these items included

placing importance on “seeking to follow religious teachings in my everyday life,” finding “religion

to be personally helpful,” and a belief that one's spiritual/religious beliefs “give meaning/purpose

to my life.” Religious skepticism measured the degree to which participants doubt the existence of

God or a higher power (α= .86). These nine items included a belief that “the universe arose by

chance” and not “believing in life after death.” Religious struggle reflected the degree to which

participants felt conflicted or unsure about their religious beliefs. Sample items from this seven-

item index (α= .77) include the frequency or extent to which students felt “unsettled about

spiritual and religious matters,”“struggled to understand evil, suff ering, and death,” and

“questioned [their] religious beliefs.” Because the items that comprised religious commitment

and religious skepticism used different response scales, the overall indices for each construct

were computed using the sum, not the average, of the relevant items (

Astin, Astin, and Lindholm in press ). The dependent variables were then standardized with a

mean of zero and a standard deviation of one so that the unstandardized coefficients can be

interpreted in terms of effect sizes ( Cohen, Cohen, West, and Aiken 2003 ). For example, a

1

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coefficient of .20 means a one-unit change in the independent variable corresponds with a .20

standard deviation increase in the religious outcome, controlling for all other predictor variables.

Independent Variables

A slightly modified version of the RELTRAD coding scheme ( Steensland et al. 2000 ) was used

to classify students’ religious affiliations upon entering college. None of the response options in

the dataset indicated affiliation with a black Protestant denomination, so participants wereclassified into one of the remaining RELTRAD categories: mainline Protestant, evangelical

Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, “other” religion, or no religious affiliation. Some of our research (

Bowman and Small 2009, 2010 , in press) has examined the impact of belonging to a minority

religious group in American society, which we had defined as all non-Christian religions and

denominations that are generally considered to be on the margins of mainstream Christianity

(e.g., Eastern Orthodox, LDS). Based upon theoretical considerations and preliminary analyses of

the data, Eastern Orthodox and Quaker students were included with the “other” religion group,

whereas Seventh-Day Adventists were included with the mainline Protestant group. The

nonaffiliated, while not technically “religious” minorities, make up just under a fifth of collegestudents today ( HERI 2005 ), rendering them minority status relative to the much larger group

of mainstream Christians. Catholic students, who are well-represented numerically on college

campuses ( HERI 2005 ), constituted their own category. Mainline Protestants served as the

referent group so that the differences between this group and multiple religious minority groups

(i.e., Jews, students from “other” religions, and nonreligiously-affiliated students) could be

examined. In addition, institutional religious affiliation was gauged with a dummy-coded variable

representing Catholic schools and a second dummy variable representing Protestant schools;

secular schools served as the institutional referent group.

Several college experiences and perceptions related to religion and spirituality were used.

Ecumenical worldview (α= .72) described students’ interest in and connection to diverse religious

traditions. These 12 items include “believing in the goodness of all people” and perceiving that

“love is at the root of all great religions.” Two indices were created based on entering levels of

ecumenical worldview: one that characterized each student's views and a second that

represented the average of all students who completed the first-year questionnaire at her/his

institution. The institutional average was considered a proxy for an inclusive campus religious

climate; however, this openness to religious diversity among students may or may not reflect

institutional support for religious inclusivity. By including both of these indices, the unique

effects of individual perceptions and campus climate can be examined.

Three college experiences from the 2007 survey were also used. First, students’ interactions with

people who held similar religious beliefs were gauged with a two-item index; these items were

the frequency of time spent with “people who share your religious views” and the number of

close friends who “share your religious/spiritual views.” Second, f aculty support of students’

spiritual/religious development was assessed with a five-item index (α= .82). These items gauged

the extent to which faculty “encouraged exploration of questions of meaning and

purpose,”“encouraged discussion of religious/spiritual matters,” and “acted as spiritual role

models for you.” Third, religious engagement represented the degree to which students wereinvolved in religious activities. This nine-item index (α= .88) included items regarding the

frequency with which students attended a religious service, read sacred texts, and engaged in

prayer/meditation.

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Control variables included gender (0 = male, 1 = female), age (1 = 16 or younger, to 10 = 55 or

older), and parental education (mean of mother's and father's education; 1 = grammar school or

less, to 8 = graduate degree). Because high school grade point average (HSGPA) was strongly

skewed, dummy-coded variables were created for students who reported a “B” average (B– to

B+) and a “C” average or less (C+ or lower); students with an “A” average (A– to A+) served as the

referent group. Several dichotomous variables were also used to indicate race/ethnicity: African

American/black; American Indian/Alaska Native; Asian American/Asian and Native

Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (a combination of two categories from the CIRP survey), Mexican

American/Chicano, Puerto Rican, and other Latino (combination of three CIRP categories); and

other. White/Caucasian served as the referent group. Pretest or initial values of religious

commitment (α= .96), religious skepticism (α= .83), and religious struggle (α= .75) were also used

(see Appendix A for descriptive statistics). The continuous independent variables were then

standardized with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one for inclusion in the analyses.

Because the independent and dependent variables were both standardized, unstandardized

coefficients for continuous variables are analogous to standardized coefficients, so the

magnitude of effects can be compared across these variables.

Plan of Analysis

Because the current sample contained students nested within institutions and because some of

the primary research questions dealt with the relationship between institutional and individual

characteristics, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses were used to predict religious

change. The nesting of students within institutions violates a key assumption of ordinary least

squares multiple regression; HLM accounts for this issue by partitioning the variance within

groups (i.e., at Level 1) and between groups (i.e., at Level 2) and adjusting standard errors

accordingly ( Raudenbush and Bryk 2002 ). Moreover, HLM can be used to determine whether

the effect of a Level-1 variable (e.g., students’ religious affiliation) differs significantly across

institutional contexts.

Three HLM models were examined for each religiosity outcome. Block 1 examined the main

effects of individual- and institutional-level predictors of religious change: independent variables

included gender, age, race/ethnicity, parental education, HSGPA, the initial value of the

dependent variable, students’ religious affiliation, and ecumenical worldview at Level 1, while

institutional religious affiliation and ecumenical worldview average were modeled at Level 2.

Block 2 examined whether the relationships between students’ religious affiliation and religiouschange were moderated by institutional characteristics; therefore, this model contained the

same independent variables as Level 1 and allowed the slopes for students’ religious affiliations

to vary. Moreover, the Level-2 variables of Catholic institution, Protestant institution, and

ecumenical worldview average were added as predictors of the slopes for the student religious

affiliation variables. Finally, Block 3 added several additional predictors at Level 1 that may

mediate the link between religious affiliation and religious change; these include student

interactions with people who share their religious beliefs, faculty support for spiritual/religious

development, and students’ religious engagement. In all models, continuous variables were

grand-mean centered, and dichotomous variables were uncentered. We chose not to center thedichotomous variables so that the intercept would represent religious growth or struggle for the

referent groups (e.g., mainline Protestants), and the base coefficients of Level-1 predictors in the

slopes-as-outcomes models would represent the effects at secular institutions (i.e., the Level-2

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referent group; see Raudenbush and Bryk 2002 ).

Preliminary analyses showed that a nontrivial proportion of variance in the dependent variables

occurred between colleges and universities. The interclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for

religious commitment, religious skepticism, and religious struggle were 13.7 percent, 15.0

percent, and 3.4 percent, respectively. Although the ICC for religious struggle was somewhat low,

the nesting of students within institutions violates a key assumption of multiple regression (

Cohen et al. 2003 ), and HLM accounts for this nonindependence of observations.Furthermore, two major texts do not provide any ICC “cutoff value” for the use of HLM (

Luke 2004 ; Raudenbush and Bryk 2002 ), and this ICC is reasonably close to the 5 percent

suggested by Heck and Thomas (2009) . Moreover, multilevel analyses are necessary when

examining individual and institutional predictors in the same model ( Thomas and Heck 2001 ),

and the use of the same statistical technique for all three dependent variables also permits

meaningful comparisons of results across the religious outcomes. For these reasons, HLM was

used for all analyses.

RESULTS

Religious Commitment

In Block 1 of the HLM analyses, students who attend a Protestant institution have greater gains

in religious commitment than those who attend a secular institution whereas no such difference

exists between students attending Catholic and secular schools (see Table 1). At the individual

level, relative to mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants have greater gains in religious

commitment, whereas nonreligiously-affiliated students have smaller gains. These same

patterns persist when the slopes for students’ religious affiliations are allowed to vary in Block 2.

In addition, attending a Catholic school becomes a significant predictor in Block 2; because the

slopes were allowed to vary, this means that mainline Protestants (i.e., the referent group for

religious affiliation) have greater increases in religious commitment at Catholic institutions than

at secular institutions. Furthermore, the effects associated with evangelical Protestants and

nonreligiously-affiliated students are significantly weaker at institutions with a high ecumenical

worldview average, and the effect associated with evangelical Protestants is also weaker at

Catholic schools than at secular schools.

Table 1. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses predicting religiouscommitment in the junior year

Predictor Variables Block 1 Block 2 Block 3

Catholic school .084 .131** .131***

(.044) (.046) (.034)

Protestant school .141** .143*** −.065*

(.047) (.034) (.027)

Ecumenical worldview average −.026 −.037 −.043

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(.028) (.024) (.024)

Evangelical Student

Intercept .142* .111* .090*

(.060) (.049) (.040)

Catholic school −.280* −.183

(.107) (.096)

Protestant school −.067 −.120*

(.085) (.046)

Ecumenical worldview average −.055* −.095**

(.024) (.027)

Catholic Student

Intercept −.001 .003 .048

(.029) (.037) (.028)

Catholic school −.025 −.120**

(.057) (.044)

Protestant school −.053 .018

(.050) (.049)

Ecumenical worldview average .022 −.005

(.021) (.020)

Jewish Student

Intercept −.167 −.043 −.027

(.089) (.108) (.046)

Catholic school −.490 −.259

(.257) (.171)

Protestant school −.295 −.099

(.267) (.123)

Ecumenical worldview average −.014 −.039

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Note : Analyses controlled for gender, age, race/ethnicity, parental education, high school GPA, students’

ecumenical worldview, and religious commitment at the beginning of freshman year; * p < .05; ** p < .01;

*** p < .001.

(.078) (.047)

Student from Other Religious Affiliation

Intercept −.040 −.066 −.012

(.069) (.083) (.058)


(.119) (.088)

Protestant school .011 .086

(.102) (.082)


(.048) (.030)

Nonreligiously-Affiliated Student

Intercept −.241*** −.254*** −.131***

(.043) (.059) (.032)


(.114) (.077)

Protestant school .087 .140*

(.089) (.056)

Ecumenical worldview average .050* .036*

(.022) (.015)

Socialized with students with similar religious beliefs .049***

(.011)

Faculty support for spiritual/religious development −.016

(.008)

Religious engagement .525***

(.022)

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In Block 3, all of the same significant effects from Block 2 are present, except that attending a

Protestant school is now negatively related to religious commitment and attending a Catholic

institution no longer significantly predicts the slope for evangelical students. Religious

engagement is a strong, positive predictor of gains in religious commitment, and a fairly weak,

positive relationship exists for socializing with students who hold similar religious beliefs. Several

other moderators of students’ religious affiliation are significant in Block 3: the effects associatedwith being an evangelical Protestant or nonreligiously-affiliated student (relative to a mainline

Protestant) are weaker at Protestant institutions than at secular schools, and the effect of being

a Catholic student on religious commitment is actually more negative at Catholic schools than at

secular schools. Because these predictors of slopes are not present in Block 2, these can be

described as suppressor effects, in which the effect of a particular predictor variable is increased

when including another predictor in the model ( Cohen et al. 2003 ; Pedhazur 1997 ).

Because suppressor effects are driven by the interrelationships between multiple independent

variables, it is often difficult to determine the exact substantive meaning (if any) of these

coefficients ( Pedhazur 1997 ).

Religious Skepticism

Some of the predictors of religious skepticism are similar to those for religious commitment;

however, as one might expect, the patterns are in the opposite direction (see Table 2). In Block 1,

students attending Protestant schools have smaller gains in religious skepticism than those at

secular schools, and nonreligiously-affiliated students have much larger gains in religious

skepticism than mainline Protestant students. However, unlike the models predicting religious

commitment, evangelical Protestants do not differ from mainline Protestants in religiousskepticism, and students from Catholic, Jewish, and other non-Christian faiths have greater gains

in skepticism than mainline Protestants. All of these patterns persisted in Block 2. Once again,

attending an institution with a high ecumenical worldview average and attending a Protestant

school both attenuate the link between religious affiliation (in particular, identifying as Catholic

or with no religious group) and religious skepticism in Block 2. In Block 3, students’ religious

engagement and socializing with peers who have similar religious views are negatively related to

gains in religious skepticism, whereas faculty support for spiritual/religious engagement is

positively related to religious skepticism. The main effect of Protestant institutions becomes

nonsignificant, while a suppressor effect for attending a Catholic school appears in this finalblock. The effects of students’ religious affiliations are generally smaller in Block 3 than in Block

2, but they still remain significant (except for the difference between Catholics and mainline

Protestants).

Table 2. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses predicting religious

skepticism in the junior year


Catholic school −.037 −.046 −.134**

(.051) (.057) (.043)

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Protestant school −.171** −.116** −.016

(.062) (.038) (.033)

Ecumenical worldview average −.016 .056 .053

(.049) (.038) (.032)

Evangelical Student

Intercept −.065 −.069 −.063

(.039) (.048) (.042)

Catholic school .044 −.004

(.084) (.079)


(.082) (.068)

Ecumenical worldview average −.067 .011

(.040) (.044)

Catholic Student

Intercept .086** .085* .023

(.029) (.033) (.027)

Catholic school −.034 .082

(.056) (.048)

Protestant school −.123* −.101*

(.051) (.047)

Ecumenical worldview average −.057* −.048**

(.022) (.015)

Jewish Student

Intercept .427*** .388** .213**

(.096) (.120) (.077)

Catholic school .333 .371*

(.210) (.153)

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(.224) (.148)


(.077) (.061)


Intercept .236*** .224*** .126**

(.060) (.059) (.039)

Catholic school .083 .117

(.119) (.089)


(.102) (.090)


(.060) (.053)


Intercept .567*** .529*** .268***

(.088) (.083) (.057)


(.122) (.092)


(.074) (.062)

Ecumenical worldview average −.155*** −.149***

(.020) (.024)

Socialized with students with similar religious beliefs −.043**

(.013)

Faculty support for spiritual/religious development .114***

(.025)

Religious engagement −.447***

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To examine whether students’ religious engagement is responsible for the link between

Protestant institutions and religious transformation, additional analyses (not shown here) were

conducted. The models were identical to Block 1 analyses predicting religious commitment and

religious skepticism, but with religious engagement as an additional Level-1 predictor. If adding

this lone variable eliminates the significant pattern for Protestant institutions, then this variable

mediates the relationship between institutional type and religious change. As expected, adding

religious engagement to Block 1 results in either a nonsignificant effect (for religious skepticism)

or a reversal of the observed effect (for religious commitment).


ecumenical worldview, and religious skepticism at the beginning of freshman year. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p

< .001.

(.011)

Religious Struggle

Interestingly, some of the significant main effects for religious struggle are similar to—and in the

same direction as—those for religious commitment. In Block 1, attending a Protestant institution

(vs. attending a secular institution) is associated with greater gains in religious struggle (see

Table 3). Evangelical Protestants have greater gains in religious struggle than mainline

Protestants, whereas the opposite pattern occurs for Jewish students, students who identify with

other non-Christian groups, and nonreligiously-affiliated students. In addition, attending an

institution with a greater ecumenical worldview average is positively associated with religious

struggle. With the exception of the pattern for evangelical Protestants, all of these significant

findings also occur in Block 2. Attending a Protestant school diminishes differences between

mainline Protestants and several groups: “other” non-Christian religions, Catholics, and

evangelical Protestants (although the main effects in the latter two categories are not significant

in Block 2). Relative to attending a secular school, attending a Catholic school exacerbates the

differences in religious struggle between Jews and mainline Protestants. As with the previous

two dependent variables, ecumenical worldview average conditions the relationship between

being an evangelical Protestant and religious change. In Block 3, the only college experience that

significantly predicts gains in religious struggle is faculty support for spiritual/religious

engagement, which has a positive relationship. The main effects for students’ religious affiliation

and ecumenical worldview average are similar in Blocks 2 and 3, although two of the predictors

of slopes become nonsignificant in the final block. As with religious skepticism, attending a

Catholic school becomes a negative predictor in Block 3, and attending a Protestant school

becomes nonsignificant.

Table 3. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses predicting religious struggle

in the junior year


Catholic school −.068 −.058 −.180**

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(.048) (.063) (.058)

Protestant school .162*** .210*** .015

(.042) (.051) (.059)

Ecumenical worldview average .075*** .111*** .083**

(.017) (.025) (.023)

Evangelical Student

Intercept .133* .056 .041

(.060) (.053) (.052)

Catholic school .072 −.028

(.112) (.116)

Protestant school −.220* −.227*

(.093) (.091)

Ecumenical worldview average −.185* −.175*

(.082) (.087)

Catholic Student

Intercept .020 .021 −.007

(.056) (.058) (.054)


(.081) (.080)

Protestant school −.154* −.073

(.070) (.067)


(.055) (.054)

Jewish Student

Intercept −.341** −.358** −.411**

(.099) (.130) (.123)

Catholic school −.473* −.419



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(.202) (.238)


(.281) (.276)

Ecumenical worldview average −.007 .009

(.151) (.138)


Intercept −.182** −.196** −.209***

(.050) (.057) (.054)


(.112) (.106)

Protestant school .177* .164*

(.084) (.076)


(.025) (.023)


Intercept −.228** −.182* −.206*

(.074) (.085) (.078)


(.154) (.149)

Protestant school −.102 .052

(.141) (.135)


(.038) (.038)

Socialized with students with similar religious beliefs −.022

(.019)

Faculty support for spiritual/religious development .174***

(.023)



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ecumenical worldview, and religious struggle at the beginning of freshman year. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p <

.001.

Religious engagement .008

(.022)

DISCUSSION

The patterns for religious commitment and religious skepticism are quite similar for most

predictors, so we will largely discuss these religion constructs simultaneously. Consistent with

Hypothesis 1, attending a Protestant institution is associated with greater gains in religiosity than

attending a secular institution. Yet for the most part, religious change does not differ significantly

between Catholic and secular institutions. Two dynamics may account for the divergence

between these two types of religiously-affiliated schools. First, the institutional effects may

simply be the product of overall differences in students’ religious engagement. Students at

Protestant schools are much more religiously engaged than students at Catholic schools,

whereas no such difference exists between Catholic and secular institutions (

Bowman and Small 2009 ; Hill 2009 ). Moreover, adding college experience variables in Block

3 completely accounts for the differences between secular schools and Protestant schools. In a

related explanation, some argue that a focus on secular goals at many Catholic institutions has

detracted from religious development and moral values at these schools (e.g., Reilly 2003 ).

Hill (2009) suggests that at Catholic colleges, “religious identity is in question or is no longer as

salient as it once was” (2009:530), and Freitas (2008) states that religion at these schools is

“nonintrusive” and “private” (2008:55). Thus, a generalized secularism (relatively speaking) at

Catholic schools may also partially account for these effects.

Consistent with Hypothesis 2, religious engagement is strongly associated with increased

religious commitment and decreased religious skepticism. This pattern implies a type of virtuous

cycle in which religious activities, such as attending services and reading holy texts, encourage

students to build their internal commitment, and their internal commitment then drives them togreater participation. Moreover, even when controlling for religious engagement and faculty

support for spiritual/religious development, socializing with students who have similar religious

beliefs is related to greater religious commitment and diminished skepticism. It seems that these

interpersonal bonds play an important role in maintaining and fostering religiosity, as students

may engage in informal conversations about their shared religious beliefs or formal religious

activities. In contrast, when controlling for other variables, faculty support for spiritual/religious

engagement is linked to increased religious skepticism. Follow-up analyses (not reported here)

reveal that this pattern is not a suppressor effect that results from including other variables in

the model. It may be that students who are questioning their religious beliefs are more likely toseek out religious and spiritual guidance from faculty members, which then leads to a

perception of greater faculty support for religious and spiritual development. The corresponding

positive relationship between faculty support for spiritual/religious development and gains in

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religious struggle provides some indirect support for this interpretation. Alternatively, it may be

engagement with religion from an academic perspective, as catalyzed by faculty members, which

may cause students to rethink their own more tacitly held beliefs, resulting in increased

skepticism.

Evangelical Protestant students generally have the greatest increases in religious commitment,

whereas nonreligiously affiliated students tend to have the least. These patterns may be

explained by group differences in religious and spiritual engagement. For instance,Bowman and Small (2010) found that differences in spiritual growth among religious groups

were completely explained by students’ religious experiences and ecumenical worldview during

college. In the current study, the effects associated with evangelical Protestants and a lack of

affiliation with an organized religion are reduced—but generally not eliminated—when

controlling for these same experiences. This pattern suggests even beyond engagement,

students’ social networks may legitimate their religious commitment, which is consistent with

Hill's (2009) understanding of the impact of one's network in the formation of religious

behavioral norms.

Consistent with Hypothesis 3, Jews and students from “other” religious affiliations have greater

gains in religious skepticism than mainline Protestants. Although these students are somewhat

less religiously engaged during college than their mainline Protestant peers (

Bowman and Small 2009 ), controlling for religious engagement and other religious

experiences does not completely account for this group difference in religious skepticism. When

considering Hill's (2009) moral community theory, this finding suggests that the peers of these

ewish and “other” religious students may harbor a normative ideology of religious skepticism. It

may also imply that religious skepticism is linked not only with a lack of participation in or

commitment to one's religion, but also with the status of being a religious minority. Members of

religious minority groups often experience the privileging of Christianity ( Schlosser 2003 ) and

therefore may perceive a contradiction inherent within the existence of multiple religious

ideologies (minimally, their own and that of Christians). This may lead to doubts about religious

truth being reflected through increased religious skepticism during college, an environment that

may expose young adults to religious perspectives that they did not encounter in their home

communities. Interestingly, Catholic students also demonstrate increased skepticism relative to

mainline Protestants, although Catholicism is the single largest denomination represented on

college campuses today ( HERI 2005 ). This also may indicate an ideological conflict between the

Catholic and Protestant worldviews.

The effects of being an evangelical Protestant or nonreligiously-affiliated student were

diminished at schools with a greater ecumenical worldview average, which is consistent with

Hypothesis 4. Ecumenical worldview measured at an institutional level may serve as a proxy for

an inclusive campus religious climate ( Bowman and Small in press ). Students who do not fall

neatly into any existing religious group may feel more welcome to practice their beliefs at

colleges and universities with a climate supportive of religious diversity, which would explain

why the effect of not identifying with an organized religion is tempered at these institutions.

Moreover, this inclusive climate seems to reduce the gains of evangelical Protestants. Because

evangelical students often feel that only their particular beliefs are the only possible religioustruth ( Magolda and Gross 2009 ), these students’ hegemonic views—and thus their

commitment to their beliefs—may be challenged in environments that accept and promote

religious diversity.

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Attending a Protestant institution often has a similar attenuating effect on the link between

religious affiliation and religious change. This pattern is somewhat surprising because one might

expect that Christian institutions would exacerbate any gaps between Christian and non-

Christian students. However, the constant presence of religious topics in the curriculum and co-

curriculum at many of these institutions provides all students with ample means for

constructively examining their religious beliefs ( Freitas 2008 ). This is consistent with the moral

communities explanation provided by Hill (2009) , albeit expanded to include non-Christian

students as those being impacted by the authority of those communities.

The overall findings for religious struggle are also largely unexpected. The same groups of

students and institutions that have greater religious growth also have greater gains in religious

struggle. As Bryant and Astin (2008) have described, the literature on whether religious

struggle is “good” or “bad” is mixed, with a majority of studies (including their own) finding that it

is generally related to negative outcomes (e.g., increased psychological distress and diminished

physical health and self-esteem). The current finding cannot simply be explained by differing

levels of religiosity across groups because religious struggle is virtually uncorrelated with

religious engagement, religious commitment, and religious skepticism (Astin, Astin, and Lindhomin press). There are two possible explanations for these findings on religious struggle. The first

possibility is that students must be engaged with religious thoughts in order to experience

religious struggle. In other words, those students who are heavily participating in religious

activities and conversing with like-minded religiously committed peers are regularly presented

with a variety of new ideas, some of which may challenge their existing beliefs. This is consistent

with the findings of Freitas (2008) , in which students at evangelical colleges had more

opportunities to test their faith. Conversely, students who have lower levels of religious

engagement, such as those who do not identify with any organized religion, have less reason to

think about religion in general and, therefore, to struggle with religion's meanings and nuances.

Alternatively, theoretical perspectives on college diversity experiences may provide some insight

into the current relationships pertaining to religious struggle. Gurin et al. (2002) argue that

students often have limited experience interacting with racial/ethnic diversity before entering

college. When they attend college campuses that are generally much more diverse than their

previous neighborhoods and high schools, these initial interactions can lead to an internal

struggle to reconcile one's current experiences with one's previously held worldviews and

conceptions. That is, these diversity interactions often lead to a questioning or a reconsideration

of one's beliefs ( Bowman and Brandenberger in press ; Luo and Jamieson-Drake 2009 ),

which often ultimately results in attitude change (e.g., Denson 2009 ; Hurtado 2005 ).

An analogous dynamic may occur on college campuses. Many evangelical and mainline

Protestants, as well as Catholics, are probably used to being in the substantial majority and

practicing their religious beliefs with like-minded individuals. Attending college campuses that

celebrate multiple forms of diversity (including religious) may be quite novel and potentially

threatening for these students. In fact, some evangelical Protestant students create close-knit

communities to protect themselves from the broader campus community that does not share

their strongly-held beliefs ( Magolda and Gross 2009 ). Therefore, this confrontation with

diverse religious beliefs may lead to greater religious struggle. In contrast, many non-Christianstudents are likely used to being in the minority; as a result, attending a campus that is mostly

comprised of Christian students is not a novel experience and therefore does not contribute to

religious struggle. This interpretation is bolstered by the positive relationship between an



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institution's ecumenical worldview average and gains in religious struggle. In other words,

encountering a campus climate that supports and celebrates religious diversity may lead to

greater religious struggle (particularly among Christian students), which is consistent with this

dissonance-related explanation.

Finally, some limitations should be noted. Previous studies have identified the impact of

attending “fundamentalist” or “conservative” Protestant institutions as opposed to other

Christian institutions ( Freitas 2008 ; Gonyea and Kuh 2006 ), but the dataset did not containsufficient information to make this delineation. Therefore, the current analyses may be

underestimating the impact of attending these subtypes of Protestant colleges and universities.

In addition, the survey response options used to indicate students’ religious affiliations did not

include a category that indicated a black Protestant group, which is one of the RELTRAD

classifications for religious affiliation ( Steensland et al. 2000 ). Moreover, the ecumenical

worldview average is an indirect proxy for an inclusive campus religious climate; a measure that

asked specifically about openness to religious diversity on one's campus would be a more direct

(and potentially more accurate) indicator of this construct.

CONCLUSION

The research presented here offers new insights into the ways religiously diverse college

students change their religious commitment and experience skepticism and struggle. It

illustrates the ways in which environments at both the macro (campus) and micro (friendship

groups) levels contribute critically to young adults’ religious commitment. For example, the

normative presence of religious engagement among evangelical Protestant students seems to

encourage religious commitment, whereas the pseudo-secular culture of Catholic institutionsdoes not have much impact. Moreover, religious commitment, religious engagement, and having

friends with similar religious beliefs all build upon and contribute to one another. Identifying

with a non-Christian religious group (or no religious affiliation at all) also plays a role, as these

students’ awareness of Christian privilege leads to greater skepticism toward religion as well as

less struggle to reconcile their own beliefs with those of others.

Two findings from this study also provide critical extensions of previous religious research. First,

the relationship between faculty support for religious development and increased religious

skepticism suggests a possible confluence with Clydesdale's (2007 ) theory of the identity

lockbox. In other words, students who temporarily push their active religious involvement aside

may also find themselves with more opportunity to entertain thoughts of skepticism. Future

research should consider the question of whether this skepticism is a lasting condition or

whether it wanes after a change in environment and a distancing from these faculty influences.

Second, Hill's (2009) work on moral communities and religious subcultures is supported by

this study's findings regarding the positive influence of like-minded peers on religious

transformation. Hill's fundamental question concerns how institutional characteristics influence

individual-level participation, and his question may be partially answered by this mediating

presence of the friendship group—the membership of which is externally limited by the

enrollment of students at a particular institution.

Additionally, future research should continue to explore the religious transformation of diverse

college students at diverse institutions and to utilize the two identified key institution-level

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Documents

2011 3_2 Religious Commitment, Skepticism, And Struggle Among U.S