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Are Students Losing Their Religion on Campus?
Many Young People Turn Away from God in College, But It Doesn't Have to Be That Way

Dec. 6, 2005 —

From the day she was born, Ashley Parrish was taught to put God first in her life. She attended a Christian school, did missionary work in Mexico, and gave youth sermons at her local church -- then she left home for her freshman year of college.

"When I came to college I was so excited to get out of the bubble that I'd been in, in high school and in my family, and i just kind of went crazy," Parrish said.

Parrish and her boyfriend, Ethan Colclasure, attend the University of Georgia. For them, partying five nights a week was the norm.

"It's definitely the norm to be drunk and to have premarital sex and just kinda live a very -- it's all about me, whatever I can get tonight," Colclasure said. "My grades suffered, I had a great social life but that's pretty much all I had. My spiritual life and my academics suffered a lot."

Parrish said she was having so much fun at first, she didn't realize she had lost something important.

"When I was a freshman my first semester I did not, I didn't go to church at all," she said. "I was having so much fun with all the boys and with all the partying, with all the friends. It didn't really occur to me that I was missing something."

Having Faith

Parrish's new priorities were disappointing news for her parents, Craig and Sherri Parrish, who were youth ministers back home in Nashville. The Parrishes recognized that kids raised in spiritual homes could be challenged by a whole new world of temptations on campus.

"I was very worried about Ashley getting drunk at a party and not being able to use her full mind and make poor decisions or have someone take advantage of her and hurt her in any way," Sherri Parrish said.

But her parents knew there was only so much they could do.

"You really, really do have to just trust that God is going to take charge and he is there, because you can't be there the whole time for them," said her husband.

Tony Arnold, the director of media relations for Campus Crusade for Christ, agrees with the Parrishes. "Often times you'll hear parents say: 'Well, we're just praying for our kids,' and I think that's very important," he said.

But Arnold advises parents like the Parrishes not only to pray but to gently remind their child of the values they consider most important -- without pushing too hard.

"I would e-mail her and usually at the bottom of the e-mail, I would put like a reference to a verse in the Bible," Craig Parrish said. "And the reason I didn't write out the verse is I wanted her to look it up, then she might read on either side of that individual verse."

Arnold advised parents: "We need to be preparing our children for going out into the world where everything they believe may, in fact, be challenged."

A recent UCLA study found many college students drift away from their religious upbringings. In the study, 52 percent of the students said they attended religious services frequently the year before entering college, but by their junior year attendance had dropped to 29 percent.

In Ashley Parrish's case it was a desperate emptiness that set in during her sophomore year that prompted a return to her faith. She joined Campus Crusade for Christ, made more time for personal prayer and Bible study, and started dating someone who experienced the same struggles.

Colclasure says he's still learning a lot about his faith. "I've just been learning more just about the freedom of the Gospel, and realizing you're not perfect and that no one expects you to be perfect."

"It's hard maintaining a Christian relationship within the context of a college," Parrish said. "But we learn from our struggles and from our temptations and from our mess-ups and every time we fall we get back up and we know we are given a second chance."

And parents should realize that their kids' struggles can often strengthen their faith. "I know that in my walk with the Lord, I needed those struggles," Parrish said. "And those, those times when I was the lowest in the middle of my freshman year, like, those are so imperative to who I am now."

What Can Parents Do?

So when kids stumble, how can parents help? Many experts say it's important to let them make mistakes so they can find their own spiritual path.

"Good Morning America" parenting expert Anne Pleshette Murphy said that parents shouldn't despair -- the UCLA study also found that 76 percent of college undergraduates want to have a spiritual life.

Murphy suggested the following tips for talking to college kids about religion:

Start slowly. Suggest that your child attend one organized religious service a week, or even attend a Bible class in a friend's dorm room. If that doesn't feel right, suggest a youth group, yoga class, meditation tape or even community service -- anything that might be nourishing for the soul. Most schools have volunteer community outreach programs that aren't necessarily religion based.

Study other religions. Most colleges offer religious studies classes; some even have an affiliated divinity school. Encourage your child to take a course in comparative religions or even attend an alternative service.

Share your own struggles with your faith. Talk about challenges you've faced, share examples of kindness and compassion, use e-mail to send passages from the book of your faith, or share stories. But don't expect -- or demand -- a reply.

For more information on spirituality on campus, visit www.beliefnet.com.

Study Shows Public Schools Indoctrinate Even Christian Kids s

Jim Brown and nni Parker
Agape Press

 

A researcher has revealed some disturbing trends regarding the sets of beliefs Christian students in public schools have about the most important issues in life.

 

Dan Smithwick is the founder and president of the Nehemiah Institute, a group that provides a biblical worldview testing and training service to Christian educators. He is the developer of what is called the "PEERS test," a tool to assess the worldviews of young people, and says the majority of public school students from evangelical Christian homes consistently score in the "socialist" category on the test.

 

According to Smithwick, this outcome should come as no surprise, considering the fact that secular humanists are currently shaping America. He notes that socialism, a political and economic philosophy that commonly emphasizes government control and redistribution of wealth over personal responsibility and private ownership, often goes hand in hand with secularist attitudes and a generally non-biblical worldview.

 

Smithwick's worldview test consists of a series of statements carefully designed to identify a person's worldview in five categories: Politics, Economics, Education, Religion, and Social Issues (PEERS). Each statement is framed to either agree or disagree with a biblical principle.

 

When it comes to major moral and social issues, the Nehemiah Institute spokesman contends there is a dramatic difference in thinking between students in public schools and those in Christian schools. This is because, while Christian school students are generally taught curricula predicated on a biblical worldview, students educated in public schools, even when they grow up in Christian homes, tend to a very high degree to adopt the non-biblical and socialistic worldviews of the secular humanists in control of their education.

 

"In the last hundred years," Smithwick asserts, "and especially in the last 30 years, this is the audience that is shaping the public square in America, hands down. And they didn't really have to fight for it -- we [in the Church] gave it to them. Somewhere along the way we decided that the public square really wasn't our business. It wasn't our playground; they could have it, and they've had their way with it."

 

As a result, the Christian education advocate says, even Christian students are growing up to become a part of a society with an increasingly secular-humanistic and socialistic worldview. "Now we've got a mess on our hands," he says, "and it's really our fault. So we've got to change that. We've got to repent before God. We've got to go back and understand that worldview means God is interested in everything he created."

 

Undoing the Damage Done by Dewey

 

Unfortunately, Smithwick says, many Christian young people today are not being taught to think biblically in all areas of life. That is why he urges parents, pastors and Christian teachers to take advantage of the Nehemiah Institute's worldview testing, training, and resources. And this is why he has been promoting the Institute's programs this week at the Alliance for the Separation of School and State Conference in Washington, DC.

 

Undoing Dewey -- that's the goal of the program, according to Smithwick. He refers to the secular humanist principles of John Dewey (1859-1952), the philosopher and education reformer whose principles have shaped public education in America. Dewey promoted a philosophy of education with the premise that learning by doing (experimentalism) should form the basis of education, and any idea or concept is validated by its practicality (pragmatism). Some Christian educators consider these ideas to be precursors to "values clarification" and other questionable teaching models that advocate moral relativism, but which are commonly taught in teacher education and used in U.S. public schools.

 

Smithwick says his program of PEERS testing indicates that Christian students are by no means immune to the secular humanism being taught in public schools, but have in fact been dramatically influenced by it. "The way we got this was by testing youth groups in evangelical churches," he says. "The majority of the kids are in public schools. In many cases, 100 percent of them are in public schools."

 

The Nehemiah Institute president says many pastors like to call these young people their "best kids" since this group, at least, are involved in a church youth group. Still, he asserts that these kids have not escaped with an intact biblical worldview. "They're in public school," he says, "and they're buying into the philosophy of life that's being put before them five days a week, six or seven hours a day."

 

Smithwick recommends PEERS testing as an aid for Christians who want to make sure their young people develop a distinctly biblical worldview. He advises Church parents to disconnect from government schooling and, along with pastors and other Christian educators, to engage in worldview assessment and training.

 

(c) Agape Press

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