The number of secular students on college campuses is at an all-time high and the number of religious students is at an all-time low, according to a University of California survey published in the fall of 2014.
The Higher Education Research Institute at University of California, Los Angeles has surveyed college freshman for the past 49 years on topics such as political engagement, drug use and religious views. In 2014 the survey found 27.5 percent of students reported “none” for their religious affiliation.
This is up from 24.6 percent in 2013 and up from 15.4 percent in 1971, when the religious affiliation question was introduced to the survey.
“The reason that there is a growing number of people who are secular, whether or not they say it, is probably just better education and also a higher standard of living,” London Homer-Wambeam, president of the Secular Student Alliance RSO, said. “People who are in poverty have these terrible things happening to them and are living in really terrible conditions are more likely to be religious because psychologically they need it more. I think it’s something that we’ve been able to give up.”
But religious students still make up the majority. Adam Huck, president of the Lutheran University Ministries RSO, meets weekly with a handful of students for a meal and bible study.
“I think for some people there are challenges in college that really make them question their faith in God,” Huck said. “Sometimes that’s questioning society, sometimes that’s questioning the church and the traditions you’ve grown up with.”
Huck said the group makes it easy to be both a college student and a Christian.
“I’ve had a lot of questions for God myself and through the experience of being a part of this group, it’s helped me grow,” he said. “It’s helped me answer some of my questions. It’s helped me realize that sometimes we can’t have answers to every question.”
The hardships of college and of finally being out on one’s own can challenge one’s faith, but Christa Hathaway, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said she saw it as an opportunity to solidify her faith.
“I would say that college is the first time you’re completely responsible for all the choices you’re making, so you really start to question whether the choices you’re making are what you want to do with your life,” Hathaway said. “And some people want to change but for other people, it confirms what they’ve already decided in life.”
Hathaway said she experienced one year of college before going on a mission to Brazil. Now that she is back, she said she sees the college experience—and the world—in a new light and feels religion is central to a healthy life on or off campus.
“I think it’s hard with the way that society’s changing,” she said. “There’s a view that religion is becoming outdated. So if you want to be religious, you really have to want it.”
The world outside college may be growing more secular as well. According to a series of Gallup polls, the number of people worldwide claiming to be religious dropped by nine percent between 2005 and 2012 (77 to 68 percent), while Americans claiming to be religious dropped by 13 percent during the same time (73 to 60 percent). According to the same polls, during the same span, the number of people who identify as “convinced atheists” rose from four to seven percent and the number of Americans who identified that way rose from one to five percent.
Homer-Wambeam said the Secular Student Alliance RSO aims to make this growing, often marginalized group feel comfortable in their community.
“We want to create a community for non-believers who often feel like their lack of beliefs are somehow taboo in a weird way and so it’s nice to have a group of people that know that they’re all on the same page about it,” he said. “The other side of that is to make it no longer taboo, not such a bad thing to be an atheist and show that we’re people too, that a lot of people are like this, that a lot of people don’t subscribe to a dogma and that doesn’t actually make us weird or different.”
Maggie Bauer, a member of the secular RSO, said the spread of atheism, agnosticism and secularism helps foster a greater acceptance of individuals who do not identify with any religion or openly identify as a non-believer.
“Being an atheist has had such a negative connotation for so long,” she said. “It’s unfortunate for the majority to look down on those of us who don’t identify as Christian or have any sort of faith at all.”
But Homer-Wambeam said atheists in modern-day Wyoming do not have to worry too much about persecution.
“We can’t really claim we’re being discriminated against in Wyoming just because the University of Wyoming tends to be pretty open-minded and people just let you do your thing,” he said. “There are certainly other universities, more religious universities in more religious areas where it’s kind of a risk to join a group in one of these places.”
