College Students Increasingly Irreligious

The 2001 fresh­man sur­vey indi­cat­ed record num­bers of stu­dents with no reli­gious pref­er­ence.

This is pret­ty dat­ed, but I just ran across it: accord­ing to the 2001 Nation­wide Fresh­man Sur­vey, col­lege stu­dents are becom­ing less and less reli­gious:

RECORD NUMBER REPORT NO RELIGIOUS PREFERENCE

When asked to indi­cate their cur­rent reli­gious pref­er­ence, an all-time high of 15.8 per­cent of stu­dents report­ed none, com­pared with 14.9 per­cent last year and 6.6 per­cent in 1966. The growth in stu­dents with no reli­gious pref­er­ence par­al­lels the growth in the per­cent­age of stu­dents who report no reli­gious pref­er­ence for at least one par­ent. A record high of 12.4 per­cent of fresh­men describe their fathers as hav­ing no reli­gious pref­er­ence, and a record high of 7.8 per­cent report no reli­gious ref­er­ence for their moth­ers.

Addi­tion­al­ly, there is a decline in the per­cent­age of stu­dents who pray or med­i­tate at least once a week (from 67.7 in 2000 to 65.7 per­cent in 2001). A new sur­vey ques­tion asked stu­dents to rate their lev­el of “reli­gious­ness” as com­pared to the aver­age per­son their age, with results of 31.7 per­cent rat­ing them­selves above aver­age or in the high­est 10 per­cent. This rep­re­sents the sec­ond-low­est fig­ure among all 21 self-rat­ing mea­sures.

Anoth­er rea­son to see Christ pro­claimed on the col­lege cam­pus!

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