Religious belief in Christian higher education: Is religious and political diversity relativizing?

Abstract

While attending college, religious participation tends to decline among American students, but evidence of changes in religious belief is less clear. On the bases of both secularization theory and the moral communities thesis, we used multi-level modeling techniques to test whether institutional diversity predicts changes in student belief at Christian institutions. Results suggest that declines in absolutism were associated with increasing religious and political diversity, and religious diversity amplified the effects of academic tenure. Political diversity, however, explained the effects of religious diversity in combined models, suggesting that challenging political discourse may be more important for changes in religious belief than diversity of religious worldviews in the context of Christian higher education in the United States.