The Religious Life of the College Student

Abstract

Whenever one attempts to study the religious life of any group of individuals, he is confronted at once with the intangibility of the problems presented. Religious experience is a matter that enters so vitally into the whole of life that any statement concerning it is liable to be partial and misleading. Moreover, on account of its being so bound up with the inner experiences of life, people discuss it with reluctance. Any investigation, therefore, into the religious status or condition of a given section of society must deal largely with the institutions or organizations through which this religious life is expressed. Statistics may often be misleading, and may fail to give an adequate view of the situation; but they do nevertheless show the tendencies, the scope, and in some measure the social results of the religious activity of the particular group in question. In the following paper it is proposed to discuss the religious life of a certain section of society. The field chosen is the state universities and certain of the larger colleges on a Christian foundation in the West and Middle West. The field is narrowed to these limits because the problems presented are somewhat different from those of the smaller denominational colleges of the same section, and of the large and small colleges of the East. The institutions investigated include fourteen state universities, four colleges on Christian foundation, and one independent endowed college. The male attendance at these colleges comprises approximately 65 per cent. of the undergraduate men students in the thirteen states represented, according to the I903 Report of the Bureau of Education. In a second article the agencies used for cultivating the religious life in these institutions will be considered, especially the work of the Young Men's Christian Association. Concerning the general religious atmosphere of these colleges some idea can be obtained from the statistics gathered by President