Christianity and the University Experience in Contemporary England

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Christianity and the University Experience in
Contemporary England
Dr Mathew Guest (Durham) Dr Sonya Sharma
(Durham) Dr Kristin Aune (Derby) Professor Rob
Warner (Chester)
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The Project in Brief

• The project explores how students (aged 18-25)
  negotiate Christian identities at university
• Large Grant (334,000), funding
• replacement teaching costs for Investigators
• Research Associate salary
• travel to research sites, project seminars,
  dissemination at conferences
• Duration September 2009-August 2012

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Research Context 1 youth and religion in the UK

• Religion Society youth stream
• British Sociological Association Sociology of
  Religion Study Group conference Religion and
  Youth (2008)
• Youth Religion (ed. Dandelion Collins-Mayo,
  Ashgate, forthcoming)
• FaithXChange network

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Research Context 2 young people and Christianity

• National Study of Youth and Religion (United
  States) surveys in 2002/3, 2005, 2008
• Smith (2005) Soul Searching (Oxford University
  Press) young people as moralistic therapeutic
  deists
• Denton, Pearce Smith (2008) Religion and
  Spirituality On the Path Through Adolescence
  stable religiosity but slight decrease in
  conventional religious beliefs practices, esp.
  among Protestants. Positive attitude to religious
  congregations
• Smith Snell (2009) Souls in Transition (Oxford
  University Press)

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Research Context 2 young people and Christianity

• Hoge et al. (2001) Young Adult Catholics
  (University of Notre Dame Press)
• Commitment to identification with Catholicism
• But more distanced from critical of the
  institutional church less committed to
  specifically Catholic doctrines practices
• Catholic identity not necessarily central to
  their lives
• Fulton et al. (2000) Young Catholics at the New
  Millennium (University of Dublin Press)
• Sizeable group of young Catholics committed to
  stewardship of world
• But decline in mass attendance, increasing
  individualism resistance to official church
  teachings, esp. on personal sexual morality

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Research Context 2 young people and Christianity

• Savage et al. (2006) Making Sense of Generation Y
  (Church House Publishing)
• Young people are happy with life and dont feel
  the need for religion or spirituality
• Popular culture central
• Lack knowledge of Christianity see church as
  boring and irrelevant

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Research Context

• Why study Christian students?
• What do we already know about Christian students?
• Dutton (2008) Meeting Jesus at University
  (Ashgate)
• Christianity as an identity marker for some
  students
• Conflicts with other groups

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Christian Student Groups

• Christian Unions (UCCF) 20,000 students in
  250-350 CUs in UK (mostly England)
• Fusion 350 small groups in 70 UK universities
• Chaplaincies
• Anglican and Methodist societies (often linked to
  Student Christian Movement)
• Catholic societies (linked to Catholic Student
  Forum)

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Freedom vs equality at Exeter University?
"The Evangelical Christian Union is the only
society identified that has barriers to entry -
both for membership of the society and to be on
the committee of the society. This is certainly
not a debate regarding the beliefs of the
society, it is one of equal opportunities."
(Exeter University Students Guild)
Going to court is the last thing we want to do,
but we really feel that our fundamental freedoms
of belief, association and expression are being
threatened here. (Ben Martin, Christian Union
committee)
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Arising Questions

• How does the university experience influence
  student Christian faith?
• Liberalise, neutralise, consolidate, repudiate,
  or radicalise?
• Symbolic boundaries and social construction of
  ethical certainties
• How forceful are the dynamics of secularization
  and fundamentalism?
• How does student Christian faith influence the
  university experience?
• Social capital? Quality of learning? Social
  cohesion? Social activism?
• Or privatized? autonomous religious consumption

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Aims

• To identify the religious beliefs and social
  values of Christian undergraduates
• To explore the impact of the university
  experience educational, social and religious
  on those beliefs and values, and vice versa
• To identify how organized Christian groups from
  chaplaincies to CUs help students respond to
  the university experience, and to examine their
  impact upon cohesion and division within the
  student body
• To address implications of these findings for
  HEIs, government policy, and religious
  organizations

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Methods

• Quantitative - A nationwide student survey of
  religious and ethical convictions, and attitudes
  to university
• Qualitative Interview-based case studies of
  undergraduate Christian faith and practice in
  three universities

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Phase 1 Questionnaire Survey

• 12 representative universities across England
• 3 elite/traditional
• 3 inner-city red-bricks
• 3 1960s campus universities
• 3 post-1992 universities
• Target 3,000 randomly selected undergraduates
  per university.

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Online survey tool (Bristol Online Surveys)

• Online survey better suited to target demographic
• (recognises popular media among young people)
• Relatively inexpensive
• Data ready configured for analysis
• Speedy process of administration and data
  collection

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Questionnaire Survey Topics

• Basic Demographics
• Religious influences pre-university
• Christian activity at university
• Christian beliefs
• Social and moral values

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Phase 2 Case Studies
Durham University
University of Leeds
University of Derby
Method One-to-one interviews with a sample of
students in each university, exploring themes in
more qualitative detail.
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Categories of Christian Identification

• Evangelical (Anglican and non-conformist, morally
  conservative, conversion-focused)
• Mainstream Protestant (Anglican and
  non-conformist, with a more liberal approach to
  beliefs and values)
• Roman Catholic (categorised separately due to
  distinctive theology and subculture)

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Dissemination of results

• Academic publications and conferences
• Briefings to interested parties
• HEIs, Government, Religious organisations
• Knowledge transfer through a website