HIGHER EDUCATION Students find religion in college classrooms

Religion courses have become some of the hottest on many campuses.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI -- Students crowd into two of the University of Miami's Religion 101 classes, the latecomers sitting cross-legged in the aisles.
They're the lucky ones: The University of Miami had to limit two of its Religion 101 classes this fall to the first 530 who signed up -- as it has had to do in recent semesters.
"Kids are discovering their faith in college and they are looking for any opportunity that comes their way to find it," says Jeffrey Shoulson, a University of Miami assistant professor of English and director of the Program of Judaic Studies.
Finding themselves
Religion has become one of the hottest areas of study in campuses across the country. Since the late '90s, members of Generation Y have been taking classes to help explain the world as well as find themselves a religion, often by mixing and matching beliefs. Universities are responding by offering more religion classes, from an overview of the world's faiths to concentrated looks at them.
The University of Miami's enrollment in religious studies classes has almost doubled in less than five years to this fall's 921 students.
Nathan Katz, chairman of Florida International University's Department of Religious Studies, sees the increased enrollment as a sign of the resurgence of spirituality in the last decade.
"We are the most technically advanced in the world and we are also the most religious, by many measures," he says.
Understanding the world
Gen Y'ers -- who at about 70 million number almost as many as their boomer parents -- also seek religion classes out of curiosity and a need to understand current events.
"I'm an open-minded person, and I want to see what all the religions had to say," says Vikram Jagadish, a University of Miami sophomore majoring in political science who is taking Religion 101 this fall.
Not to change his Hindu beliefs, he hastily adds, but to understand the world better. He's particularly interested in Islam and Christianity.
The numbers
In just three years, from the school year 1996-97 to 1999-2000, the number of students taking a religion class increased 15 percent across the United States and the number of religion majors jumped 25 percent, according to a national survey of 1,156 colleges by the American Academy of Religion.
A Gallup Poll survey of teens' worship attendance showed slightly more were going to services in 1998 -- 49 percent -- than the 47 percent a generation ago in 1977.
"There's a different attitude: It's more acceptable, not as contentious" to be religious, says Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina who is directing the National Study of Youth and Religion. "Today's youth are less suspicious, less hostile than baby boomers would have been in the '60s and '70s."
Indeed, Carlos Santos, a Florida International University English senior taking a Religion and the Holocaust class, says religion offers a way "to get a better understanding of humankind."
It's also a way to find yourself, says Matt Oglesby, a 21-year-old transfer student from California who says he grew up with no religion. He is now enrolled in a Florida International University Buddhist class and is thinking of earning a master's in Buddhism.
Learning their own roots
Many students are also on a pilgrimage to learn about their family faith -- the rituals, customs and traditions their Boomer parents may have abandoned.
Some also have grown up in megachurches without ritual. But young people today like icons, incense and other traditional trappings of Christianity so they're taking religion classes to learn more about them, says Richard Flory, a sociology associate professor at Biola University in California who studies trends in religion.
"People are interested in their own roots, in their own traditions, in learning about them," adds Florida International University's Oren Stier, who is an assistant professor of religious studies.
Threatening
Sometimes, though, students may feel threatened by how religion classes look objectively at religions -- even challenging what students think as infallible beliefs, says Daniel Alvarez, a Florida International University religion instructor.
Many evangelical Christians, for example, are stunned when professors teach that the Bible is open to interpretation and contradicts itself, he says. Or they may have been taught that Christianity is the best religion -- and are now being told that other faiths are equally valid.
"The more traditional have a sense of anxiety," Alvarez says. "They're exposed to historical criticism that they simply aren't familiar with or sympathetic to."
Alvarez tries to be gentle. "My job, I say to them, is to make each of the religions come alive."
Stier says students come to him for pastoral counseling, and he has to tell them he is an academic, not a member of the clergy, and steer them elsewhere.
Many students, though, aren't taking religious studies for personal reasons but rather to understand the times better.
Says Florida International University's Katz, "There are people who are blowing themselves up for religion, our foreign policy is influenced by religion, and they want to understand why."