Medium
By Kevin Singer
December 4, 2019
Kevin Singer is a PhD Student in higher education and Research Associate for IDEALS at North Carolina State University.
According to the new IDEALS national report on interfaith friendship, Evangelical Protestant institutions are negatively associated with first year college students making close friends of other faiths. “Students at Evangelical Protestant institutions may find themselves in more homogenous communities,” the report reads.
Many Evangelical colleges ask prospective students to formally agree with a faith statement prior to joining the campus. At these colleges, students are unlikely to encounter a Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, or Hindu on campus unless a special opportunity presents itself.
Some students at Evangelical colleges may be exposed to other faith groups by studying abroad and performing service in the local community, but these opportunities don’t automatically translate into students making close friends of other faiths that they continually invest during college.
The new report by the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS) entitled Friendships Matter: The Role of Peer Relationships in Interfaith Learning and Development explains that close friendships across religious and non-religious differences in college (or interworldview friendships) have a special power to improve student readiness for a pluralistic society of many faiths, and also improve their appreciative attitudes toward groups with different beliefs.
IDEALS measures appreciative attitudes by students’ level of agreement that another group makes positive contributions to society, are ethical people, personally share things in common with that group, and have a positive attitude toward that group.
Even if students perceived their campus to be welcoming for diversity and reported having formal/informal interfaith exchanges during their first year, these experiences still could not fully account for the impact close interworldview friendships had on their preparedness for a diverse society.
Therefore, the report encourages all educators to make supporting college students’ interworldview friendships a priority, while specifically urging educators at evangelical colleges to help students maintain interworldview friendships that originated in their home communities or to seek out these friendships in the college’s local community.
“Without religious diverse peers for interactions to occur, we can’t expect students at Evangelical colleges to make learning and developmental gains to the same degree as students from other institutions,” explained Dr. Matthew Mayhew, who leads IDEALS at The Ohio State University.
“Given that opportunities to build interfaith bonds may be more of a challenge on these campuses, institutional leaders, faculty, staff, and students may need to be creative by reaching beyond the walls of their college to form interfaith partnerships within the larger communities of which they are a part,” added Dr. Alyssa Rockenbach, who leads IDEALS at North Carolina State University.
I asked Joy Mosley, Director of Government Relations for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), how the Council’s colleges are preparing students for a society of diverse worldview perspectives. She explained the proof is in the pudding. She pointed to the work that CCCU alumni have done to address polarization in society through organizations like Better Angels and Neighborly Faith. Better Angels was started by two alumni of King’s College in New York City to build bridges between political conservatives and liberals, while Neighborly Faith (the organization I co-founded) was started by two alumni from Wheaton College to improve relationships between evangelical Christians and other faith groups.
“Pluralism needs Christian higher education. It needs our passion, our gifts, our abilities, our love for others, our belief that every person is created in God’s image and worthy of dignity and respect. It needs our alumni to engage deeply in the world because of their faith. Christian higher education conversely needs pluralism to fully live out our callings, to serve God and to serve others. So pluralism and Christian higher education are inextricably intertwined, woven together for the common good and for the flourishing of human society,” Joy explained.
In my own work with Neighborly Faith, I’ve had opportunities to see first-hand how numerous evangelical colleges are addressing religious diversity. Though there is oftentimes robust curriculum on other religions, study abroad opportunities to places with rich diversity, and ongoing efforts to recruit international students from predominantly non-Christian countries, many of these opportunities are framed as unique, one-time immersive experiences and are not necessarily conducive to supporting ongoing friendships with people of other faiths.
Neighborly Faith hosted a conference at Wheaton College that drew hundreds of students from evangelical colleges across the Midwest and a few others around the nation. A little over 20% reported at registration that they have a Muslim friend that they talk to two times or more each year. This is consistent with studies from LifeWay Research, which found in 2017 that 17 percent of those with evangelical beliefs reported having a Muslim friend, and the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which found in 2019 that only 22 percent of evangelicals say they interact frequently with Muslims.
Before the conference, 34% of evangelical student attendees reported being neutral or disinterested in Muslim friendship, but this number dropped to 4% after the conference. 96% left the conference somewhat or very interested in making friends with Muslims. This suggests that students at evangelical colleges are primed to take advantage of opportunities to make friendships with people of other faiths. But will they have these opportunities?
Recommendations for Educators
For example, in addition to visiting a local mosque, temple, or synagogue, invite local college students of another faith to visit your campus for a meal or shared activity. Encourage them to take these new connections deeper by giving each student a $10 gift card to continue their conversations at a local restaurant or cafe.
Religious holidays like Christmas and Ramadan are excellent reasons to gather and practice hospitality.
If you are teaching a course on Judaism, for example, invite a panel of local Jewish students to share their stories in class and then encourage everyone to continue the conversation over lunch in the cafeteria. Instead of assigning an observation of a mosque prayer, assign an in-person interview with a mosque attendee (or do both!).
This may require some reflection on your own social circles and habits. Be open about how friendships across faiths have been a blessing to you, and share why you are enthusiastic to gain more of these friendships.
Behind “education” and “Christian,” the terms “service” and “world” are the two most common to appear in CCCU institutions’ mission statements. The world outside of an evangelical college is home to people of many faiths. Are students fully equipped to serve them?
IDEALS is a national study of college students’ experiences with worldview diversity spanning 122 institutions. The study is conducted by research teams at NC State University, Ohio State University, and Interfaith Youth Core and is led by Drs. Alyssa Rockenbach and Matthew Mayhew. For more information about IDEALS, please visit our website or follow us on Twitter.
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