It’s almost considered conventional wisdom – the
more educated you are, the less likely you are to
believe in God or hold strongly to a particular
faith.
Those with letters following their name who
eschew God say the reason is clear: religious faith
is irrational, anti-scientific, anti-intellectual and…
well, you get the point. The only way you could
be, say, a Christian would be to check your brains
at the door.
Not so fast, says a new Pew Research Center
study.
While it is true that overall, U.S. adults with
college degrees are less religious than others, this
is not the case when it comes to Christians .
Among Christians, those with higher levels of
education are just as religious as those with less
schooling. “In fact,” the study says, “highly
educated Christians are more likely than less-
educated Christians to say they are weekly
churchgoers.”
As mentioned, this does not hold up when you
look at the U.S. public as a whole. There, more
education is correlated with less religion. Still,
“fully three-quarters of college graduates are
affiliated with some religion.”
Two pivotal questions emerge from this study
that the authors themselves say lay outside the
scope of this particular research project:
First, why, overall, does faith decline as education
climbs? Contrary to the belief of some, it is not
because there you discover that all religion is
bogus. No, it is because there you are told that
all religion is bogus.
There’s a difference.
I have long been concerned with the tendency of
many professors in secular colleges and
universities who take it upon themselves to not
simply educate, but indoctrinate according to
their own predilections. It’s as if they are on a
mission to undermine a freshman’s faith as a
matter of duty.
To make matters worse, many, many students
entering college have never examined their faith
intellectually. They have never been exposed to
many of the arguments and attacks against their
beliefs. Which means they have never been
equipped with the responses to such attacks. So
when a young study is confronted with challenges
to their faith for the first time at the hands of an
intellectual predator, the damage to faith can be
severe.
Which raises the second question: Why are
educated Christians more immune to this
pattern? There are several probable reasons.
Christians, particularly evangelical Christians,
have taken the life of the mind and, more
specifically, apologetics much more seriously than
other faiths. One is that it is a clear biblical
mandate to know why you believe what you
believe (e.g., I Peter 3:15). And while many
churches have failed their students who are
preparing to leave for college, many have not.
They have solid worldviews, have been exposed
to the more common cultural attacks on the
Christian faith, and are able to engage the secular
academic environment as a thinking, informed
person of faith.
But there’s an easier answer. Perhaps the reason
Christians are outliers when it comes to the effect
of education on their faith is because their faith
stands up under intellectual scrutiny better than
any other faith. When Christianity is examined,
it’s not found wanting – it’s found more
compelling than ever.
So perhaps the reason so many educated people
are still Christians is because when it comes to
the Christian faith, you don’t have to check your
brains at the door to believe it. If anything, you
have to check your brains at the door not to.
And here’s one Ph.D. who will put his name on
that list.
James Emery White
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