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This happened to me. I started losing faith in middle school. By the time I was in college, I was a full-blown agnostic.
I truly didn’t come to believe in or understand who Jesus really was until I was 35 years old.
A new study published in Christian Higher Education shows it is common even for students attending evangelical colleges and universities to struggle with their faith.
“In fact, they are more likely to feel unsettled about spiritual matters, unsure of their beliefs, disillusioned with their religious upbringing, distant from God, or angry with God than their peers at secular schools as well as those at mainline Protestant and Catholic institutions,” a story in Christianity Today noted.
Jennifer Carter, an assistant professor of leadership at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., analyzed surveys of more than 14,000 students at 136 colleges and universities, looking for patterns and predictors of religious struggle.
She found that students at evangelical schools experience “unique patterns of religious struggle.” At most institutions, rates of religious struggle decrease between the first and third year of college. Freshman have a lot of questions. Juniors feel more settled in their beliefs.
For other students, it is the other way around. They start strong and find themselves facing a crisis of faith before they graduate.
The full story is available at www.christianitytoday.com.
