Ranking Religion on Campus
Don't expect a transcendent spiritual experience if you enroll at Reed College. The private liberal arts school in Portland, Ore., is the least religious U.S. college, according to a ranking last month by the Princeton Review.
The rating was based on a survey of students at 361 colleges and universities, who were asked to agree or disagree with statements about their school such as "Students are very religious" or "Students ignore God on a regular basis."
"Sometimes perception is a little different than reality," Reed spokeswoman Beth Sorenson told Religion News Service, playing down the school's religion ranking. She preferred to focus on the fact that Reed finished first in overall academic excellence in the Princeton Review rankings, which also covered categories ranging from best dormitories (Loyola College in Maryland) to biggest parties (University of Wisconsin at Madison).
The other schools in the top five for students looking for a religion-free college experience are Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; Eugene Lang College of the New School University in New York City; Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.; and Lewis & Clark College, also in Portland.
Not surprisingly, Brigham Young University, the Mormon school in Provo, Utah, was rated the nation's most religious college campus, followed by Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.; Grove City College in Grove City, Pa.; the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind.; and Samford University in Birmingham, Ala.
Homes With Holy Foundations
In some homes, the Bible has made its way underground. Two Texas home builders, one in a Houston suburb and the other in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, routinely place a Bible in the frame of a home's foundation before covering it with concrete.
"It's nice for me to have a reminder in there, when I'm walking through the frame, of where my principles are," Andy Eckert, 29, a partner in Possibility Custom Homes outside Houston, told the Associated Press.
Both Eckert and officials with the other home builder, Jones Custom Building, said they tell customers about their practice of building Bibles into homes but don't use it as a sales pitch. They said they wouldn't do it in a case where someone objected, but that has yet to happen. Some customers have brought their own Bibles to be placed in the foundations.
No Broad Biblical Perspective
Although it's the bedrock of some homes, the Bible is not the authority that most Americans consult when making moral decisions. In a recent national survey, only 16 percent of U.S. adults said they make their moral choices based on the Bible's content.
The July survey of 1,002 adults by the Barna Research Group also found that only 5 percent possess what the organization defined as a "biblical worldview." That definition requires belief in seven principles, including that the source of moral truth is the Bible; that every person has a responsibility to share his or her religious beliefs with others; and that Satan is a living force, not just a symbol of evil.
About half of evangelicals have such a perspective, the survey found, but only 8 percent of all Protestants and less than 0.5 percent of Catholics. Only 1 percent of African Americans have a biblical worldview, compared with 6 percent of whites and 8 percent of Hispanics, according to the Barna study.
