Santorum's College And Faith Loss Remarks Challenged By Experts

By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today

WASHINGTON (RNS) Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum's claim that U.S. colleges drive young Christians out of church is facing scrutiny from Protestant and Catholic experts.

Santorum told talk show host Glenn Beck on Thursday (Feb. 23) that "62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it." He also has called President Obama a "snob" for wanting more Americans to attend college.

"There is no statistical difference in the dropout rate among those who attended college and those that did not attend college," said Thom Rainer, president of the Southern Baptists' LifeWay Christian Resources research firm. "Going to college doesn't make you a religious dropout."

A 2007 LifeWay survey did find seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23.

The real causes: lack of "a robust faith," strongly committed parents and an essential church connection, Rainer said.

"Higher education is not the villain," said Catholic University sociologist William D'Antonio. Since 1986, D'Antonio's surveys of American Catholics have asked about Mass attendance, the importance of religion in people's lives and whether they have considered leaving Catholicism.

The percentage of Catholics who scored low on all three points hovers between 18 percent in 1993 and 14 percent in 2011. But the percentage of people who are highly committed fell from 27 percent to 19 percent.

"Blame mortality," D'Antonio said, "The most highly committed Catholics are seniors, and they're dying out."

Dennis Prager, a conservative writer on religious and political issues, decried secularism in Western universities in the National Review in April. He concluded, "With all the persecution that Judaism and Christianity have survived over the centuries, an argument that cites America's Top 310 Colleges as a first order adversary is hard to credit."

(Cathy Lynn Grossman writes for USA Today.)

Comments

[elblanc0]

12:30 PM on 03/01/2012

Republicans take anti-intellectualism to the extreme. Leaders encouraging kids to remain uneducated so that maintain their fragile belief system? They'll create an entire underclass of unemployable believers.

Sounds anti-democratic to me. Isn't the whole point of democracy the free exchange of ideas with the best ideas winning out? Religion is being exposed for the bad idea that it is. Rick and his ilk are obviously terrified.

[CarolinaDem]

05:13 PM on 02/29/2012

There's a lovely little book named "I'm saved, you're saved---maybe" which unites Piaget's stages of development for formal thinking operations with Harvard's Fowler and his states in the development of moral reasoning and associates their 'stages' with typical structures of protestant and other forms of religion. His thesis is that once you pass above a certain level of abstract formal operations you tend to let up on the need for law-and-order certitudes and embrace a potential for change and positive regard for the 'other'. At the top of his pyramid are the Gandhis and MLKs who embrace all mankind in a unity, a position reached by quite few. A lot of christians lose their faith in college. That's just a fact. Partly because their faith was based on pre-college structures of reasoning, partly because you just don't get much if you're too uptight.

[Ventoi]

01:03 PM on 02/29/2012

During my time at college...I found that being away from home with the stereotypes I had created for myself and the relationships I had established due to character development and required deliverance on such a standard...I was free to just attend a variety of churches each Sunday.
I did not become an actual member of either of the Churches...and I did not become involved in either of them in any tangible way...
but I did enjoy heading off to a variety of city churches on Sundays..and participating quietly as a congregation member...
the effect was very calming and restored me for the coming week...
Spending time in a variety of Churches has given me more examples of sanctuary and calmness I can call to mind as I work through this hetic life.
?
You call up the memory...feel as if you are there in the congregation...look skyward as if connecting with a camera...what is that?

[Ed438]

12:15 PM on 02/29/2012

Rick is only worried that this kind of "snobby elitism" that is higher education would turn anyone against voting for him or the other cons.

All I can say, in rebuttal, is that his 3 degrees didn't do anything to cure his own ignorance!

So stop worrying Ricky!

[squirrely girl]

09:55 AM on 02/29/2012

The rich get rich 'til the poor get educated. ~ Sage Francis

[jakielewis]

08:59 AM on 02/29/2012

Hey, Ricky makes it up as he goes along, facts are of no importance to him.

[ThinkCreeps]

03:36 AM on 02/29/2012

Education: the practical alternative to superstition.

[bjwtaylor]

01:34 AM on 02/29/2012

Santorum, who holds a small collection of degrees, does not fear that college will take young people away from the church. That's just for public consumption and to cater to his anti-intellectual electorate.

What he fears, with justification, is that college will take young people away from the Republican Party. When they have far more knowledge and learn to think critically, analyze information for themselves, interact well with all types of people, learn far more about the world and other types of people, and are open to a more questioning and sophisticated approach to examing issues they couldn't possibly return to the knee jerk, hate-filled dogma of extreme conservatism.

[themuse]

01:25 AM on 02/29/2012

Religion is based on assumptions that can never be proven. Science is based on provable and verifiable observation and evidence. Knowledge sheds us from the shackles of ignorance. The far right, these days, harken to the dark ages.

"Now I see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face."
intellects try to see through the glass by removing assumptions that cloud it. Religion paints over the glass with a vivid image of assumptions.

[farmilyman]

12:56 AM on 02/29/2012

Santorum cannot defend anything he says because he makes it all up.

[Sophist FCD]

12:21 AM on 02/29/2012

Republican Wrong About Thing: Film At 11

[elblanc0]

12:32 PM on 03/01/2012

LOL

[Gryf]

11:00 PM on 02/28/2012

I hate to say it but... he is right. Better educated people are less likely to believe in supernatural stuff. Well, he got one right. Don't despair. He is wrong pretty much in everything else he says.

[sdave]

07:26 PM on 02/28/2012

I can honestly say I have never seen a presidential candidate discourage people from attending college...this is a first......

[decrepittex]

08:42 AM on 02/29/2012

An ignorant uneducated person is much easier to control. Since Republicans want to control every part of your life it only seems natural that they'd perfer you uneducated. It seems they'd love to take us back to the 1800's.

[mamabeverley]

07:02 PM on 02/28/2012

He does not want anyone to go to college so he can pretend to be the smartest guy in the room.

[sweetlilthing]

06:09 PM on 02/28/2012

Universities and Colleges must love Santorum now! Nothing like an anti education message to warm the hearts of religious universities and colleges.