The level of faith college students profess seems to have an impact on how conservative they are on issues such as sex, abortion, homosexual rights and drugs, according to a study released July 28.
But the study, led by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, also found those same students tend to be more liberal on issues such as gun control and the death penalty.
About one-fifth of college students classified themselves as “highly religious,” which was defined in the study as a pattern of behavior that includes attending religious services, reading sacred texts, attending religious workshops or retreats or joining a religious organization on campus.
On the other side of the spectrum, about one-fifth of college students were found to have low levels of religious involvement.
Researchers found that the largest gap in views between those who are highly religious and those who are not was on the issue of casual sex.
While 80 percent of the least religious students agreed with the idea that “if two people really like each other, it’s all right for them to have sex even if they’ve known each other for only a very short time,” only 7 percent of highly religious college students agreed.
Concerning legalized abortion, 24 percent of the most religious students approved while 79 percent of the least religious thought the practice was acceptable.
A large difference exists in those who favor legalization of marijuana: 17 percent versus 64 percent, the study found.
Support marriage laws
Thirty-eight percent of highly religious students supported “laws prohibiting homosexual relationships” compared to 17 percent of the least religious students.
On the issue of gun control, though, 75 percent of the most religious students said “the federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns” while just 70 percent of the least religious thought so, the study concluded.
Similarly, 38 percent of those whose faith was very important to them supported abolition of the death penalty while just 23 percent of the least religious wanted capital punishment to stop.
No simple relationship
“The nation’s cultural and political divide is on college campuses too,” Alexander Astin, co-principal investigator on the project, said in a July 28 news release, “but the study also shows that there is no simple, one-to-one relationship between religious and political beliefs. While highly religious students tend to be more ‘conservative’ than less religious students on certain issues, they can also be more ‘liberal’ on other issues.”
The analysis was part of a national study of 3,680 third-year college students at 46 diverse colleges and universities. (BP)
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