The Search

The student who burst into his office seemed so distraught that Professor James A. Martin Jr. of Amherst College's department of religion has never forgotten him. "Sir," said the student that day two years ago, "I am at the end of my rope. I have now lost my faith in science, and I gave up religion long ago! What am I to do?" The student, in a sense, was asking the question on behalf of a whole generation that has found an urgent desire to believe. Today on campuses across the

U.S., the young American is searching for answers in an area that his prewar counterpart was all too ready to scorn.

In its current quarterly report, the Carnegie Corp. of New York gave a preview of a survey made by four Cornell sociologists of 7,000 students at twelve colleges and universities. Of those questioned, eight out of ten said that they feel a need for a religious faith. Only 1% described themselves as atheists. Though the tendency, said the report, is not toward any particular creed, today's students seem fairly well agreed that there must be some religious system "based on God as the Supreme Being." Other signs of a new interest in religion on U.S. campuses:

P:In 1933, Yale offered only three undergraduate courses in religion, one of which (Biblical literature) had only four students. Today the university offers twelve courses, and Biblical literature alone has 400 students. Meanwhile, the Yale Co-op lias had such a demand for religious books that it has set up a separate section for religion.

P: In 1936, says Episcopal Minister Frederic Kellogg of Cambridge, Mass., only about 35 Harvard students showed up for Sunday Episcopal services. Now 500 come on Sundays and 200 come on Wednesdays. Church attendance in the Yard is also up--from 400 two years ago to an average Sunday turn-out of up to 1,000. P:In 1928, the University of Chicago employed one chaplain. It now has eleven full-time chaplains and 13 part-time workers. When Theologian Paul Tillich arrived to deliver a series of lectures, so many students wanted to attend that Tillich had to move to a hall twice as big as the one

originally assigned.

P:In 1939, Princeton's first course in

religion had 20 students. Now 700 Princetonians are enrolled in various religion

classes, and the university has started a

new program leading to a doctorate of

philosophy in religion.

P:At the University of California, facultymen have started meeting once a week

for special seminars on religious topics.

Full Turn. Though the new enthusiasm is not yet universal, almost every campus has felt it. "I've been in the dean's office for more than 20 years," says Nicholas McKnight, dean of students at Columbia College, "and never have I seen such a wide interest in religion among the students."

To some observers, the return to religion is actually a revolt against revolt. As previous generations felt it necessary to throw off old orthodoxies, so this generation is ready to discard yesterday's iconoclasm, which had become a sort of orthodoxy of its own.

Revolt or not, says the Rev. George Buttrick, Harvard's professor of Christian morals, "the cycle has come full turn. Once we doubted our faith. Now we have come to doubt our doubts." The most overshadowing reason for this is "the threat of nothingness" brought on by the atomic bomb. Adds William D. Geoghegan, assistant professor of religion at Bowdoin College: "The resurgence oi religion is largely due to the shock administered to cultural Coueism by two world wars, a depression, and the painful knowledge that the great powers possess the awesome tools of genocide. Religion is seen as an essential tool in the hard work of sheer survival, not as a matter of icing on the cake."

For the most part, one of the dominant characteristics of the new young Christians is not their concern with social service but their preoccupation with finding themselves. "Religiously," says Clarence P. Shedd, emeritus professor of Christian methods at Yale, "it is a wistful generation, tired of living on 'snap judgments' and seeking enduring foundations . . . This does not mean a 'return' to religion or a 'revival' of religion. Rather it means that these students are seeking to come to grips with the basic problems of faith and living. They are asking not superficial but ultimate questions, and they will not be satisfied with easy answers. They want to find solid grounds for ultimate loyalties."

In their search for solid grounds, the students have not surrendered their right to criticize, nor do they seem any more susceptible than their parents to blind acceptance of dogma. As a matter of fact, says Kaare Roald Bergethon, dean of the college at Brown University, the students seem so tolerant of the beliefs of others that "if I had seen this same phenomenon in the '30s, I would have thought it was indifference, but today I know it isn't." This tolerance has meant that old gods have not been dethroned; they have merely been demoted. "Science students," says Goucher's Director of Religious Activities, Walter Morris, "have come to realize that science is accurate and true in those areas to which it has purposely limited itself." Freud is still studied respectfully, but he no longer monopolizes the conversation. The fashion now, says Nicholas Cardell, director of the University of Chicago's Unitarian Channing Club, "is to talk of Niebuhr or Tillich."

Queen of the Sciences. Once again religion has become intellectually respectable. "In my day." says David Webster, acting dean of men at Temple University, "we were apt to say that religion is a superstition." Today, says Chaplain Richard Unsworth of Smith College, "theology is no longer classed with domestic science as a subject not suited for a liberal arts college." Adds Bowdoin's William Geoghegan: "One average student was recently asked if he thought theology was the 'Queen of the Sciences.' He replied: 'I don't know, but I can see how it could be.' Twenty or 30 years ago, the question would probably have been dismissed as nonsense."

For thousands of young Americans, such a dismissal today would be intellectualhleresy. Brown University reports that more students are taking courses in religion than ever before; the number of Smith girls enrolled in religion courses has doubled to 442 since 1950. On campus after campus, says Amherst's James Martin, "there is what one might call at least a new look at the values of our Hebrew-Christian heritage, not only as a neglected and important factor in our cultural history, but also as a possible source of faith for living in today's world--or yesterday's, or tomorrow's. For some men the new look is a second look at ideas and personalities briefly encountered in Sunday school and long since dismissed.

"For others ... it is a first look at something brand-new to their thinking. These come to us as religious illiterates. They are totally ignorant of Biblical literature . . . What they find, when they look for a first time with relatively mature minds at the Hebrew Epic, the Hebrew prophets, the wisdom of the authors of Job, the life and teachings of Jesus, the Resurrection Faith of the early Christian church, the synoptic vision of an Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, the courage of Luther or the consistency of Calvin, the . . . challenging insights of Kierkegaard, Buber, Earth, Tillich, or the Niebuhrs--what they find when they look at all this for the first time is, I suggest, at least something to think about, and finally something to decide about, one way or another."

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