Members of His House, a Christian worship group, share their reasons for joining the group and testify their faith.
Sitting silently in church alongside his mother, Marc Cunanan is the image of a devout Catholic. The chemistry junior celebrates every Catholic holiday and sometimes watches religious television shows at home with his mother. But as his lips form the words of Sunday mass, his heart and mind are elsewhere.
“Every time I go home and go to church with my family, it’s like having a blank slate mind and going through the motions,” Cunanan said.
Since he began studying at MSU, Cunanan hasn’t set foot in a church.
He only goes to services when he goes home and visits his mother, who still doesn’t know he spends his Sundays jogging and studying at the library, not bent in prayer.
“I can never tell my mom, it would literally break her heart,” Cunanan said.
Living on their own for the first time, college students such as Cunanan have the opportunity to explore their spirituality without their parents’ supervision, assistant sociology professor Ralph Pyle said.
As they become increasingly independent, students can define themselves based on their own ideas of spirituality, not their parents’, Pyle said.
“Earlier, that might not have been an option,” he said.
“(There was an) expectation that they would attend the church of their parents.”
A change of heart
Cunanan’s mind was racing during his confirmation, a traditional Catholic ceremony pledging teenagers to the church.
For Catholics, confirmation is the beginning of a lifetime of service to God.
For Cunanan, it was the beginning of his disenchantment with the religion.
As he grew older, he realized his beliefs clash with traditional Catholic values.
His frustrations rose to a head when he finally told his mother he had premarital sex, a sin in her eyes.
Cunanan spent the weekend at a friend’s house, and he hasn’t spoken with his mother about their conversation since then.
Growing up in a Southern Baptist home, English senior Becky Hodge also was taught her beliefs were immoral.
As Hodge embraced her own homosexuality, she was rebelling against her religion and her parents.
But when she lived with her parents, denouncing her religion wasn’t an option, she said.
She stopped going to church her first week at MSU.
“It was really rough,” Hodge said. “It took a good year for me to be able to not feel guilty about everything that went on.”
Conforming to the views of her parents would mean changing herself.
Although she goes to church with her parents, she doesn’t miss spending every Sunday in a pew.
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“I don’t feel like I can fully be myself when it comes to being in a church,” Hodge said. “It’s not that I’m uncomfortable, (but) it doesn’t feel like it’s my thing — it’s more my parents’ thing.”
More and more, Hodge’s generation is moving away from organized religion, Pyle said.
“(Some students) feel that the church is just aligned with conservative, Republican politics,” he said. “They feel churches don’t speak to their interests and needs.”
Finding faith
Although Felicia Baker’s parents raised her to believe in God, she wasn’t involved with Christianity until her freshman year at MSU.
That year, the interdisciplinary studies in social science and health studies junior watched as her roommate drank so much she had alcohol poisoning.
“Seeing her go through that different spiral of stuff, made me far more hesitant to try it myself,” Baker said.
Baker wanted more than the drinking, partying and recklessness that sometimes is associated with college life.
For Baker, finding her faith saved her from the destructive behavior that hurt her old roommate.
Now, she lives alongside peers who share her beliefs in His House, a home for religious students at MSU.
“It’s changed the direction of my life,” she said.
“It’s completely affected me.”
For students who reject stereotypical college behavior, religious life on campus can bring relief, Pyle said.
“The main social activity is equated with partying, (and) if that’s true people feel pressure to party just to fit in,” Pyle said. “(Religious students) reject that whole partying tradition and look for alternatives.”
From attending holiday gatherings at different places of worship to joining the Religious Studies Discussion Group, students at MSU often are open to learning about different faiths, MSU Hillel Program Associate Dirk Roberts said.
He often sees non-Jewish students at MSU Hillel who are looking to learn more about Judaism.
“At Michigan State, there (are) so many people here with so many different viewpoints, if you’re not willing to learn about a different culture, you’re probably in the minority of college students,” he said.
For students, learning about new religions is the first step in finding their own beliefs, Roberts said.
“Everybody goes to college to find themselves,” Roberts said.
“It’s another stepping stone to search out other religions and to explore them and see which religion fits your personality.”
