Conventional wisdom has long held that the young adult years are marked by a growing autonomy and movement, not only away from home, but away from organized religion as well. Churches have responded by waiting for their young people — especially those who had attended college — to come back to church, as they often did after marrying and starting families.

Recent research, however, challenges the perception that young adulthood is a time of “losing my religion.” For five years, the Higher Education Research Institute [HERI] at UCLA has been conducting a longitudinal study of the spirituality of undergraduate college students funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Alexander Astin, emeritus professor and co-principal investigator, is careful to distinguish between spirituality and religiosity in describing the focus of the study: “Spirituality has to do with the students’ search for meaning and purpose, with their values development and with their self-understanding. Spirituality is primarily an interior quality, so most of our spirituality measures have to do with values, attitudes and beliefs.”

Religiosity, by contrast, is external, measured in practice or piety. And the study did report both a serious drop in students’ attendance at religious services and a lesser decline in community service involvement. But before the hand-wringing begins, the researchers remind us that the increasing time demands of college academic work are a likely factor in that decline, as is the greater influence of peer pressure on students living away from home and the influence of family.

Students in the study, from 136 colleges and universities, reported strong interest and involvement in spirituality and religion, expressed in an ethic of caring, a sense of equanimity and an ecumenical worldview. These characteristics represent a growing commitment and connection to others, including an interest in understanding other religious traditions and cultures without judging them. Astin notes that these findings “suggest that college is influencing students in positive ways that will better prepare them for leadership roles in our global society.”

Students are not without doubt, however. One-fourth reported spiritual struggles that involved questioning beliefs, disillusionment with religious upbringing, and understanding suffering, death and evil. Many students look to college as a place where they can find meaning and purpose and deepen their spiritual connections. The definition of seeker truly fits.

Those of us who work in higher education are challenged by these data to identify means to support students in their emotional and spiritual development. Students expect us to. Our institutional mission statements declare the core values and learning outcomes that make an institution of higher learning distinctive. At church-related colleges and universities in particular, curricula are often built on the distinctives defined by the mission statement. Learning outcomes for courses include not only knowledge and skills but dispositions, those attitudes, values and habits of mind we desire students to acquire in the process of study.

Fairly standard in the curricula of colleges and universities these days are first-year seminars designed for entering students. Such courses serve to introduce freshman to the mission and culture of their particular school while addressing the transition to college in general, all within a course of study focused on a central theme. Often these courses explore one or more of what theologian Sharon Daloz Parks calls the Big Questions, those larger life questions central to the meaning-making quest of young adulthood. The developmental task of this life stage, according to Parks, is “to discover and compose a faith that can orient the soul to truth, and shape a fitting relationship between self and other, self and world, self and God.” A fundamental premise of Parks’ work is the importance of mentoring, both by individuals and communities, in the young adult quest for meaning.

But higher education has unfortunately long been viewed with wariness by parents and others who worry that exposure to different ideas will lead young people to drift from the tradition in which they were raised. And higher education for too long has sustained that wariness by viewing religion with suspicion. But in the past ten years religious studies programs have moved even into large public research institutions and the academic study of religion has taken on a new legitimacy. Evidence of a true sea change can be seen in attendance and topics at the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and in increased interest in and focus on mission distinctiveness in institutional identity.

While The UCLA study indicates strong interest in religion among traditional college-age young adults, it does not directly address the rise in what some have called a new small-o orthodoxy among young people. Colleen Carroll Campbell describes the phenomenon in her book, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola Press, 2004). Campbell interviewed hundreds of young adults between 18 and 35 who she describes as morally conservative, highly committed Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians. But Campbell’s believers differ significantly from the UCLA study respondents in political orientation. Students in the longitudinal study reported becoming more liberal in their political thinking and toward socio-cultural issues, while Campbell’s new faithful have become more politically conservative in their embrace of orthodoxy.

To ask a good Lutheran question, what does this mean? We might begin by holding conversations in congregations about what educator Nel Noddings calls “educating for intelligent belief and unbelief.” But beyond educating for religious and spiritual literacy — the subject of a previous column — we need not only to be conversant about what young adults are thinking, but to engage them in conversations in order to learn from them. That’s lifelong learning — catechesis — at its best.