Recent data from the Pew Research Center suggests the number of Americans who selected “none” as their religious affiliation has increased over the past six years and currently resides at 25 percent. Despite the growing number of Americans without a religious affiliation, this trend does not apply to students at Oklahoma Christian University.
According to data from last semester, three percent of undergraduate Oklahoma Christian students selected “none” when choosing their religious affiliation. In 2013, five percent of all students checked “none.”
According to Bible Professor and Co-author of “Owning Faith: Reimagining the Role of Church and Family in the Faith Journey of Teenagers” Dudley Chancey, the millennial generation’s definition of church contributes to the nationwide statistic.
“Not that you go to church to meet your needs but I think we’ve trained the past couple generations to be consumers of religion, which means if you’re not meeting [their] needs [they are] going to go to another church or not go at all,” Chancey said. “It’s partly our fault, the older generation, if we built this model. You don’t go to church to get something. You should go to give something.”
According to the Executive Director of Westview Boys’ Home and Co-author of “Owning Faith,” Ron Bruner attributes Oklahoma Christian’s statistics to selective recruiting efforts.
“The way we recruit changes the sampling in effect,” Bruner said. “The young people that are tied to a faith family are looking for other ways to keep faith in their life including in their education.”
Although all students are welcome to attend Oklahoma Christian regardless of religious affiliations, 84 percent of undergraduate students affiliate with the Christian faith. According to Jack Smith, the spiritual life chair of the Student Government Association (SGA), there are no explicit systems to spiritually guide the 16 percent of undergraduate students who do not affiliate with Christianity.
“In my experience most people are not comfortable with talking about spiritual life,” Smith said. “I’d say its a need that needs to be addressed, but there not really any ways to just fix that. The main thing that my focus is to reinforce the community growth and I think that is a byproduct of comfort.”
Chris Rosser, Oklahoma Christian Bible professor and theological librarian, said the efforts to create a welcoming environment among all faith practices at Oklahoma Christian remains ambiguous.
“Explicitly, we would say that we want to welcome everybody,” Rosser said. “In many ways, the people that I know on this campus are very welcoming, hospitable and seek to invite all kinds of people into their lives, worlds and conversations. In terms of the university logistically [and] structurally creating a very robust support system for others who are non-Christian, primarily international students, I think we have a lot of work to do. In terms of that reality I would say no, we’re not a welcoming place.”
According to Smith, Oklahoma Christian is considered a “liberal” school, because of the institution’s efforts to attract all people and still associate with the Christian principles.
“You can look at history and see the linear decline of Christian values imposed [at Christian schools],” Smith said. “Oklahoma Christian is trying to create this relationship of a business and an education working together. Two things that seem like opposites they are trying to mash them together and get something great out of it. We can’t have too many rules or people won’t come to school, but we have to somehow enforce and uphold the values and convictions we have as a school.”
Regardless of the nationwide trend’s contradiction of the religious reality at Oklahoma Christian, Chancey said he believes faith is the essential aspect for every individual.
“We are made in God’s image,” Chancey said. “Ecclesiastes chapter three says that [our hearts] can only be filled up with God. When we try to fill it up with everything else Solomon said, ‘Meaningless, meaningless.’ [Our lives] have to be filled up with God. You need God, you need Jesus.”
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