Hartley Witten speaks to students who found their faith community in university. Graphics by Paloma Callo.
Tyler Brooks called himself an atheist in grade 10, but encountered God in prayer during his second year of university.
Kadiatu Barrie has practiced her Muslim faith at various levels throughout her life, but while increasingly interested, is hesitant to increase her observance.
Maggie Hutchinson felt at home in her church growing up, but abandoned organized religion when she found a new supportive community at university in her sorority.
Kirpa Grewal grew up in a traditional Sikh community, and felt it was important for her to find a similar community at university.
These are not unique stories. Brooks, Hutchinson, and Grewal are among many students who change their religion or spirituality while attending university.
According to Statistics Canada, Canadians are increasingly less likely to have a religious affiliation, with nearly a quarter of Canadians being unaffiliated as of 2011, a 16.5 per cent increase from 2001 data. However, with increasing immigration and new Canadians more likely to have a faith-based lifestyle according to the Angus Reid Institute, this is not the case for everyone.
As former Carleton University chaplain Tom Sherwood puts it, university is a time for young people to be “constructing their identities.”
Finding faith again
While the presence of religion has decreased in Canadian society overall, especially among the younger demographic, there are still some who have taken steps to find meaning in the transition to adulthood through religion.
Before returning back to his faith, Brooks originally grew up Roman Catholic in Niagara Falls before renouncing religion in 2013.
When Brooks first attended a Catholic Christian Outreach event at the University of Ottawa in September 2017, he merely went because a friend of his was leading it. Since this experience in his second year, Brooks said his life has gained new meaning.
“I made a commitment to put Jesus at the centre of my life,” he said.
Brooks, who has gone from an aspiring politician to future chaplain, says his life has been reshaped by faith both spiritually and non-spiritually.
“It’s provided me with more genuine friendships, not just friends you hang out with because you want to drink with them, but rather genuine, authentic friendships.” – Tyler Brooks
Tobi Oluwole, youth pastor at the Protestant church Hillsong Ottawa, said students who first come to church in university are often at a point of desperation.
“I rarely see someone walk in on their own who hasn’t tried drugs, alcohol, girls, sex, and everything in between,” he said. “They walk in as a last-ditch effort.”
Unlike previous generations, many young people today often don’t grow up religiously. According to a 2017 Angus Reid Institute study, just 28 per cent of Canadians have attended a religious school “for at least a few years.”
In his study on late 20th century spirituality, sociologist Robert Wuthnow wrote that this is part of the many social and cultural shifts that have occurred since the 1960s, such as the breakdown of the nuclear family and an increasingly consumer-oriented marketplace.
Today, students seeking religious experiences are looking for ones that fit their 21st century upbringing.
When faith called upon Brooks, he said he made a commitment to pray daily and have a deep, personal connection with God. For him, this meant “not simply just reciting different prayers you find online, but actually having a conversation with Him, as if He were a best friend.”
Different stages
The late James W. Fowler, theology and human development professor at Emory University in the U.S., shared this idea in his “Stages of Faith” theory, which outlines the development of one’s faith from birth to age 45 and beyond.
In Fowler’s opinion, a student’s transition from the “conventionally assumed faith” stage to a “critically appropriated faith” is a developmental process based in “exploring and questioning meaning and identity.”
After a number of events in her life had her questioning her faith, Hannah Williams experienced this transition during an event at church in her first year of study at Carleton University.
While Williams was raised in a strict Christian environment in her hometown of Wasaga Beach, Ont., her faith was not something deeply personal for her.
“It was just something I did on a Sunday,” she said. “I didn’t think much of it—it was just the way that I grew up.”
When she moved to Ottawa, Williams experienced what Fowler defines as part of the “Stages of Faith.”
“Things just sort of clicked for me, and it made things more personal,” she said. “I experienced what it means to love other people, and love God the way that I had not known growing up.”
Modern Worship
Sherwood, also an adjunct professor of sociology at Carleton University, says he believes behaviour like this is a recent phenomenon that has developed rapidly since the 1960s.
“Nobody in human history has had so many choices available to them as a young adult Canadian today,” he said. “You have to make a lot of decisions . . . it can lead to quite a bit of anxiety and difficulty, but it’s also an opportunity.”
Sherwood said this opportunity has led many young people to experiment with a variety of different forms of faith and spirituality.
“Adults tend to think in terms of conversion,” he said. “Younger people tend to think of fusion . . . that you can come to a fork in the road and take it.”
While this choice is liberating for many, Sherwood said it does lead some to lose many of the benefits of organized religion.
“We’re wired to need relationships and community, and postmodern 21st-century spirituality can be isolating,” he said.
This necessity that Sherwood describes can be seen across Canada. While organized religious service attendance is shrinking, the 30 per cent of Canadians still embracing religion, according to the Angus Reid Institute, still deeply value their community. As reported in the 2015 Large Church Canadian Survey, one in eight Canadian Protestants attend a congregation drawing over 1,000 attendees each week, like Oluwole’s.
However, some people who grow up with faith find it to be a considerable commitment, and one which they must be fully invested in.
Barrie, a Muslim of West African descent, grew up with parents so religiously observant that she would not be allowed to have male friends. While Barrie has worn a hijab during periods of her life, she does not currently. Even as she makes some efforts to observe her faith more at university, such as doing her five daily prayers when she is supposed to, Barrie is reluctant to return to the height of observance that, she says, a hijab requires.
“I’ve always told myself I will definitely go back to it (wearing a hijab), but on my own terms. I can’t just rush straight into it, because I don’t think I’m 100 per cent ready to commit to the hijab . . . there’s a lot of meaning that some people don’t understand, and some people take it for granted I believe.” – Kadiatu Barrie, third-year student at Carleton
Kirpa Grewal, like Barrie, spent much of her youth entrenched in her religion as a part of Brampton’s Sikh community. Unlike Barrie, Grewal was able to find a faith community, or “sangit” in Punjabi, while attending Carleton. While it is not one exactly like hers at home, it is one she has connected with.
“I think the way you practice religion is up to you,” she said. “Some people take different ways of practicing . . . It was different and interesting to see how it’s practiced here.”
Whatever religion people may practice, Sherwood believes that amongst all human beings, the lifelong search for meaning is an innate desire.
“The inner drive, or motivation, or acute need is part of being human,” he said. “It’s an inner impulse to seek. That’s why anthropologists and archeologists have never identified a human society or group that did not have some sort of ritual relationship to a sense of the sacred.”
