Christian Union: The Magazine Summer 2017 | Page 50

the spiritual climate on campus
students’ true characters.”
Not surprisingly, the issue also
prompted debates about freedom of
expression across online, broadcast,
and print outlets.
Will Creeley, senior vice president
of legal and public advocacy with The
Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education, said Harvard’s decision
might have been legally permissible,
but also may have resulted in an “un-
fortunate outcome” for both institu-
tion and would-be students. “They
won’t have their ideas or sense of
humor informed, tested, refined, or
expanded by interacting with their
classmates,” Creeley wrote in a blog.
“Even — and perhaps especially
— if one believes the memes that the
students posted are morally repugnant,
the most productive response would
have been to teach the students why.”
In a lengthy, technical explanation,
Creeley also asserted Harvard’s deci-
sion to revoke admissions for the high
school students would have violated
the university’s promise of free expres-
sion if the individuals had been “full-
fledged” Harvard students posting
memes in private Facebook sectors.
In response to the news, high
school counselors across the country
are reminding adolescents that unfet-
tered online speech can harm them-
selves and others.
Emphasizing college attendance
as a privilege, Michalski noted the
students would probably not have
been admitted if the posts had been
discovered during the admissions
process. “Harvard’s decision was ap-
propriate not because the posts were
offensive to others, but because they
revealed that the students involved
were not mature enough for the priv-
ilege of a Harvard education,” he said.
“Mature and civil debate requires
mature and civil participants.” | cu
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
H A RVA RD | On Campus
Does More Education Equal Less Religion?
PEW REPORT CHALLENGES POPUL AR ASSUMPTION
By Catherine Elvy, Staff Writer
I
48
n April, Pew Research Center
issued a sizeable report featuring
several streams of remarkable find-
ings, especially as related to well-ed-
ucated Christians.
The report debunked some facets
of the common perception that high-
ly educated individuals tend to be
unreligious. Rather, Pew found the
overall relationship between religion
and education in the United States is
“not so simple.” When researchers
mined the data further, they discov-
ered a handful of extraordinary pat-
terns, particularly when it comes to
subcategories of Christians with un-
dergraduate or advanced degrees.
Alan Cooperman, Pew’s director
of religion research and a Harvard
alumnus of 1982, oversaw the team
that analyzed the impact of educa-
tional levels upon religious practices
for the report entitled In America, Does
More Education Equal Less Religion?
A common perception is that in-
creased education translates into de-
creased religious involvement among
American adults. However, in recent
years, some sociologists and scholars
have questioned the validity of that
cultural premise.
For the 2017 report, Pew combed
through data from its 2014 U.S. Re-
ligious Landscape Survey, which in-
volved 35,000-plus Americans. The
most striking results – specifically
pertaining to the influence of higher
education upon religious practices
– involve Christians.
As a category, Christians domi-
nated Pew’s 2014 data sweep, account-
ing for 70.6 percent of the U.S. adult
population. In addition to various
denominations, Pew’s broad classifi-
cation of Christian included cults such
as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
For the new study, those with col-
lege credentials within the overall
Christian grouping indicated they are
as faithful to pray daily and assert a
firm belief in God as those with only
high school diplomas, according to
Pew.
Evangelical Protestants made up
25.4 percent of the broad Christian
category, followed by Catholics with
20.8 percent.
Among Protestants with a college
degree, the results were noteworthy.
They were more likely to say they are
weekly churchgoers at 68 percent,
compared with 55 percent of those
with only high school training, ac-