Faith on Campus: How Religious Students Navigate Identity and Inclusion at PFW

By Cincade Drudge

At a time when overall religious affiliation among young adults is declining, students at Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW) who practice faith face unique challenges and opportunities. As national surveys show a drop in religious identity among college students, faith-based organizations on the PFW campus work to foster inclusion and community amid a shifting culture.

According to the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study from the Pew Research Center, religious disaffiliation among young adults may have leveled off since 2019.

However, the levels of disaffiliation remain significantly higher than in past decades, with only 69% describing themselves as belonging to an organized religion compared to 83.7% in 2007.

Additional research from the CIRP Freshman Survey 2019 indicates that the number of college freshmen who identify as nonreligious has risen from about 10% in 1986 to 33.6% in 2019.

Despite a decline in participation in organized religion, faith-based campus organizations continue to serve as spaces for spiritual growth and community.

PFW is home to several religious organizations, including Campus Ministry, Mastodon Catholic, and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. These groups allow students to connect with others who share similar beliefs while also fostering a welcoming environment that promotes belonging and outreach.

These campus organizations are not limited to solely the Christian faith, with PFW also featuring organizations of other faiths, such as the Muslim Student Association, which is dedicated to creating a positive environment for students to learn about Islam.

Zach Gaerte, a student leader and treasurer of Campus Ministry, emphasized the group’s mission.

“Our focus is on building a welcoming community where students can grow in their faith,” he said. “We are open to anyone, regardless of faith or background, and we work hard to create an environment where people feel supported.”

Campus Ministry, a student-led, recognized religious organization on the PFW campus, holds service events, social events, and weekly meetings on Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m.

“We’ve done events like worship nights, winter retreats, and even a winter formal,” Gaerte added. “All are welcome to join the community and hear us out.”

For religious students, balancing their beliefs with their studies can be troublesome, and finding time for their faith can be difficult.

Kate Landrigan, a Catholic student at PFW, related to this struggle.

“Between exams, projects, and work, it’s hard to set aside time for my faith,” she said. “When you are up till 12:30 doing homework, it’s hard not to feel exhausted.”

Landrigan also noted that some misconceptions about religious students do exist, though not to a large degree.

“Some people assume that all Christians are judgmental, which isn’t true,” she explained. “I’ve also found it difficult to express my beliefs because many of my classmates aren’t religious, which is okay, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling hard sometimes.”

Gaerte, the student leader, also spoke of misconceptions about religious students.

“Some may have the idea that if you are religious, you are judgmental and aren’t accepting of others,” he said. “Everyone is their own individual with their own beliefs, and while there are obviously bad apples in every group, that is not our mindset, and I guarantee you, if you spoke to any of us, we would be willing to hear you out.”

In terms of administrative support for religious organizations and individuals, PFW is generally seen as supportive of religious freedoms and expression. Organizations like the Campus Ministry are treated the same as any other club or recognized group on campus.

“We go through all the same administrative red tape as other organizations and pay for the event space we use just like everyone else,” Gaerte said. “The school has been great about letting us operate, and we are extremely grateful.”

PFW provides space for religious organizations, but faculty members acknowledge gaps in institutional support.

Sherrie Steiner, an anthropology and sociology professor at PFW who teaches religious courses, pointed out that the university lacks a designated interfaith space.

“Some universities provide multi-faith centers where students of all religions can pray or reflect,” she said. “PFW has student organizations, but to my knowledge, there’s no dedicated space for prayer.”

Despite this limitation, Steiner noted that PFW has historically supported students’ religious expression. She recalled a past controversy involving a student play that depicted a Christ-like figure as gay.

“The administration defended students’ rights to stage production, despite some community backlash,” Steiner said.

According to a 2001 ABC News article, officials at the university, then named IPFW, protected students’ rights to put on the play while simultaneously allowing for demonstrators against the play, providing they didn’t carry weapons or signs.

While national trends show a decline in religious affiliation, faith-based groups at PFW continue to boast high engagement with students.

Gaerte, of the Campus Ministry, mentioned that their weekly ministry gatherings usually draw between 60 and 75 students. While the group doesn’t prioritize attendance figures, he noted it’s uplifting to witness strong student engagement.

As religious demographics continue to shift, the role of religious organizations in higher education will likely evolve to engage individuals from diverse faith backgrounds or even those without a specific religious affiliation.

Professor Steiner also spoke of something in a similar vein regarding what religious disaffiliation truly means.

“So as people get younger, they’ve been disaffiliating. Not necessarily spiritual but disaffiliating from formal religious organizations,” Steiner said. “Oftentimes, they have sacred beliefs, but… It’s not affiliated with any specific church,” Steiner said.

At PFW, religious students navigate the challenges of faith in an increasingly religiously disaffiliated environment. While some misconceptions persist and institutional support remains neutral, organizations like Campus Ministry provide a sense of belonging for spiritual students.

As national trends indicate a decline in religious identity, students like Landrigan and Gaerte demonstrate that faith still plays a meaningful role in college life.

“Even if fewer people identify with a specific religion, community will always be important,” Landrigan, a religious student said. “Faith is still a core part of many students’ lives.”

Converting to Catholicism

Evan Thomas came right from work. The sun shone through the window, which gave his white shirt what almost looked like a glow.

He was excited. He loves any opportunity to talk about Catholicism.

The 20-year-old LaGrange, Ind. native is a student at Purdue University Fort Wayne and also works two jobs: one on campus, as a resident assistant; and the other off-campus, as an intern with Regal Beloit, an electric motor company.

“I like to work out,” he said, regarding how he spends his very limited spare time. “I like to practice faith, play sports, watch movies.”

Of these things, one has become much more important to Thomas than the rest.

“Evan is this very joyful person,” said Nicole Rudolph, an acquaintance of Thomas. “He’s really gotten into his faith on the Summit Awakening retreat last year and then he converted recently.”

Summit Awakening, according to Rudolph, is a retreat for college-aged students in Fort Wayne to learn more about the Catholic faith. It lasts for three days, many of the details are secret, though some things are still allowed to be discussed . Staff and participants alike are under instruction not to reveal what happens on the weekend.

“He’s participating in the retreat this year, but as a leader. And he’s giving a talk on the retreat about the Eucharist.”

The Eucharist, more commonly referred to as communion, is the most important part of Catholic worship and it is the final stage in a person’s being accepted as a full member of the church, according to flameoffaith.org, a website run by the Archdiocese of Brisbane in Australia.

“At my church, it was very liberal,” said Thomas, regarding a misunderstanding between he and his Catholic girlfriend prior to his conversion. “And their communion beliefs, it was not quite transubstantiation, Jesus was not completely present in communion when we took it.”

He said this church, which was non-denominational, did not require its members to take communion; however, they did offer it.

“I went up, and she refused to take communion at my church,” Thomas said. “I got pretty upset with her at the time, you know, thinking that she was stuck-up in her faith and, you know after my formal training, then I came to understand exactly why she would not want to take communion there.”

Thomas was raised in a Methodist home until he was 14 years old, when he stopped going to church altogether.

“I think there were a lot of members of my church who influenced me in a negative way,” Thomas said. “They were what I saw as negative influences of the church, people who claimed the faith and didn’t live it. And so, for me, I thought that was very detrimental to my faith life.” Thomas said many of these people were members of his own family. He said he was also told a lot of negative things about the Catholic church.

“That priests were people that held power above the layman, as you may call it. That they had an organization that was very corrupt; a very political and hierarchical society just integrated into what it meant to be a Catholic.”

He also said he viewed Catholics as more people who claimed the faith, but did not live it.

“I don’t think I really knew anything about it,” said Thomas about the Methodist theology. “I didn’t look deep enough into faith to distinguish between the different points of what each denomination believed compared to another so I didn’t learn a lot about that until maybe this previous year or two.”

Thomas said before that, he saw Christianity in terms of Catholics and Protestants, and the Protestants were the correct side.

Protestantism began in 1517 when a German monk named Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church over practices he deemed could not be found in the Bible; chief amongst them the buying and selling of indulgences, which promised the purchaser would go straight to Heaven when they died. Since then, a degree of enmity has existed between those who stayed with the Catholic Church and those who followed Luther and formed their own churches.

Thomas began dating his girlfriend who got him to look into Catholic theology.

“I think it wasn’t necessarily one point,” Thomas said. “It was several points building up. I would look into a question and I would find that the Catholic church had the — to me — correct answer. And this process would happen again, and again, and again and eventually I believed it without already knowing the Catholic answer.”

Thomas said once he realized this was the case, his decision became obvious. When he made the decision, his family had mixed attitudes.

“My mom is Catholic, she was very excited. My girlfriend is Catholic, she was also very excited. The rest of them didn’t quite understand. I think a lot of them thought I was doing it because of my girlfriend was Catholic.”

Thomas said they commonly responded by making jokes, but eventually learned to accept it.

Next for him came the Rites of Christian Initiation for Adults, or RCIA for short. RCIA is the process where one is accepted into full communion with the Catholic Church, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. To begin the process, the prospective convert must talk to a priest or an RCIA director. This comes after the Period of Evangelisation, in which the convert must partake in a period of deep personal reflection.

This process is difficult for many converts, including Thomas.

“I think it was because I was such a big opponent of the Catholic Church in my own mind. To owning up to that and accepting it proudly and then also dealing with the fact a lot of people thought I was converting because of my relationship.”

Thomas is a man who wants his peers to see him as someone deep in his faith and does not want that perception to change. At the end of this period, he began RCIA classes at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Fort Wayne.

These classes are just like any at a college campus. You have the instructor, usually a priest or a nun, running through the different points and aspects of Catholicism while the students take notes and ask questions. Students are generally also joined by their sponsors.

A sponsor, according to the USCCB, is a person chosen by the convert to help them through the process; one who exemplifies how to live the faith and answer questions the convert may have.

“I would say my sponsor Philip Litchfield was very helpful,” Thomas said. “It was nice to be able to turn to him and get an intellectual answer to faith.”

“People question things like the papacy and different things Catholics do,” said Ruth McMahon, a sponsor in another diocese in the 1980s.
According to McMahon, many Protestants question Catholic obedience to hierarchy, which she said is also present in Protestant churches to some degree.

The Hierarchy, which many Protestants are hesitant to get behind, is the Catholic Church’s leadership which is based in Vatican City, just outside of Rome.
It is headed by the Pope, who every Catholic around the world considers to be infallible and incapable of teaching anything wrong.

This explains why, even in the midst of accusations that the current Pope covered up a sex scandal, Thomas’s faith remains unshaken.

“I think that it motivates me to be a stronger Catholic,” said Thomas, matter-of-factly. His confidence justified his tone.

“Now more than ever, there needs to be good representatives of the faith and I think it’s important for people outside of the Catholic church to look at what we have and to see that we’re still proud, that we’re not shaken or hesitant at all, that I’m not reserved, that I’m still confident I made the right decision.”