Christian College Students and Emerging Adulthood: Exploring or Lost? A White Paper from the Center for Scripture Engagement Steven Bird Taylor

Transcription

1 1 Christian College Students and Emerging Adulthood: Exploring or Lost? A White Paper from the Center for Scripture Engagement Steven Bird Taylor University January 2016

2 2 Abstract Students in college today are experiencing a life stage emerging adulthood that previous generations did not experience. Society has not provided clear social expectations and boundaries on this life stage yet. This has led to 2 different research-based characterizations of the reality students are experiencing: a time of exploration and opportunities (Arnett, 2004) and a time of lostness and struggle (Smith, 2011). This research uses data from roughly 6,000 students at 22 Christian colleges to determine which of these descriptions better characterizes their experiences of emerging adulthood and what role different kinds of religiosity play in those experiences. Generally, students at Christian colleges find emerging adulthood to be a time of exploration and opportunity and not a time of being lost and disconnected. Religiosity (measured in 7 different ways) consistently decreases lostness, has no effect on exploration, and increases a perception of opportunity.

3 3 Christian colleges are focused on the spiritual, intellectual, and social development of students. They exist to meet students where they are and help them move toward whole-person maturity. But every few decades the realities of students lives change enough that those of us who work at Christian colleges have to revisit students realities and figure out how to meet them where they are. This is particularly true now in the United States and other post-industrial societies. Students realities are sociologically different in two profound ways, and we can only pursue our missions effectively by understanding those changes. This article considers one of those changes (the new life stage known as emerging adulthood) and looks at the way over 6,000 devout Christian students at 22 Christian colleges in the United States are experiencing it. The article then goes on to consider how different kinds of religiosity play a role in these students experiences of emerging adulthood. High school graduates used to move from adolescence to young adulthood a movement from a life with some freedoms and many controls while living with their parents to a life with all the freedoms and responsibilities of adulthood. Young adulthood is a stage where people start families and their jobs or careers. Now, though, many students are waiting until their late twenties to move into the young adult life stage. They spend a large portion of their twenties living in this new in-between stage called emerging adulthood, a stage with all the freedoms of adulthood but not as many of the traditional responsibilities. Emerging Adulthood Recent research has argued that people in their twenties in contemporary developed nations face a different sequence of life stages than previous generations did (Arnett, 2004; Arnett, Kloep, Hendry, & Tanner, 2011; Konstam, 2015). In particular, where adolescence used to progress to young adulthood, now there is an additional stage in life that goes between them a stage being called emerging adulthood. To a large extent, the possibility of a new life stage is based on increased life expectancy. Around 1960, average life expectancy at birth in the United States was years. In 2010 it was (Arias, 2014). Average life expectancy increased 8.77 years. But which stage(s) of life, if any, is (are) lasting longer to account for those extra nine years of life? While there is no one list of life stages that everyone agrees with, we can generally agree that people in 1960 went through infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, and senior adulthood. So what happens when people live another 8 to 10 years longer? Which stage(s) get(s) longer? Or is a new stage of life created with those years? It is possible that society could extend the understood boundary of adolescence beyond graduating high school. Or some of the nine years might have ended up in an extended stage of young adulthood or a longer adulthood. Interestingly, though, it may be argued those years are being lived out in a rather undefined stage that now fits between adolescence and young adulthood. The easiest way to see this shift is in marriage ages. In 1970 the median age at first marriage for men was 22.5 and for women was In 2009 the median age at first marriage for men was 28.4 and for women was Students today are still getting married they are just waiting until later to do so (Elliot & Simmons, 2011). They are using the extra life expectancy they have to live a less encumbered life from the advent of adult freedoms at age 18 or 21 until they settle down later in their twenties or early in their thirties. Arnett (2004) has been the most notable proponent of the argument for this new life stage called emerging adulthood. In his book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties, he says,

4 4 As recently as 1970 the typical 21-year-old was married or about to be married, caring for a newborn child or expecting one soon, done with education or about to be done, and settled into a long-term job or the role of full-time mother.... For today s young people [written in 2004] the road to adulthood is a long one. They leave home at age 18 or 19 but most do not marry, become parents, and find a long-term job until at least their late twenties. (p. 3) In essence, Arnett argues, young people in their twenties today are experiencing a time of transition from adolescence to young adulthood that previous generations did not. Arnett sees this time as one of possibilities and exploration a time when dreams can be dreamed and aspirations can be embraced. Overall, he presents emerging adulthood as a fascinating time of self-discovery. A few years later, Christian Smith used the results of his research with young people in the United States (the National Study of Youth and Religion, or NSYR) to revisit emerging adulthood. His conclusions were not as rosy. In the book Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, Smith, Christoffersen, Davidson, and Herzog (2011) argue that this transitional stage is not as benign as Arnett believed it to be. Smith et al. explore emerging adulthood in chapters titled Morality Adrift, Captive to Consumerism, and The Shadow Side of Sexual Liberation, among others. They make an extensive argument that this stage is not a joyful time of personal actualization but, instead, a time of floundering confusion and self-destructive indulgence. It is, of course, possible that both Arnett and Smith et al. are correct. There is no reason to naively believe that this new life stage must be all wonderful or terrible. It is also, perhaps, wise to point out here that new stages of life, including the advent of childhood and the advent of adolescence both stages that are also rather modern and dependent on longer life expectancies resulting from more food and better health care also were characterized by undefined edges and mixed understandings at first (Aries, 1965; Baxter, 2011). It is quite probable that emerging adulthood is as confusing as it is for people living in it because society is still coming to grips with the common expectations and normative behaviors that will define and constrain it. For the purposes of this paper, the question to be answered is how do students at Christian colleges engage with being emerging adults? Put another way, are they finding it to be a time of opportunity and exploration, or are they finding it to be a time of confusion and unhealthy identities? The Committed Traditionalists Method Students at Christian colleges in the United States are not like most people their age. They are much more proactive in bringing Christian faith into the mix of their life experiences. They have chosen to attend a Christian college something only 16% of college students chose to do in 2013 ( Table , 2015). Do the patterns described by Arnett accurately describe students at Christian colleges? Do the patterns described by Smith et al.? The role of religion in emerging adults lives has been explored from a variety of perspectives. Excellent academic research like A Faith of Their Own by Pearce and Denton (2011) or Smith and Snell s (2009) Souls in Transition explore the topic well. Practitioners have also entered the discussion with books like Setran and Kiesling s (2013) Spiritual Formation in Emerging Adults and Kinneman s (2011) You Lost Me. But these authors have not had the opportunity to delve deeply into the religious lives of particular groups of emerging adults. For example, Pearce and Denton worked with a sample of twenty-

5 5 somethings from across the United States who participated in comprehensive interviews about their faith, but they were limited to the insights of just 120 participants. That s a very nice set of cases for qualitative work, actually, and they provide some very valuable insights, but it is quite hard to generalize from those 120 young people to all devout Protestant emerging adults. Smith and Snell (2009) also have provided a very valuable set of insights in fact, the body of work from the National Study of Youth and Religion has provided some of the best work in the sociology of religion but even with thousands of survey results and hundreds of interviews, there are important limits to their ability to speak to how religion is interacting with emerging adulthood in specific subpopulations. This is the normal trade-off researchers face include a broader population of cases but not be able to look closely at subpopulations, or gather data for a subpopulation so you can study it well but not have the data to see more broadly. Smith and Snell provide the larger picture but cannot look at a smaller level. They find, for example, that there are six major religious types in the twenty-something population of the U.S. but cannot look very deeply at any one type. The committed traditionalists are the most devout group and comprise, they estimate, about 15% of the emerging adult population. The NSYR is a tremendous research project but only has about 369 committed traditionalists in its third wave of measurement. For anyone wanting to study the way faith and emerging adulthood interact for devout students at Christian colleges, there are too few cases to have great confidence in. To take a deeper look at the committed traditionalists, this paper uses the Christian Life Survey (CLS). The CLS is very different than the NSYR. It looks more deeply at devout emerging adult Protestants and only looks at that religious subpopulation. The NSYR is a national-scale research project conducted for academic research, while the CLS is a national-scale research project conducted for applied research. The CLS is a tool used by a variety of Christian colleges to take the spiritual pulse of their student populations. In the data collection, 25 Christian colleges participated. Of those, 22 colleges participated in a way that allows the use of their data here. There were 6,024 student participants from those 22 colleges who are traditional-age, traditional program, Christian students. These students chose to attend a Christian college and agreed to participate in a half-hour survey about their spiritual life. That alone suggests they are more spiritually engaged than other emerging adults elsewhere, but the results of the survey also demonstrate that they are to a very large extent committed traditionalists (shown in Table 1). Smith and Snell (2009) indicate that committed traditionalists embrace a strong religious faith, whose beliefs they can reasonably well articulate and which they actively practice (p. 166). A survey like the Christian Life Survey does not allow an effective measure of the students articulateness in expressing their beliefs, but it does allow self-reports on what beliefs they adopt and what religious activities they engage in. Beliefs. These students are devout in their beliefs. Ninety-three percent self-identify as Bible-believing, and 78% self-identify as born again. Large percentages say they believe in Jesus (89%), believe in the Trinity (87%), and believe that God is actively involved in their lives (70%). Only 4% or less believe the Bible is an ancient book of moral tales, that all truth is relative, or that they don t know what to think about the Bible. Behaviors. Because they are at Christian colleges most of which have chapel services during the week 55% attend worship services more than once a week. But this is not simply an indication of conformity or compliance. In general, these students chose to attend a college that expects this behavior because they want to be involved in this behavior. If you include those who only attend worship services weekly, the

6 6 total is 89%. Almost all the survey participants pray and worship God weekly or more (94% and 95%, respectively). These students are devout in their faith. These participants in the Christian Life Survey allow us to explore in some depth how committed traditionalist students at Christian colleges are engaging with emerging adulthood. Table 1 Devoutness of Respondents % saying yes Bible-believing 93 Born again 78 % strongly agreeing I believe in Jesus 89 I believe the God of the Bible is the one true God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 87 The Bible is the authoritative word of God 76 I believe God is actively involved in my life 70 I have a personal relationship with Jesus 67 The Bible is an ancient book of moral tales 4 All truth is relative nothing is really True in an absolute sense 3 I don t know what to think about the Bible 1 % weekly or more Worship God 95 Pray 94 Attend worship services 89 Read the Bible 77 Times of solitude 74 Results Committed Traditionalists Perspectives on Emerging Adulthood So what do committed traditionalist students at Christian colleges think about their life stage? Do they see life as a difficult circumstance that leaves them adrift, as Smith has suggested, or do they see life as an open-ended set of opportunities, as Arnett has suggested? Or perhaps some combination of those? Table 2 shows the percentage of the roughly 6,000 students who agreed or disagreed with each of the eight questions about their perception of life as an emerging adult. The trend in the answers to the questions measuring if the students feel adrift or lost have mixed results. One question ( I am often unsure what is right and wrong ) had a strong majority (68%) disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. Another ( I m not sure what I want in life ) has 45% of the students disagreeing at some level, 19% neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and 35% agreeing at some level. The students have a lot of variation in their sense that they are unsure what they want in life. The third question asks if life seems uncertain to them and, while the responses are quite varied again, the students were more likely to agree. Forty-five percent agreed at some level, 23% neither agreed nor disagreed, and 32% disagreed at some level. The fourth question asks if they believe there is no purpose in getting involved in political change. So if a student disagreed, he or she is saying there is a purpose in getting involved. If a student agreed, he or she is saying there is not a purpose to getting involved. Fifty-two percent of the students disagreed at

7 7 some level with the question, which means they think there is a purpose in getting involved and they are not exhibiting the lostness Smith discusses. The questions looking to see if the students are experiencing emerging adulthood as a time of being lost have mixed results, then, but generally these students do not feel lost in this stage of life. Two questions have clear majorities disagreeing, which suggests that the students are not feeling lost in emerging adulthood. Another has 44% indicating they are not feeling lost (and 35% indicating they are). And the fourth has only 32% disagreeing (and so indicating they do not feel lost), while 45% indicate life is uncertain (which supports the argument that they are feeling lost). On the other hand, the trend in the students answers to the questions about life being a time of exploration and possibilities is that they do experience their current stage of life that way. On one question (I plan to take time after college to explore who I am and what I want to do) students were almost evenly split between agreeing and disagreeing. Thirty-seven percent agreed at some level and 34% disagreed at some level. But on the other three questions, the students had large to almost unanimous majorities agreeing. Fifty-seven percent agreed at some level that they are spending a lot of their time living in ways that make them happy. (Smith might actually argue that this is a sign of being lost since personal happiness is not much of a base to build your life on. Arnett would probably see this as a positive engagement with their current life.) Seventy-one percent of the students indicated that they are exploring who they might be and 94% agreed at some level life is full of possibilities. Clearly the four questions together indicate that the students agree that their time as emerging adults is one of exploration and possibilities. It s worth remembering that being lost in emerging adulthood is not mutually exclusive from experiencing it as a time of possibilities. The students could have found both to be true. They could have found neither to be true. They could have had only one or the other to be true. The actual results are that these roughly 6,000 committed traditionalist students attending 22 Christian colleges find emerging adulthood to be a time of exploration but not a time of lostness. Table 2 Students Experience of Emerging Adulthood Strongly disagree Disagree Neither agree nor disagree Agree Strongly agree I am often unsure what is right or wrong I m not sure what I want in life Life seems uncertain to me I don t see any purpose in using my effort to try to change the civic or political parts of society I plan to take some time in my life after college to explore who I am and what I want to do I spend a lot of my time trying to live in ways that make me happy I am exploring who I might be Life is full of possibilities

8 8 Seven Indexes of Religiosity The Christian Life Survey provides seven indexes that measure a student s spiritual foci and his or her spiritual orientations. Before seeing if any of these seven measures of religiosity affect experiences of emerging adulthood, a description of the indexes and the students values on them is necessary. Spiritual foci. The Christian Life Survey has three indexes that measure a spiritual focal point in Christians spiritual lives. They are a focus on God, a focus on others, and a focus on the Bible. All the questions in all three indexes load cleanly in orthogonal factors using principle axis factor analysis with varimax rotation. The specific questions in each index are provided in the appendix. These roughly 6,000 students from 22 Christian colleges reported very high levels of focus on God and moderately high levels of focus on others and focus on the Bible. Table 3 provides a distribution of the students average answers on the sets of questions where the averages have been collapsed into the original answer categories. A student who agreed, on average, across the set of questions is counted in the agree category on the table, for example. A large majority of the students (77%) strongly agreed, on average, with the seven questions that collectively measure a focus on God. Another 21% agreed. This means 98% of these students had high average answers on the focus on God index. For their focus on others and their focus on the Bible, the students tended to agree or be neutral. Fifty-two percent agreed, on average, with the questions measuring their focus on others, while 37% had answers that averaged to neither agree nor disagree. Similarly, 48% of the students classify as agreeing with a focus on the Bible, while 27%, on average, neither agreed nor disagreed. These students tend to either have a moderate focus on others and on the Bible or are neutral on those two indexes. Table 3 Students Average Classifications for Spiritual Foci Focus on God Focus on others Focus on the Bible Strongly disagree Disagree Neither Agree Strongly agree Mean Standard deviation

9 9 Spiritual orientations. The Christian Life Survey uses a set of questions on spiritual practices to identify students spiritual orientations the ways they live out their spiritual lives. Through six years of refinement the survey has identified five broad approaches to the Christian life: connectedness, asceticism, reflection, evangelism, and service. Connectedness measures being plugged in to church, fellowship, and so forth; asceticism measures an orientation toward self-denial and self-discipline; reflection measures being reflective about prayer, Scripture, and other aspects of the Christian life; evangelism measures efforts to persuade others to the Christian faith, and service measures efforts to help those in need. All of the specific survey questions used in each index were identified using exploratory principle axis factor analysis with varimax rotation. The refinement process has created stable sets of measures to identify connectedness, reflection, and outreach, but the measures of asceticism are less certain. Asceticism will therefore be set aside for this study. The specific questions in each spiritual orientation index are listed in the appendix. The 6,000-plus students studied here have high average levels of the reflective orientation and connectedness orientation but lower average levels of evangelism or service. Each orientation index is constructed of a set of questions that asked how often the students engaged in particular spiritual activities. The questions were answered on a 9-point scale that ranged from never (1) to each day (9). A value of 7 on this scale means each week, and the students overall average on the reflective and connected orientations is just above each week. Service and evangelism are less common, with means of 6.38 and 5.25, which are between each month (5) and each week (7). Table 4 summarizes students answers on the spiritual orientation indexes by collapsing the students values into the ranges that match the original answer scale for the questions. Large percentages indicated that they were engaged in connected activities (82%) or reflective activities (also 82%) weekly or more. Evangelism was practiced weekly or more by 25% of the students, and service was engaged in weekly or more by 50% of the students. Table 4 Students Average Classifications for Spiritual Orientations Connected Reflective Evangelism Service 1. Never Each year Each month Each week Each day Mean Standard deviation

10 10 How Does Religiosity Relate to Experiences of Emerging Adulthood? With the eight questions asking the students about their experience of emerging adulthood and these seven indexes measuring spiritual foci and spiritual orientations, it is possible to see if religiosity affects these students experience of emerging adulthood. Control variables. Several factors other than religiosity could affect the students experience of emerging adulthood. In this analysis four control variables were included to see if they were involved in the students experience of emerging adulthood: sex, race, income, and political view. In every analysis, none of these control variables had any effect. None of them predicted different outcomes on the emerging adulthood questions. In all the results to be discussed below, all of these control variables were included in the regression, but none of them had any main or interaction effects that had effect sizes that could even be called weak. Statistical significance. Virtually every analysis run using these data is statistically significant. Since inferential probability is increased when there are more cases, and these analyses have roughly 6,000 cases, it is exceedingly easy to have statistically significant results. Because even near-zero effect sizes achieve statistical significance with this many cases, and only a handful of specific results out of the hundreds of results reported here were not statistically significant, statistical significance is not reported in the results below. Even results with an effect size as low as.001 were statistically significant. Thus, in the 56 religiosity main effects reported below, statistical significance is not reported. Of those 56 main effects considered, four were not statistically significant, while 22 (including the four non-significant findings) had no effect size. In the results below, then, effect size the much more discerning statistical information is reported while statistical significance is not. Effects of religiosity: Overall results. The question is this: Does greater religiosity among the students at Christian colleges lead to an increase or decrease in their lostness, as Smith suggests is commonly true for youth in general, or does it lead to an increase or decrease in their propensity to explore and see possibilities, as Arnett suggests is more generally true? The full results will be discussed below, but the main trends are: 1. Students with higher levels of religiosity were consistently less likely to indicate they were feeling lost and unsure, 2. Students with higher religiosity were more likely to say life is full of possibilities, and 3. Students with higher religiosity did not have any difference in their likelihood to say they are exploring life and themselves than students with lower religiosity. Overall, then, increased religiosity decreases lostness, has no effect on exploring life, and increases the perception of possibilities in life. How each measure of emerging adulthood was affected by different kinds of religiosity is explored below. After that, the general effects of each kind of religiosity are considered. Effects of religiosity: Results in detail. All of the effects of the different kinds of religiosity are summarized in Tables 5 and 6.

11 11 Religiosity as measured by I m not sure what I want in life has a consistent decreasing effect on lostness. None of the control variables (sex, race, income, political view) had any effect on students indications that they are not sure what they want in life, but all seven of the religiosity indexes had weak and significant effects. Having more of any of these kinds of religiosity led to a decrease in the students sense that they were not sure what they wanted in life. As students have higher values on six of the seven kinds of religiosity measured, they have decreased lostness as measured by the question life seems uncertain to me. A higher focus on the Bible was most consequential in decreasing uncertainty about life. Five of the seven kinds of religiosity measured decreased students being unsure about what is right or wrong. The other two had no effect. A higher focus on God led to a particularly notable decrease in self-reports that they were unsure what is right or wrong. Religiosity decreased students perception that there is no purpose in being active in civic or political ways. Six of the seven indexes of religiosity decreased the pessimistic view. Being more or less religious had no effect on the likelihood that students would say they plan to take time after college to explore who [they] are and what [they] want to do. Even though there was a substantial amount of variation in students responses to the life after college question (see Table 2), religiosity (even measured in these seven different ways) does not relate to the answers students gave. Religiosity that has a greater focus on the Bible or that has the students more plugged in (connected) will decrease their likelihood to agree that they spend a lot of [their] time trying to live in ways that make [them] happy. The other five indexes had no relation to students responses on the question asking about whether they live for their own happiness. Those other five kinds of religiosity did not consistently increase nor decrease a student s likelihood to live for his or her own happiness. Religiosity does not have any effect on students likelihood to be exploring who they might be. All seven indexes of religiosity had nearly zero effect on the students views that they are exploring who [they] might be. Religiosity consistently increases students likelihood of saying that life is full of possibilities. Five of the seven religiosity indexes and particularly a focus on God were related to weak increases in agreement that life is full of possibilities. What effects on emerging adulthood did each kind of religiosity have? (Detailed results.) The results reported above can also be summarized according to the efficacy of different kinds of religiosity, as is done below. The results are also summarized in Tables 5 and 6. A greater focus on God decreases lostness and being civically disengaged, has no relationship to exploring life, and increases students sense that life is full of possibilities. A greater focus on others decreases lostness and being disengaged, has no relation to exploring life, and increases the perception that life is full of possibilities.

12 12 A greater focus on the Bible decreases lostness, disengagement, and living for one s own happiness, while being unrelated to exploring life and seeing life as full of possibilities. A more connected spiritual orientation decreases lostness, disengagement, and living for one s own happiness, while being unrelated to exploring life and increasing perceptions that life is full of possibilities. A more reflective spiritual orientation decreases lostness and disengagement, is unrelated to living for one s own happiness and exploring life, and increases perceptions that life is full of possibilities. A more evangelistic spiritual orientation decreases uncertainty about life but is unrelated to disengagement, pursuing happiness, exploring life, or seeing possibilities in life. Greater service spiritual orientation decreases some aspects of lostness and disengagement but not all of them, is unrelated to pursuing happiness and exploring life, and increases the perception that life is full of possibilities. Summary of Results College students today are experiencing two profound changes in society: a shift to a latemodern digital society and a new life stage called emerging adulthood. This research has considered how students at Christian colleges are experiencing emerging adulthood. Using eight measures of emerging adulthood, seven indexes of religiosity, and including considerations of the effects of sex, race, political view, and income, there are six broad findings. First, these students have varied answers on being lost in emerging adulthood the way Smith et al. suggest might be true more broadly, but the clear trend is that they do not generally feel adrift, lost, or disconnected. The closest they come to experiencing emerging adulthood the way Smith et al. describe it is agreement that life is uncertain. Second, the students do tend to see emerging adulthood as a time of exploration and possibilities. They have an optimistic perspective generally in keeping with Arnett s representation of how emerging adulthood is experienced more broadly. Third, surprisingly, sex, race, income, and political view had no noticeable effects on any view of emerging adulthood. Fourth, religiosity, as measured in the seven indexes from the Christian Life Survey, consistently tends to decrease lostness. As students are more religious in a variety of ways, they are generally less likely to feel life is currently a time of uncertainty or disengagement. Fifth, greater or lesser religiosity has no effect on experiencing emerging adulthood as a time of exploration. And, sixth, greater religiosity consistently leads to a greater sense that life is full of possibilities.

13 13 Table 5 I m not sure what I want in life Partial eta square Direction of effect Effect size Life seems uncertain to me Partial eta square Direction of effect Effect size I am often unsure what is right or wrong Partial eta square Direction of effect Effect size I don t see any purpose in using my effort to try to change the civic or political parts of society Partial eta square Direction of effect Focus on Decrease Weak Decrease Weak Decrease Weak Decrease Weak God Focus on Decrease Weak Decrease Weak Decrease Very Decrease Weak others weak Focus on Decrease Weak Decrease Weak Decrease Weak Decrease Weak the Bible Connected Decrease Weak Decrease Weak Decrease Weak Decrease Very weak Reflective Decrease Weak Decrease Very Decrease Very Decrease Weak weak weak Evangelism Decrease Weak Decrease Weak NA None NA None Service Decrease Weak NA None NA None Decrease Weak Effect size

14 14 Table 6 I plan to take some time in my life after college to explore who I am and what I want to do Partial eta square Direction of effect Effect size I spend a lot of my time trying to live in ways that make me happy Partial eta square Direction of effect Effect size I am exploring who I might be Partial eta square Direction of effect Effect size Life is full of possibilities Partial eta square Direction of effect Focus on NA None NA None 0 NA None Increase Weak God Focus on NA None NA None 0 NA None Increase Weak others Focus on 0 NA None Decrease Weak NA None NA None the Bible Connected NA None Decrease Very weak 0 NA None Increase Very weak Reflective NA None NA None NA None Increase Weak Evangelism NA None NA None NA None NA Very weak Service NA None NA None NA None Increase Weak Effect size

15 15 Discussion Christian colleges are focused on the spiritual, intellectual, and social development of students. They exist to meet students where they are and help them move toward whole-person maturity. But every few decades the realities of students lives change enough that those of us who work at Christian colleges have to revisit students realities and figure out how to meet them where they are. Contemporary students in the United States are facing both a change to a late-modern society type and a new arrangement of life stages that puts them into a new life stage called emerging adulthood. This new life stage has been described as a time of exploration and opportunity (Arnett, 2004) as well as a time of lostness (Smith et al., 2011). This research has established that committed traditionalist students at Christian colleges in the United States experience emerging adulthood as a time of opportunities rather than a time of lostness. Further, it has established that greater religiosity, as measured by the spiritual foci and spiritual orientations identified by the Christian Life Survey, increases students sense that emerging adulthood is a time of opportunities, has no effect on their sense that emerging adulthood is a time of exploration, and decreases their experience of lostness during this stage of life. Why Do Students at Christian Colleges Experience Emerging Adulthood This Way? Having established how students at Christian colleges experience emerging adulthood, we have to ask why they experience it this way. What, if anything, are Christian colleges doing that is leading to these patterned outcomes? The patterns in the data do not answer this question, but we can speculate based on what we know about human identity and development. There are a couple of rather obvious possibilities. First, personal understandings of identity and the degree to which students experience life as a time of exploration or lostness are shaped within social contexts. Students who attend a Christian college are placing themselves in a social location where particular understandings of self and reality predominate. Hill (2009, 2011), for example, finds that the kind of college that students in the USA attend can help predict their level of religiosity. A student s understanding of his or her identity within his or her reality is shaped by the education community he or she lives in. That reasoning can be extended to suggest that Christian colleges are social locations where relationships and shared understandings guide students to perceive emerging adulthood as a time of opportunity rather than a time of floundering lostness. In essence, they live in a social location that does not leave them floundering and lost. This demonstrates the idea that people live in moral communities that shape their experience of life stages an idea based on extensive sociological grounding (Smith, 1998; Stark, 1996, 2011; Stark, Doyle, & Kent, 1980). An alternative but complementary explanation focuses on the meaning-making of students. Research into meaning-making does not necessarily assume a social location effect, but it is not antagonistic to such an idea. This hypothesis would suggest that students interact with others in ways that shape the ways they make sense of (and so report) their experiences of emerging adulthood (Miller & Mangelsdorf, 2005; Stone, Underwood, & Hotchkiss, 2012). Because students at Christian colleges engage in the meaning-making process in a place where the vast majority of the people share a common narrative for meaning, we can expect a greater proportion of them to adopt a meaning system that is more in keeping with Christian understandings which would be an understanding that is less prone to nihilism and solipsism.

16 16 The Elephant in the Room: What Happens After They Leave College? Christian colleges, then, tend to be creating social communities that help their students to experience emerging adulthood as a time of exploration and opportunity but not a time of lostness. Campus efforts to create a community in and out of the classroom that supports whole-person religiosity should be maintained and extended. But what happens after these students leave college? Emerging adulthood lasts much longer than the college years, and these students will be moving from strong campus communities to more loosely organized social realities. They will distribute their time between workplaces, social spaces, churches, and home life. These places will not be organized in ways that provide the same community they have left behind at their campuses. Does the grounding they received at their college campuses support them as they move toward a more common social arrangement? Or do they find themselves experiencing the same floundering lostness described by Smith et al. (2011) but at a later age? Christian colleges can be quite pleased with the realities they are helping to create during students college years, but to answer these additional questions, they must now initiate research with alumni to see how well prepared their students were for the post-college years of emerging adulthood.

17 References Arias, E. (2014, November). National vital statistics reports: United States life tables, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Aries, P. (1965). Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life. New York: Vintage. Arnett, J. J. (2004). Emerging adulthood: The winding road from the late teens through the twenties. New York: Oxford University Press., Kloep, M., Hendry, L. B., & Tanner, J. L. (2011). Debating emerging adulthood: Stage or process? New York: Oxford University Press. Baxter, K. (2011). The modern age: Turn-of-the-century American culture and the invention of adolescence. University Alabama Press. Elliot, D. B., & Simmons, T. (2011, August). American community survey reports: Marital events of Americans: United States Census Bureau. Hill, J. P. (2009). Higher education as moral community: Institutional influences on religious participation during college. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48(3), (2011). Faith and understanding: Specifying the impact of higher education on religious belief. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50(3), Kinnaman, D., & Hawkins, A. (2011). You lost me: Why young Christians are leaving church...and rethinking faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. Konstam, V. (2014). Emerging and young adulthood: Multiple perspectives, diverse narratives (2 edition). Springer. Miller, P. J., & Mangelsdorf, S. C. (2005). Developing selves are meaning-making selves: Recouping the social in self-development. New Directions for Child & Adolescent Development, 2005(109), Pearce, L., & Denton, M. L. (2011). A faith of their own: Stability and change in the religiosity of America s adolescents. New York: Oxford University Press. Setran, D. P., & Kiesling, C. A. (2013). Spiritual formation in emerging adulthood: A practical theology for college and young adult ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Smith, C. (1998). American evangelicalism: Embattled and thriving. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press., & Snell, P. (2009). Souls in transition: The religious and spiritual lives of emerging adults. New York: Oxford University Press., Christoffersen, K., Davidson, H., & Herzog, P. S. (2011). Lost in transition: The dark side of emerging adulthood. Oxford University Press. Stark, R. (1996). Religion as context: Hellfire and delinquency one more time. Sociology of Religion, 57(2), 163. (2011). The triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus movement became the world s largest religion. New York: HarperOne. Stone, L. D., Underwood, C., & Hotchkiss, J. (2012). The relational habitus: Intersubjective processes in learning settings. Human Development ( X), 55(2), Table : Total undergraduate fall enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by attendance status, sex of student, and control and level of institution: Selected years, 1970 through (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2015, from 17

18 18 Appendix: Index Questions The focus on God index uses these questions: I believe in Jesus I believe the God of the Bible is the one true God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit What God says is what is true, right, and good I believe God is actively involved in my life I know my mission in life is to participate in the Kingdom of God I want God to be pleased with me I have a personal relationship with Jesus The focus on others index uses these questions: I live in ways that help others as much as myself I have tremendous love for people I don t know I go out of my way to discover the people in need around me that I normally wouldn t see I use what I own for others as much as for myself I think about others well-being and want what is best for them I rejoice with those who rejoice no matter how I personally feel The focus on the Bible index uses these questions: The Bible is an important part of my daily life As I go through the normal day I think of Bible passages relevant to what I am doing I talk about Bible passages with my friends I believe the Bible has decisive authority over what I say and do The connected spiritual orientation index uses these questions: I engage in fellowship with Christians I attend worship services I read the Bible I worship God I meet with a spiritual small group or spiritual mentor The reflective spiritual orientation index uses these questions: I reflect on who God is I reflect on what it means for me to be a Christian I reflect on the meaning of prayer in my life I reflect on what is good and right I reflect on the meaning of Scripture in my life The service spiritual orientation index uses these questions: I serve those in need I help others who are in difficulty I help people who are treated unjustly I serve the people around me I allow myself to suffer for a worthy cause The evangelism spiritual orientation index uses these questions: I talk to non-believers in ways that I think will help them come closer to Christ I try to evangelize others so they will become Christians I go out of my way to be in contact with non-believers I act in specific ways around non-believers so they might come closer to Christ