A few weekends ago the New York Times ran a feature in the Op-Ed section where current masters or doctoral level students offered bits of advice they wish they had received to incoming college freshman.

Most of the suggestions in the column, entitled “Ditch Your Laptop, Lose Your Boyfriend,” were pretty standard fare: branch out, meet new people, take advantage of electives, limit internet usage in favor of human interaction, and so forth. All good ideas.

But more than the actual suggestions offered, the question itself got me thinking about a conversation I had with my youth minister during my first semester at college.

We were on the phone talking about how things were going at school (fine), how I was adjusting (well), what my roommate was like (kind of goofy but a good guy), and how classes were going (big pause). Most of my classes were going fine, I told him, except for this intro religion class.

Oh…he said. How so? Well, its just that we are learning a lot of things that I have never heard before, and I am trying to make sense of it all.

I see, he said. What sorts of things?

I proceeded to tell him a few tidbits, most of it related to Historical Criticism, church history, and other scholarly approaches to the Scriptures, and at the end I asked him the big question–and I remember not even knowing exacty what I wanted his answer to be.

So, did you know all of this? I said.

Yes.

Well then why didn’t you tell me!

We then got into a discussion about how we as people of faith can and should use scholarly study of the Bible as a means to deepen our faith, and why this doesn’t happen more in church. It’s a question I still ask myself.

I was thinking of all this while receiving email after email alerting me to the recent Pew study showing the troubling trends in religious knowledge among people of faith. It turns out we don’t know that much…about our own religion, let alone other people’s. Then I started wondering if all of this might have anything to do with the amount of students who “leave” the church when they graduate high school and go on into college.

To be honest, I think incoming freshmen get a good amount of college prep and advice. It seems like all of that starts in elementary school these days.

I think they get a lot less preparation about what it means to be a person of faith when they move away from home.

Now, this involves a lot more than learning that there are other flood stories and that there is actually no mention of an apple in the story of Adam and Eve.

But hearing these things would be nice too.

SHD