<p>I know that Mac is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, but does that actually result in anything noticeable on campus? Like class requirements, student body, etc.</p>
<p>Mac was founded by the Presbyterian Church, but isn’t affiliated now. There is a chapel on campus where opening-day, etc. non-religious ceremonies are held.
There are no religious requirements.</p>
<p>Not. At. All. Friend’s D attends.</p>
<p>Mac is still affiliated with the presbyterian church, and they do hold church services in the chapel, actually. I’m not sure if it’s only on major holidays or if it’s weekly because I haven’t been to either, but it’s much more of an all purpose space than it is a church and I believe they have other non-Presbyterian religious activities there, as well as readings/meetings/other secular things. The overall climate of the school is very non-religious as a whole (“Drink blood, smoke crack, worship satan, go Mac!” is one of my favorite cheers and it lampoons this essentially deserved reputation for “godlessness”), but they do have some scholarship/award things that they give to Presbyterians still; unfortunately I don’t know the details of those. There’s no requirements related to religion at all, nor is there a space where they require some belief statement on the application.</p>
<p>Oh I forgot to mention that one of the only aspects of Macalester life that’s related to Presbyterianism for all students is that one of our chaplains, K.P. Hong, speaks at some school events–not in a religious capacity, in a more general motivational/inspirational sense. I’m not sure if this is something that always happens though because K.P. is exceptionally awesome so he might just speak a lot because of how awesome he is at it. He’s also probably one of the most respected people on campus, whenever he speaks everyone listens with complete attention as far as I can tell and his speeches get talked about amongst the students very positively. A little bit of a legend, he is.</p>
<p>^^^My daughter, an atheist, has said that he is extraordinarily charismatic.</p>
<p>The replies here are actually getting me worried. As a Christian who is tolerant of other faiths/beliefs, would I fit in? I don’t really picture myself being very comfortable in a mostly non-religious community, especially one that totes the kind of cheer Wombatsoup mentions haha.</p>
<p>The cheer is basically ironic, it’s just that as a bastian of liberalism & general non-religious and/or hippie sentiment we have a certain reputation that we chose to exaggerate for comic effect. It’s supposed to be a little shocking : ). I found a letter from the late sixties in the Mac Weekly archives (I write for them) from a reverend that literally said that Mac was destined for hell, so that kind of stuff obviously gave us a lot to work with from a satire perspective. As a whole atheists (like me) and other flavors of non-religious people don’t really make any effort to convert religious people or otherwise bother them, but it is true that the overall climate of Macalester is pretty secular. Social conservatives (as it’s usually defined) probably wouldn’t be that comfortable here (I don’t know if you are one or not). If I had to take a guess, most of the community is either non-religious or culturally/non-practicing religious, so if that bothers you you might want to look somewhere else. That being said, from my perspective we’re pretty tolerant, and there’s certainly a wide offering of religious events at the college including a lot of Christian ones. There’s also the interfaith house, which is a new housing option that focuses on being serious about spiritual belief. One of my friends is actually about to leave for Australia on a mission for his LDS church, so there are definitely people who are comfortable with serious religion here. If you want to know more, you should try to get in touch with the [Center</a> for Religious and Spiritual Life](<a href=“http://www.macalester.edu/religiouslife/]Center”>Center for Religious and Spiritual Life - Macalester College) or start a discussion on a FB group or something.</p>