Religious Atmosphere?

Colleges and Universities A-Z American University
1

I"m a transfer student hoping to attend American University in the fall. Thought I am leaving my current school for many reasons, one of them is that the school is very overly religious (Jesuit) to the point where I felt like it was being shoved down my throat. I don’t have any problem with religion and truthfully I like a campus that is diverse religiously, but as someone who just doesn’t partake in that kind of thing, having priests come and bless things and being told to pray just makes me uncomfortable. Also, they didn’t allow female students to sign in male friends to stay to visit overnight (and vice versa), and they were against promoting safe sex and never handed out condoms or had a talk about that or anything. In addition, our Dean is a priest, and taking a religion class is part of the core, which I do not like.

I had this concern when considering my current school, but when i asked about it I was told the religious presence of the school wasn’t ‘in your face’ and was ‘barely noticeable’, but that was clearly a lie. According to its website, American is linked with the United Methodist Church, but has a secular curriculum. This sounds promising, but I can’t help but be skeptical after my previous experience with a religiously affiliated school. Can someone truthfully tell me about the presence the religious affiliation has on the students?

2

The institutional religious presence on campus extends to the Kay Spiritual Center and that is about it. There are no forced religious classes, no restrictions based on the Bible, or anything like that. The Kay Spiritual Center is the religious center of campus and it hosts more than just Christian faiths - any faith can go there to practice.

With that said, there are religious student groups that are active on campus. Annoyingly so, to be honest. The Jewish Student Association along with the Chi Alpha Christian Ministry are the most active and they are very in your face about it during the first few weeks of school trying to heavily recruit.

But we are overall not a religious school. We have a very active LGBT community (to the point that AU is jokingly referred to in DC as GayU); fundamentally, the LGBT community wouldn’t flourish here if we had a conservative religious curriculum.