<p>Or any religion for that matter. Every time I mention any school like Boston College, Brandeis, Loyola or Villanova the first thing anyone mentions is that those schools are such and such religion. There's lists for the top Christian schools and even a subforum on CollegeConfidential for schools of certain religions.</p>
<p>How does a school identifying as a specific religion effect the experience of attending? I don't understand what it means for a school to be a certain religion or what bearing it has on its students and community.</p>
<p>Is Brandeis associated with a religion? I thought it was secular.</p>
<p>Anyway…for most of the Catholics, it really makes little difference. No one is going to force you to be Catholic or do “Catholic things.” Most Catholic univ have many non-Catholics and even non-Christians and also atheists attending with no problem at all.</p>
<p>yes, at Catholic univs, there usually are crosses and crucifixes and statues around, but heck, you’ll see those in Catholic hospitals, too, yet those serve everyone, too. Shouldn’t be a biggie.</p>
<p>Brandeis is a secular university that has strong cultural ties to Judaism and is around 50% Jewish. Within the Jewish community it’s regarded as the only “Jewish” college that isn’t exclusively for the ultra-Orthodox.</p>
<p>Religious expression at some Catholic institutions might include:
crucifixes on classroom walls
required religion courses (not necessarily with a strong Catholic/Christian focus)
a large number of priests on the faculty (a majority of faculty members in some departments)
policies affecting student health (e.g. covering birth control in student insurance policies or dispensing it at clinics)
administrative resistance to some student activities that may be at odds with Catholic teachings (e.g. advocacy for GLBT or abortion rights); this resistance may take the form of denying funding or meeting space, for instance, but probably not outright bans.</p>
<p>Most of the above would apply to Georgetown University, for example. Georgetown is relatively secular compared to some other Catholic institutions. Less than half of students are Catholic. In most classes and other aspects of college life, the student experience would be hard to characterize as distinctively Catholic.</p>
<p>True, the “religion” class req’t is often very loose. There usually are a wide variety of choices that don’t have anything to do with Catholicism or Christianity. I know an atheist who took the World Religions class. No biggie for him, it was just educational/information.</p>
<p>Consider Georgetown University in Washington D.C. The university has Jesuit roots and yet it is inclusive. It has a full time rabbi and a full time imam. So for example, Jews can attend a Shabbat service on campus.</p>
<p>It is going to vary widely depending on the school. For Catholic colleges and universities, you get the added layer of which religious order founded the school. So, teaching at Providence will be influenced by the philosophies of the Dominicans, and the many Jesuit institutions across the country be particularly unique as that order has an explicit philosophy of education. I went to grad school at The Catholic University of America, and many people there were VERY in to making sure you used the “THE” in the beginning, because it is the only US institution with a Papal Charter and they would get cranky about most people thinking of Georgetown when they thought of a Catholic institution in DC. </p>
<p>Short answer, amount of religious influence and interpretation of religious influence will vary by school.</p>
<p>You have to look at the distribution requirements; if religion is required, with what type of classes can it be fulfilled (doctrine? religion in society or Bible as literature? world religions?) Are other classes taught in a faith-based way (ie., is history taught from a Christ-centric point of view where Greeks and Romans are primarily considered as Pagans? Is science taught independently from faith or is it submitted to beliefs?)Does it imply a service mission (volunteering? proselytizing?) Does the college mission indicate that its goals is to form “servants of Christ”? Is there a behavior code (ie., no drinking, no dancing, no usage of tobacco, no drinking coffee/tea, no premarital sex - with violations enforced by expulsion or a mark on the transcript)? A dress code? Parietal rules (ie, single-sex dorms with visiting hours)? Are gay students allowed to exist as out and gay students, as long as they are not in a relationship, or passible of expulsion?
There’s a very, very wide spectrum, from schools like Haverford and Grinnell where affiliation with the Quakers simply means an emphasis on equalitarianism and decision by consensus, to evangelical or fundamentalist schools where being an atheist or a non-believer would be extremely uncomfortable.</p>
<p>You have to begin with the question “Is the affiliation current or historical?” And follow with the question “How does the school embody that affiliation today?”</p>
<p>For example, Dartmouth was founded by Puritans but no one regards it as “a Puritan school”.</p>
<p>Haverford is a little further along the continuum - founded by Quakers, now secular, but retaining a certain essential Quaker-ness in its core philosophies. (e.g. the student-run Honor Code and its focus on “restoration to community”)</p>
<p>At the middle of the spectrum are schools like Georgetown - still formally religiously affiliated, but ecumenical in their philosophy.</p>
<p>Around that fulcrum is a wide spectrum of religiously-affiliated schools that vary in their degree of religious diversity and ecumenical openness. For example, Catholic University of America is <em>very</em> predominantly Catholic and takes a more fundamentalist stance on Catholic doctrine than Georgetown. Case in point: Louis Farrakhan has spoken on campus at GU, while CUA turned away Stanley Tucci because he had previously supported Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, Baylor University has in recent decades continued a decline in Baptist student enrollment (circa 30% and falling) and a concurrent decline in the strength of their ties to the Baptist Convention. Despite being affiliated with one of the most conservative major denominations, the school may actually be a more liberal environment for students than many schools tied to more nominally-liberal denominations.</p>
<p>Finally, at the far end of the spectrum you find the truly evangelical institutions. Brigham Young University, whose LDS affiliation extends to a 98%-LDS student body a mandatory code of behavior based on LDS principles. They have significant restrictions on academic freedom. The school is essentially an extension of the church. They are not merely affiliated, they are one and the same.</p>
<p>In short, it all depends on the specific school and what they choose for their religious affiliation to mean. One Catholic university, or Baptist university, or Buddhist university may be very different from another.</p>
<p>Some schools are very heavy on the religious element while others are more lax.</p>
<p>Boston College and Georgetown are two schools that are techincally catholic but have a secular feel. You don’t get force-fed religion and the schools are more well known for their prestigious academic reputations than their religious affiliations. Brandeis, while Jewish, has a very secular feel and most people don’t realize it is Jewish.</p>
<p>Other schools are very religiously oriented. Wheaton College in Illinois, for example, is heavy handed on the religion, both in the class room and outside. This is what most of the people who choose that school are looking for.</p>
<p>You would need to visit each school and talk with students to get a feel.</p>
<p>You can also have universities that work under the collegiate system, having originally been a collection of smaller colleges that federated into one university. It is quite often that some of these historical colleges in the university were originally founded as religious and interestingly you can at some of these universities get a collection of different colleges with historical roots to different religious denominations. The example I know best is the University of Toronto, which was formed out of a confederation of University College (secular), St. Michael’s (Catholic), Victoria (Methodist), Knox (Presbyterian) and Trinity (Catholic). The neat part about some of these colleges is although many of them (like those at UofT) are now secular, the different histories of the different federated colleges make for some cool traditions.</p>