New data from the Pew Research Center demonstrated that today’s generation of young adult Americans are considerably less involved in organized religion than the generations before them were at their age.
“Nearly one-quarter of people ages 18-29 have described their religion as ‘none.’ By comparison, only about half as many young adults were unaffiliated in the 1970s and 1980s,” the study stated.
International students at Ohio University, many of whose culture was fused with religious traditions, contrasted this statistic about American students.
“International students bring these religious traditions with them so they’re essential to the representation on campus,” Steve Hays, an OU Classics and World Religion professor, said. “If it isn’t endemic, somebody has to bring it in and the international students are the natural vectors.”
One such international student is Zhongwen Li, a graduate student from Taipei, Taiwan studying sociology. Li practices a form of Buddhism combined with Taoism that is common in Taiwan. She credited her continued religious practice to personal experience.
“Originally I was a little bit anti-religion, but when I deeply communicated to Buddha and the more I devoted myself, things changed that I could not control,” Li said. “That’s when I decided that the religion was mine and that I belong to it.”
Li said time spent in prayer does not dictate devotion in Buddhism.
“If you don’t have time to pray because you need to study or to make money that’s all okay,” Li said. “Even my grandmother, a very observant Buddhist, says that. If you have great sincerity and your heart is pure and you are doing good things, trying to contribute to society, then Buddha will understand your good will.”
According to another international student, to identify with a religion does not dictate devotion.
“I don’t really pray five times a day because sometimes you have classes and even at home I never really pray five times a day – more like once or twice,” Nurenzia Yannuar, a Sunni Muslim and graduate Linguistics student from East Java, Indonesia, said. “If you consider yourself a Muslim you are supposed to pray five times a day because it’s one of the fundamental rules of the religion. If you don’t it’s considered a big sin. I’m kind of bad, I always forget.”
Aside from international students, first generation American citizens like Hassan Sheikh also uphold familial religious traditions.
“My mom and dad are both from Pakistan,” Sheikh, a Communications Studies major and Shiite Muslim from Point Pleasant, New Jersey, said.
“I had a really awesome Islamic education when I was growing up,” Sheikh said. “My family started an Islamic Center. One of the camps would take you in the morning to the beach in Jersey so we could pray Fujr [the sunrise prayer] on the beach. It’s the East coast, and you have to pray toward the East, so you would pray toward the ocean.”
According to the Pew study, “The large proportion of young adults who are unaffiliated with a religion is in part a result, in part, of the decision by many young people to leave the religion of their upbringing without becoming involved with a new faith.”
Students attributed their continued practice of their family’s religion to various factors. Sheikh was entertained and bound by relationships with other people who were involved.
“The more I grow up the more I’m forced to look at it from a sociological point of view,” Sheikh said. “I just really have a good time with Muslims. But on a more spiritual note, something the scholars would be more happy about, I feel like every time something’s happened to me, there’s been somebody watching out for me. I kind of felt like I owe it, basically.”
Shani Salifu, a Ph.D. education student from Ghana and leader at the Islamic Center, echoed the importance of companionship in Islamic doctrine.
“A conversation with a wise man beats five years of reading [scripture],” Salifu said.
Yannuar accepted spirituality as a part of her culture, her personal roots.
“My parents had introduced me to their religious lives since I was little and they put me through religious school, so it’s kind of already a part of me,” Yannuar said. “The boundary between religion and culture is not obvious anymore. We just do it because that’s the way people do it in the place where I come from. Some people ask me if I ever question whether it’s true or not, whether God is there or not, and I don’t know I just never question anymore.”
Li’s religious experience at a young age propelled her into a life dedicated to Buddhism.
“Psychologists say that when people encounter problems in life, their religious experience usually helps them," Li said. “In high school I met some difficulties and my religion gave me the mental power to foster and support me to overcome them.”
Two of the three students agreed that the Pew study may be true on a global scale, that their generation was less devout than that of their parents or grandparents.
Li disagreed. She said just because her grandmother spent more time in prayer after she retired, she was not more devout than other Buddhists.
Sheikh attributed his father’s devotion to a driven nature and relationship with Sheikh’s grandfather.
“I know that his dad was harder on him than my dad is on me,” Sheikh said. “When my dad graduated elementary school he graduated tenth in his class and his dad sat him down and was like, ‘What did I do wrong? What more can I do for you? You tell me and I’ll take care of it. That’s my promise to you.’ My dad was valedictorian of his high school class.”
Sheikh believed his father’s drive to rise from poverty translated into devotion to God.
“Maybe I’m more complacent because I was born into relative wealth as opposed to him,” Sheikh said. “When he was studying for his medical degree he was in a room without any windows, a fan that broke, and flies going around. Maybe if I had been born into extreme poverty I would have that same drive.”
The students said devotion translated to everyday life in different ways.
“Someone who practices Islam more strictly wouldn’t be in certain social situations that others would be,” Sheikh said. “That’s primarily where the difference comes from. Like my best friend’s dad and my dad are the real deal. They wouldn’t hang out at a bar, they wouldn’t hang out at a house party where there’s drinking going on. They probably wouldn’t hang out if they felt like one girl wasn’t very well dressed that day. They probably would just bounce and do something else with their lives.
“One issue that’s controversial in Islam is how we deal with music, because there are certain themes in a lot of popular music that are not things that more religious people are going to be okay with. The closer you are to the hard line [of Islamic Law], the less music you’re going to listen to, like my best friend’s dad actually listens to like motivational tapes most of the time when he’s in the car, he doesn’t listen to any music whatsoever. He also doesn’t go to most popular movies.”
Yannuar said the hijab, the scarf of modesty worn by Muslim women, was commonly mistaken as a matter of devotion when in reality it was one of culture. In Middle Eastern countries, it was expected for women to wear the scarf, but elsewhere in the Muslim world it was not. Above all the decision to wear the scarf was one of personal preference, although regional pressures influenced personal choice.
“There are a lot of Muslim women in Athens, but I’ve only met them at the Islamic Center and only during the holidays of Islam,” Yannuar said. “Sometimes it’s difficult because most of them are from Middle Eastern countries and they cover themselves with the veil. I don’t wear a scarf so it’s difficult for me to relate to other Muslim women who are not from my country because we practice it differently. I am Muslim but it doesn’t mean that I can’t practice it differently. I don’t have to wear the same clothes as other Muslims.”
But cultural traditions often clashed so the students chose which rules to follow and which were better left to generations past.
“There’s a lot of line-by-line regulation to being in a religion, obviously, and the question is what that ‘line-by-line’ translates to in a daily life,” Sheikh said. “And whether or not some of that ‘line-by-line’ should be discarded in a world where we’re in a more secular environment. Like in Saudi Arabia [a man and a woman meeting in public] would not happen, probably even Pakistan it would not happen, but definitely around here there are some adjustments to be made.”
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