Now, one can add a new designation to Generation X and Generation Y – Generation M. It is the missionary generation, a fast-growing group of young adults emerging from religious colleges who are engaging the culture with values and perspectives counter to the typical secular student.
Now, one can add a new designation to Generation X and Generation Y – Generation M.
It is the missionary generation, a fast-growing
group of young adults emerging from religious colleges who are engaging
the culture with values and perspectives counter to the typical secular
student.
At least, that is how Naomi Schaefer Riley sees things.
In her new book, “God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the
Missionary Generation Are Changing America,” Riley explains what she
learned from visiting 20 religious colleges in 2001 and 2002.
The visits revealed some significant ways Generation
M students are set apart, said Riley, who has written for The New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal and other major publications.
“They reject the spiritually-empty education of secular schools,” she
said. “They refuse to accept the sophisticated ennui of their
contemporaries.
“They snub the ‘spiritual but not religious’
attitude,” Riley added. “They rebuff the intellectual relativism of
professors and the moral relativism of their peers.”
Riley noted that enrollment at 100-plus institutions
of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities – of which
Louisiana College is a member – jumped 60 percent between 1990 and 2002
while it barely fluctuated at public and private secular schools. She
put the number of students in religious colleges today at 1.3 million.
Other differences Riley noticed in her interaction
with religious college students is that while some engage in alcohol,
drugs and sexual activity, most of them avoid such destructive behavior.
“Some of this stuff goes on, but the standards are
set high, and when people violate the rules, they’re careful not to
flaunt it,” she said. “It creates a whole different environment.”
Students at religious schools also tend to take
their studies more seriously, such as those at Brigham Young University
who told her, “The glory of God is intelligence.”
Ultimately, the trend could change the way secular educators view religious students, Riley said.
“I think religion will eventually regain a place of
respect in the classroom,” she said. “People will be more willing to
study the interaction between religion and literature, religion and
philosophy and even between religion and science. I think there will
ultimately have to be an acknowledgment among even the faculty of the
elite secular universities that religious people are not just stupid or
crazy.”
Riley added that the missionary generation does not
necessarily push their faith on others – most even see explicit
proselytizing as a last resort. Their approach is more subtle, with
their faith being made evident in lifestyles of community service and
of penetrating the marketplace with their values, she explained.
They also do not see their primary role as working
in churches but are willing to leave their comfort zones and engage the
culture as lawyers, doctors, politicians and businessmen, Riley noted.
“In other words, the missionary generation is coming
to a neighborhood, an office, a city council, a soup kitchen or a
school near you,” Riley said. (BP)