By Angela Suico

firstchurchoberlin.org

Every Friday night at a few minutes before 7:00 p.m., a small group of students gather in the lounge of Barnard House on the famously liberal campus of Oberlin College. After greeting each other, they sink into the room’s mismatched chairs and couches and discuss typical college-life concerns—Facebook statuses, extracurricular activities and off-campus excursions.

But when seven o’clock rolls around, prayer worship begins and the students start to sing hymns praising Jesus.

Some of them raise their hands in reverence during the slower songs and clap their hands to the beat during faster ones. Between hymns, when junior Lisa Brown asks, “Is there anybody here who loves God?” they erupt into enthusiastic cheers.

This group of students—the Oberlin Christian Fellowship—is just a portion of the passionate intellectuals at Oberlin who identify as Christian.

Christian Oberlin students are well aware of the stigma associated with their faith. “People expect Oberlin to be an open-minded place, but my experience has found that to be false on the surface,” says Sam Berger, a junior majoring in Physics and Philosophy. “My friends know to some extent why I do what I do and think that it is cool that I believe what I believe, but only those [who] have seen me deal with struggles know that I am not just some Bible-thumping non-thinking hypocrite.”

The discussions at the OCF gatherings clearly subvert this “non-thinking” stereotype. During his presentation on evolution at one OCF meeting, Chase Nelson, a 4^th-year biology major, asked the audience if marrying one’s relative was acceptable. His question prompted a series of critical questions from members like, “Where are we [in time]?” and “What kind of relation?” while others remarked with amusement how dissecting such an inquiry was a classic characteristic of Oberlin students.

“You’re not supposed to interpret [the question]” Chase said with a laugh.

“Stop thinking!” joked one male member, slamming his palm down against his thigh like a judge with a gavel.

But many say that out of the various reactions to their spirituality, the most common response is interest in their beliefs. “Everybody I share my faith with is at least respectful of my choices if not supportive,” says sophomore Sujata Murty. “Most of the people I talk to are actually curious either about God or how I reconcile issues such as God and evolution.”

Mieko Gavia, a junior theater major, expresses a similar sentiment.

“A lot of people just make assumptions [about Christianity], and they say something, and when you say something back to them, then you get into this really nice dialogue about faith and what it means and what it doesn’t mean and religion in general. I’ve learned a lot from other people, and I think other people have learned a lot from me.”

Such curiosity may be indicative of a larger trend in Oberlin students’ relationship to religious issues. According to the Director of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, Reverend Greg McGonigle, the annual survey of incoming students’ spiritual interests reported that over 50% expressed interest in connecting with the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, while 45% expressed interest in multifaith activities. Besides students of faith, these statistics include “students who identify as atheist, agnostic, or of no affiliation—which means that even these students are searching.”

Rev. McGonigle also cites the large attendance numbers for different multifaith events—“more than 300 students at an event we sponsored on belief and unbelief, over 100 people at our campus-wide celebration of the Hindu festival of Diwali and over 40 people at a Parents Weekend presentation called “Windows to the Sacred: Iconography in Eastern Spirituality”— as another example of Oberlin students’ interest in spiritual topics.

Pastor Mary Hammond, the co-advisor of the Ecumenical Christians of Oberlin (ECO), agrees with Rev. McGonigle.

“I often feel like there is a lot more interest in religion than is evidenced by the numbers of students that participate in student religious groups. That seems clear to me when guest speakers come to campus to share about various topics in religion or a book they have written [about faith].”

Rev. McGonigle admits, however, that Oberlin has room for improvement.

“Oberlin is somewhat unconventional in its spiritual demographics,” says Rev. McGonigle, “and we do need to fight some stereotypes, prejudice and bigotry against religion and spirituality that silences people and makes them feel unwelcome.”

Students have experienced such prejudice even within their classrooms. Gavia says in one of her courses, her teacher placed Christianity within different types of mythology. And Pastor Steve Hammond, who co-advises ECO with his wife Mary, says he has heard similar stories regarding the faculty’s approach to Christianity. One ECO member, for example, reported that in her introductory religion class, the teacher only focused on the eccentric aspects of Christianity, like snake handlers and Jesus camp, while treating other religions more seriously.

“Faculty should know better than that,” says Hammond. “I get frustrated when I hear about faculty dismissing faith as something that’s contrary to academia when they have colleagues who are people of faith and they’ve studied with [individuals] who are people of faith.”

Though some students found the prominence of atheists and agnostics on campus to be no different from that in their hometowns, the transition required some adjustment for others. Christina Kwok, a junior majoring in Piano and Math, says that since most of her friends at home were Christian, Oberlin has challenged and forced her to deeply reflect on her beliefs.

Sophomore Naomi Onsongo is a more extreme case. Onsongo hails from Kenya, a country where a large amount of the population is Christian. Before entering college, Onsongo had never known any atheists or agnostics, and she says Oberlin has made her re-evaluate her own faith.

Nonetheless, several students say that attending Oberlin has actually strengthened their faith, as well as broadened their perspectives of the world.

“It has challenged me to…really think of reasons I do or don’t believe things,” says Nelson. “And I have been stretched and there are opinions that have changed a lot, but overall my faith has deepened quite a bit, so I’m grateful for the struggle.”

“I have a couple of friends who are Hindu,” says Gavia, “and it’s really interesting to learn about how they view Christianity and how they view their own religion. I’d learned about it in school, but it’s a lot different when you learn about it from somebody who’s grown up with it all their life.”

For Joseph Chou, a junior Environmental Science major, being at Oberlin has helped him embrace his homosexuality, a trait which his upbringing had taught him was “ultimately” wrong.

“[Finding out] I was gay…was a big thing for me,” says Chou. “It contrasted with a lot of things I learned back at home. Here on campus, they were open to it. This environment has been really supportive…[of] my coming out.”

According to Chou, his identity as a gay Christian has also changed other religious students’ opinions about homosexuality and helped them see that the issue “isn’t so clear-cut.”

Nelson, who is also gay, had a different experience. He says finding complete acceptance of his identity as a gay Christian from any one person or group has been extremely difficult.

“I find that, to generalize, those people that accept my sexual orientation as something to be celebrated are less than happy about the serious place Jesus holds in my life,” says Nelson. “On the other hand, those that tend to accept my Christianity are…less favorable about my sexual orientation, because they think it is sinful.”

Many of the students interviewed for this article develop their faith through one of Oberlin’s spiritual organizations. The three largest Christian group on campus are OCF, an evangelical association that welcomes all denominations; Ecumenical Christians of Oberlin, a progressive group that espouses more liberal forms of Christianity, such as affirming LGBT individuals; and Newman Catholic Campus Ministry, an organization that  seeks to develop the faith of Catholic Oberlin students.

Oberlin College was originally established for religious purposes. Presbyterian minister John Shipherd and Philo Stewart founded the colony of Oberlin in 1833 to promote the Christian values they viewed as lacking in the surrounding areas of Ohio. Named after Jean-Frederick Oberlin, an Alsace minister whom Shipherd admired, the colony became home to the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in December of the same year. The school aimed to produce pastors, teachers and other Christian role models who would spread their faith to people in the West; and in 1835, Shipherd established the Oberlin Theological Seminary, which was later incorporated into the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University in 1966.

Though Oberlin’s liberal reputation may now overshadow its religious beginnings, only a few students acknowledge having moments where they wished they attended a different school.

“If my faith can’t live through Oberlin,” says sophomore Allie Lundblad, “then I shouldn’t have it. If my faith goes through all of this argument and it doesn’t live, it wasn’t very good faith.”