Religion and Spirituality among University Students in the United States, Norway, Denmark and Sweden

• In Event: 165 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Religious Experiences of College and University Students

Abstract

This paper presents the results of survey data collected from Purdue University in the United States and from three universities in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (N=6,561). Respondents were asked to self-identify into categories consisting of “religious and spiritual,” “spiritual but not religious,” “religious but not spiritual” and “not religious or spiritual.” We use this classification scheme to explore how the different categories of students differ in their responses to other measures of religiosity and spirituality. We also inspect the ways in which American students differ in their responses from Scandinavian students. Our analyses thus far have revealed that Scandinavian students are more inclined toward private spirituality than American students, but roughly equal numbers of American and Scandinavian students identify as “spiritual but not religious.” This incongruity could suggest that Scandinavian students are moving into a period of “fuzzy spirituality,” a term that describes a liminal state between religiosity and secularity. We also discuss other categories such as “religious but not spiritual,” a group to whom little scholarly attention has been given. The implications of this study are discussed as they apply to the sociological study of religion.

Authors

• Joey Marshall, Purdue University

• Daniel V.A. Olson, Purdue University