At Columbia, Faith Put Into Focus

For students like Joel Ryzowy, CC '07, the absence of mom and dad makes college a time for revising and reinforcing inherited beliefs or identity.

Born in Uruguay, Ryzowy attended Modern Orthodox yeshivas all his life. He decided to come to Columbia, a secular university with a strong Jewish community. Acknowledging that he once took his inherited religious beliefs for granted, he now serves as president of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel.

"It [the college experience] removes you from that society that socializes certain principles. And now you're on your own and you have to choose what's important to you and why they're important to you, and it's a great challenge," Ryzowy said.

While stereotypes may dictate that the secular and intellectual can't mix with the religious and spiritual, Ryzowy's spiritual reassessment is by no means unique for Columbians who are thrust into an environment marked by freedom and thought. Some fall away. Others reconnect. And many start anew.

On Their Own

A national poll released by Harvard University's Institute of Politics in April found that 70 percent of college students believe that religion is important in their lives. A quarter of those polled said that they have become more spiritual since entering college, compared to only 7 percent who said they have become less spiritual.

Another national survey, whose results were released in 2005 by the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 80 percent of college students have an interest in spirituality and 79 percent believe in God.

While those numbers don't necessarily translate directly to Columbia's population, but that search for spirituality affects many students in Morningside just the same.

Adil Ahmed, CC '09 and vice president of programming for the Muslim Students Association, decided that spirituality was important to him his first year.

"I wouldn't say I was always religious. My family has always been lax. But when I got to college, I became more religious, not in a conservative context but a spiritual context," he said. "You're on your own for the first time ... I would say that I became more religious just because I was on my own."

At Columbia, Ahmed said he found a spiritual medium that allows him to fulfill a sense of moral and ethical duty to himself.

Like Ahmed, Columbia Hillel Rabbi David Almog, GS/JTS '99, had his own spiritual awakening in college. Identifying with Judaism culturally and Buddhism spiritually, Almog shifted toward more traditional Judaism because of events in his college career.

"Truthfully, I grew up with it. I struggled with it," Almog said. "This might not be the most inspirational of reasons, but I met someone I eventually married who went to Barnard, and she was more traditional than me."

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Multifaith, for Better or for Worse

Columbia's multifaith campus makes accommodations for those interested in Buddhism, Orthodox Judaism, and everything in between.

As the head of religious life on campus for 11 years, University Chaplain Jewelnel Davis has overseen a wide spectrum of faiths on campus, traditional and otherwise.

Unlike other peer institutions such as Dartmouth and Brown, Davis said Columbia's large size offers every student the opportunity to relate with enough people with common beliefs to start a group.

Recounting a question from a visitor from Yale who had asked whether St. Paul was an interdenominational Christian space, she said the campus goes far beyond accommodating Christian diversity as she replied, "It's multifaith. We are a long way from a word like interdenominational."

The Student Governing Board recognizes 29 student-led spiritual and religious groups. Additionally, there are 19 religious life advisers in United Campus Ministries under Chaplain Davis, serving, accommodating, and advising those of more established faiths such as Catholicism and Judaism as well as less traditional movements such as ethical humanism.

Jesse Imbriano, CC '07 and president of Columbia Catholic Undergraduates, said that the University does a good job of accommodating the various religions on campus, including providing space for Catholic mass, which he estimated averages between 100 and 200 people every Sunday.

While the institutional support is there, Imbriano said that religious life, especially that of the more prominent religions in America, is out of place at Columbia.

"In general, religion is not something that is very well-accepted. People feel the need to step away from it," Imbriano said. "Especially if you are a member of a mainstream religion, it's definitely more difficult to go out on a limb and say what your beliefs are."

My Religion, My Identity

Still, Imbriano said that as a Catholic, he has the benefit of being in certain control of his identity.

"It's easy to turn off being Catholic. They can be a 'normal college student' most of the time," said Imbriano adding that while he's just Catholic in religion, people of less prominent faiths "have religion in their identity."

For members of other faiths, religion is a part of their culture, and their culture is part of their identity, according to Davis.

"I'm often amazed and fascinated by some of the students at this campus who can make that commitment to make it [religion] a part of their lives and more than a routine. For some of these students you cannot separate them from their religion," she said referring those people who identify with a minority group.

While Columbia's multifaith population can comfortably accommodate those identifying with certain faiths, a recurring criticism has been that some groups tend to isolate themselves from others.

"Sometimes, I get the perception that people think the MSA isolates itself from other organizations. ... Then there are people that say the MSA does good work." Ahmed said.

As a means of fostering campus dialogue, the Columbia/Barnard Hillel was endowed with the Kraft Family Interfaith and Intercultural Fund.

The fund has been used for a dinner event between the MSA and Hillel. After the MSA-sponsored March campus appearance of Norman Finkelstein-a controversial DePaul University professor who has highly criticized Israel's record-the Kraft fund was used by cultural and political groups in conjunction with Hillel in response to the event.

"After the Finkelstein event, a lot of students felt shut down and weren't able to participate with freedom of speech with the topic involved," Davis said. "There were at least two dinners so that students from different political, religious and cultural groups could come together and sit down sort of in the way that says biblically, 'Come let us reason together.'"

An Enlightenment?

Those who profess to be spiritual or religious at Columbia often find their views under the critical lens of academia.

Like all Columbia College students, Ryzowy studied the Bible in Contemporary Civilization. Studying the text critically and engaging in discussion with a diverse group of students has contributed to a new understanding of his religion.

"Before I would probably have said that God is almighty," Ryzowy said. "Now I would probably tell you-I don't know if this is because of Columbia or me as an individual-that God is some sort of creation of man. ... Those types of issues I could not have necessarily observed elsewhere."

Students who have a spiritual investment in these texts often turn to their religious advisers when dealing with required intellectual analysis of their faiths.

"If you are coming from a religious background, an academic environment may not be the best fit for you. And that's fine. Academics are there to challenge us and our beliefs," Almog said. "At least they'll have a more informed understanding of what their beliefs are."

Whether religion is incompatible with certain academic fields remains to be seen. A study sponsored by the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center is currently in progress, examining "the effect of college major on religiosity." The results are expected to be released in a few months, but the perception remains that some fields of study are seen in opposition to faith.

"We definitely run up in a conflict where religion is unscientifically irrational. If you can't write a proof about it, why should you believe it?" said Karen Giangreco, CC '07 and co-president of Columbia Catholic Undergraduates.

On the relationship between spiritual and scientific thought, the physics major added, "I never saw them as mutually exclusive."