Keeping the Faith: Rethinking religion at university

Emma arrived at the University of Edinburgh in 2018, embarking on a life away from her family and home in the UAE for the first time. “I wanted to do something familiar, so I went to church.” New people, a new city, even a new country – arriving at university is a moment of great personal upheaval. Searching for normality in the chaos is natural – and for Emma, this meant religion. 

Then Emma decided to take a step back. “As the weeks passed, I was realising that I would really like to do this on my own terms. There was a lot of me that was changing, a lot of my beliefs and who I am that I was trying to have a fresh start on.” It was during this religious quandary that Emma found an altogether different kind of Christian space – one that opened her eyes to what a faith-led community could be.

Emma’s re-evaluation of her relationship with Christianity has become a documented trend amongst her generation. 62% of the UK’s Gen Z cohort identify as ‘spiritual’ – a significant increase compared with 41% of their Gen X parents. Sales of the Bible have increased 134% since 2019, with youth editions of The Good Book leading the charge. Contentious reports of a new wave of young Christians have made headlines, christened the ‘Silent Revival’. So what does this reappraisal of Christianity mean for students entering university? And what role might spirituality have in student life today? 

Emma’s period of religious self-reflection led her to Roots, a Christian community space designated for Edinburgh’s substantial student population. Since graduating, she has joined the charity as a team member. She describes the site, a stone's throw from the University of Edinburgh’s Old College, as a third space – separated from student accommodation, formal lectures and weekend jobs. “It's always a place that will be warm where you can heat up food, play board games, sit quietly or join a conversation,” she says, “[we have] open hours for people to just be – and that ends up being where a lot of community building happens.” 

The space offers support for a tangible need: that of human connection. “Young people really want community but feel like they cannot get it for a myriad of reasons.” Emma cites teenage years impaired by the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing dependence on smart phones and the difficulties of striking up conversations with strangers as some of the factors leading to this isolation.

Despite Roots’ Christian foundations, many of the students who are welcomed through the door don't subscribe to the same school of religious thought. “I would say most of our students, probably 80%, are not Christian…. a lot of students actually come into Roots being very anti-religion.” The charity doesn’t serve to preach or proselytise, instead it provides a meeting place for differing beliefs, values and backgrounds. “It's less ‘let's learn about Christianity’ and more ‘let's have a chance to talk about these big questions that we have.’”

This broad approach to the function of religious spaces is echoed by the Reverend Scott Blythe, Chaplain at the University of Glasgow. “The university community is so plural,” he says about the some 35,000 people who make up the student population, “we need to make people realise that the chaplaincy is for everyone.” Alongside the five members of staff in the chaplaincy, a team of honorary chaplains represent this plurality – from Roman Catholicism and Hinduism, to Sikhism and Humanism. He describes their work as an inter-faith unit as “a listening process, an engaging process.” 

Alongside covering the expansive needs of those searching for spiritual guidance, the chaplaincy caters to the specific experiences of the student body. Several times each semester, the chaplaincy holds Death Cafe, described by Blythe as “a space [to] speak about loss and bereavement from different perspectives.” For some young people  encountering loss for the first time, distance away from support networks can present further difficulties. The inevitable questions that arise with grief can be asked in this space, where listening and discussion is untethered from the rest of university life. 

This inclusive and adaptive approach to Christianity is a necessary step for the church – particularly in the context of Scotland’s socially-liberal student body. “The church has been a tool of empire – it's a tool of politics and power,” Emma says about the legacy of imperialism, homophobia and sexism across Christian denominations, “the exclusion of people from church has been a thing forever and that's not just within Christianity.” 

Having grappled with these contradictions – as well as her own sexuality, having come out as queer during her degree – she reflects on her expectations: “I would love for a church to do what a church is supposed to do, which is to abide by the values that they profess and I think through exclusion, they don't.”

But what does an inclusive church look like? In 2010, Augustine United Church in Edinburgh went through the process of discernment. The entirety of the congregation were consulted on whether to set up an overtly LGBTQ+ affirming ministry. Augustine’s minister, The Reverend Fiona Bennett, describes the consensus: “The congregation were very clear, we have always been open and a welcoming place – why would that change?”

As Bennett states, “Inclusion is not a destination.” Augustine has evolved to support the needs of their congregation, whether they are disabled, neurodiverse or identify as transgender. “When you start going down the road of inclusion, you realise it changes your perception,” says Bennett, “it's not just that you put in a ramp so everybody can get in the building. It means everybody changes how they think about disabled people. It's a lot more radical.” Whether this comes in the form of providing fidget toys for services, or by affirming those who have experienced ostracism from other religious spaces, acts of care are fundamental to the church’s worship.  

For the next generation of young people contending with their own spirituality, the church will have to adapt once again. “There is an underlying global anxiety which [Gen Z] carry,” Bennett says in reference to the political instability, global conflicts and climate crisis which have each shaped the outlook of young people, “they're questioning those fundamentals and they don't have the same securities as people of my generation.” 

With this ingrained insecurity comes the need for stability, yet Bennett doesn’t see religion as a cure-all: “churches are not places that provide a service you consume. They're a community of transformation that wrestles together.” In the age of the wellness revolution, where longevity and peace are regarded as things to be bought or consumed, Bennett regards the purpose of the church as an unending tussle amongst a community, rather than a transaction. “That's a healthy church. It's always growing, it's always wrestling.” 

In conjunction with the surge of wellness content comes the documented rise of conservativism, particularly amongst young men. “I think these are really challenging times for being male in our society,” says Bennett, “it leaves men, particularly young men, with a certain sense to flee into the past.” These extreme ideas of tradition, be it misogynistic attitudes towards women or harmful perceptions of masculinity, have surfaced on social media and online forums – dubbed the manosphere. “What the manosphere is doing is conning people,” Bennet says. “All human beings need to work out our way forward… we need to take that responsibility rather than running away to fearful, rigid ideas.”

While Gen Z grapples with what spirituality means for them, Christian groups grapple with what they offer to a largely secular Scotland. These spaces may not provide explicit answers to the questions of our age – yet what they can offer is a space to question personal beliefs, an hour to speak about grief, or simply, someone else to connect with.

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Roots can be visited 12–5 pm, Mon–Fri, on South College Street, Edinburgh
Death Cafe next meets of Thu 8 Oct, Memorial Chapel, Glasgow