Janel Wietharn considered herself a “cradle Catholic” while growing up in St. Marys.

The sophomore was raised in a strict Catholic family. She was baptized as an infant and regularly attended religious education classes. It was a solid birthright her family placed on her and there were to be no discussions about it.

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Students and Religion

At the college level, some students find growth in challenging spiritual beliefs.

However, beginning her senior year of high school and continuing into her freshman year at the University of Kansas, she had a crisis of faith.

“I have been so forced into it and seeing that other people just had so many different options,” Wietharn said. “Why was there all these options and I’ve just been told there’s this one?”

Thad Holcombe, Campus Minister for the Ecumenical Christian Ministries, said he oftentimes saw this trend with KU students. He said he defined faith as making sense out of the world. When a student has a crisis of faith, he or she, is just trying to make sense out of their world. A crisis of faith is when the sense of the world has been challenged, and a student is seeking a way to again find balance.

“In traditional-aged freshman students that come in, there is an unsettling, a crisis, or whatever,” Holcombe said. “As a matter of fact, I am a little concerned if there isn’t some.”

Most students come from a conventional upbringing where their peers influence nearly every decision, Holcombe said. But when they come to a university, things change.

“When they get into the university culture, the university culture says you know you need to really critique the world around you and your culture because we’re going to ask you questions in sociology and psychology and history and even in engineering,” Holcombe said. “You’re going to look at the world a different way.”

From the controlled environment of their family home to the bigger stage at a university, students find their faith to be tested or reinforced by the challenges of a education. Their faith may wane at times but some find that these challenges eventually make their faith stronger through understanding and acceptance.

A liberal education

Richard Botkin, senior lecturer of Humanities and Western Civilization, teaches classes that introduce students to religions and outlooks different than their own. In his Western Civilization class, a few of the readings Botkin assigns are selected readings from the Bible, the Torah and the Koran.

“I warn my students, usually the first day, that this is not Sunday school, that there’s nothing wrong with Sunday school,” Botkin said. “This is a secular University and I am given the charge of teaching the material in Western Civilization whether it’s considered sacred or not.”

Botkin uses these readings to portray a cultural viewpoint of the past but he encourages critical thinking.

“We’re going to look at this material with a critical eye, putting it in its historic context and with a skeptical eye at times,” Botkin said.

Botkin emphasizes critical thinking because, as he explains, a student’s ability to learn can be seen as a gift from God. Botkin said it would be a waste of God’s gift if a student didn’t use his or her brain.

The responses Botkin receives, either in e-mails or face-to-face conversations, were always either from students who were angry or just wanting to discuss the topic further.

Botkin said he thought passion was a good trait to see in a student and he encouraged any student to discuss the religion, its history and its messages. The response Botkin doesn’t like to see is indifference.

“In general, most of them really don’t care one way or the other. That to me is the worst possible situation,” he said. “Passion, one way or the other, is good.”

Paul Mirecki, associate professor of religious studies, has the opportunity to see students willingly question religion.

“We don’t ask the question ‘What does God want me to do,’ but rather ‘Why do humans behave this way?’” Mirecki said. “It’s more of an anthropological than a theological question. So we’re not looking for the answer that a religion might provide. We’re looking more toward why humans construct reality in this way. In a

Muslim way, in a Catholic way, a Southern Baptist way, in a pagan way, whatever the religion might be.”

Mirecki said most students in religious studies have a personal interest to study religion academically.

“My experience is that the student’s reactions are ‘Oh this makes sense,’” Mirecki said. “That religion itself can be analyzed like any other phenomenon.”

There are 41 religious student organizations registered on campus this school year. Most of the organizations are based in Christianity with a few Muslim and Jewish groups. One organization that stands out is KU Cauldron, the student pagan group.

KU Cauldron is a student organization with 11 members that practices pagan religions, such as Wicca and Neo-Druidism.

A pagan religion is loosely defined as believing in polytheism, a belief in more than one god, or not pertaining to the beliefs in Christianity, Judaism or Islam.

One group doesn’t appear in the listing of religious student organizations because it doesn’t advocate belief in religion or God.

According to the University’s Web site, the Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, or SOMA, is a student organization with 55 members that advocates reason above faith as well as the complete separation of church and state.

Janel’s journey

When Janel Wietharn had her crisis of faith, she said she explored a few options but nothing too polarizing to Christianity. She said she looked into Lutheran and Presbyterian churches but noticing the differences from her childhood church, she did not feel comfortable. She then began to reevaluate her faith and to better understand it.

It was a journey Janel’s mother, Mary Wietharn, couldn’t completely understand. She said she couldn’t understand why Janel would abandon the religious support she and her father built for her.

“I felt with what we brought her up with, how can this come about?” Mary said. “We done everything we needed to get her strong in her religious life.”

Mary said she started to question what emotional inflictions could cause Janel’s doubt.

“Is it the world that’s doing this to you? Is it just being out on your own?” Mary said. “It was just, I guess, a little disheartening knowing that I felt she was where she needed to be when she left and then all of the sudden, she wandered.”

Janel’s journey of re-discovering her faith was coming full circle when she and her mother began to seriously discuss why her faith was important not only to the family, but to Janel herself.

“I sat down and talked to her about what I was thinking, what I was feeling and she just told me you know that this is why we raised you Catholic, this is why we believe,” Janel said. “It was finally nice to hear that because you grow up with it and you never discuss it.”

Janel said she was thankful of the re-discovery of her faith because it brought her closer to her mother. She said she was also thankful of her journey because it rounded her out as a person.

“I wanted to kind of explore those options and take a step back,” Janel said. “But just realizing that there was nothing wrong with knowing that you were raised with one and that there can be others and that mine is not necessarily wrong compared to theirs or that theirs isn’t wrong either.”

Mary said the aspects of living a Catholic life such as attending mass and being kind to one another, was important to her family values and it’s those values she wanted to embed into Janel.

“These things I think show through in our Catholic faith and maybe we don’t know all the answers but we stand strong and are good to one another,” Mary said.

Janel is now a devout Catholic who attends St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, 1631 Crescent Rd.

Minister Holcombe said religion should not simply provide answers just to relieve anxiety. He said he has seen churches and religions manipulate by providing answers. But he said other churches and religions just take someone in to listen to their troubles and supports them.

“It’s more about the questions,” Holcombe said. “Finding places where they could raise those big questions and talk about and maybe get some tentative answers. Questions about, am I loved by something? What am I going to do in the future in terms of a partner? What is my sexuality? What do I want to put at stake in my life? What are my priorities?”

Holcombe said it’s the big questions that are in their hearts and that it’s not wrong asking them.

“If they come out of the Christian tradition, the Bible in itself is not a reservoir of answers entirely,” Holcombe said. “It’s also a reservoir of questions.”

— Edited by Abby Olcese