Secular student groups rapidly expanding

The Chronicle of Higher Education [subscription required] has a piece on the rapid growth of a network of groups for secular students, all affiliated with the Secular Student Alliance. Some of these groups are found on religiously affiliated campuses.

The national group expects clubs to be naturalistic (holding that natu­ral things are the only ones humans can understand), economically neutral, civil-rights-minded, and nondiscriminatory. Beyond that, individual groups have a lot of freedom.

The article explores in some detail the club at Cal Lutheran, looking at the experiences of several of its members and the reactions of the larger Cal Lutheran community.

Secular Club seeks recognition from Concordia College in Minnesota

Students at Concordia College, in Moorhead, MN, are gathering signatures of support after the college declined to recognize the students’ request that the College recognize “Secular Students of Concordia” as an approved student organization. The college spokesman said that recognized student organizations cannot be in conflict with the mission of the college or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The students are revising their proposed constitution to eliminate some items that the College found objectionable and are hoping to convince the College to reconsider its decision.

[ Inforum: The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead via Inside Higher Ed]

Atheist student groups on campus

Eric Gorski of the Associated Press offers a sympathetic account of the Atheist and Agnostic Society at Iowa State University and places this student group within the context of changes in student attitudes toward religion at colleges and universities across the country.

This piece has enough detail to serve as the starting point for a faculty conversation about student attitudes toward religion or about local and national organizations devoted to supporting various points of view on religion.

[The Associated Press via The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Religion News]