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Conventional wisdom says that American universities that have lost their religious roots are places where neither spiritual longings nor moral boundaries can get a hearing. But Donna Freitas, a religion professor at Boston University, says that students themselves defy this wisdom by showing an insatiable interest in spirituality and ethics, particularly as they challenge the hypersexed party scene dominant on such campuses. Freitas spoke with CT assistant editor Katelyn Beaty about her latest book, Sex and the Soul, and what nonreligious schools (which Freitas calls spiritual schools) can gain from born-again virgins and evangelical authors such as Joshua Harris and Lauren Winner.

Sex and the Soul emerged from conversations in your class "Dating and Friendship" at St. Michael's College. What about those conversations made you want to investigate sex and spirituality on campuses?

I thought it was interesting that even though hookup culture was prominent on campus, I had so many students trying to get into the class, dying to have a conversation about spirituality and religion in relation to their dating lives. I saw in them a yearning to critique hookup culture with spirituality and religion, even if they were unsure of what that meant.

There was also a turning point during my class when my students came back from spring break. One student admitted out loud that she hated hookup culture—that she was participating in it but that it didn't make her happy. Suddenly the whole class shifted: they were all shocked to realize that they were all unhappy; they were acting a certain way because they felt like that's what they were supposed to do. I was interested in that dissonance between what they thought everyone wanted to do versus what they really wanted for themselves.

You often write positively about evangelical colleges. What did you find at them that was lacking elsewhere?

I saw at them a lively conversation (albeit not without some inadequacies) about sex, dating, kissing, and romance on campus. The conversation is intergenerational. Professors are involved. Student life is involved. Campus ministry is involved. It really affects the campus culture in positive ways, and it's a high-level conversation.

At the spiritual schools you may be able to take a class where you read Jane Austen or romantic poetry, but dating and relationships are often discussed in impersonal, arcane ways. There's often an attitude on campus that personal subjects like dating are not classroom worthy. Many faculty devalue the personal or don't provide it space. This leaves students on their own with regard to these conversations. They don't give students intellectual resources. They don't give them resources from the religious tradition the campus is affiliated with. And they don't have intergenerational conversations. There's much fear among college administrations and admissions to reckon with hookup culture beyond sexual health and disease prevention, because it's bad press.

Can what's happening on evangelical campuses translate to these campuses?

Looking at how the intergenerational conversation is being run by evangelical colleges is one important resource. But faculty and staff must also ask, What other kinds of activities are evangelical schools sponsoring? Also, one of the most important things that most spiritual colleges have, but don't often use to their advantage, is a mission statement: a statement of ideals, of who they think the community should be, how they hope to educate, and so on. Almost all colleges have mission statements, but they often don't use them in ways that meaningfully affect their communities.

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August 2008, Vol. 52, No. 8