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The cultural myth says that secular schools are the places where faith goes to die. Or, secular colleges are for adults who don't need religious beliefs to prop up their worldview. But what you found is that spirituality, even though it takes various forms and is often private, is thriving. Students are just not being given the tools to know what to do with it.

Absolutely. For example, take the sexuality and spirituality class I taught last fall at Boston University, where we studied books by Joshua Harris, Lauren Winner, and Rob Bell in addition to different sexual-ethics scholars. Almost all the students were as liberal as liberal can get. One of the big hits of the semester was Wendy Shalit's A Return to Modesty. The students were floored by her critique of hookup culture, and they spent so much time talking about modesty as a virtue. It allowed them to say, "Wow, we're witness to all this vulgarity on campus. We pretend that we're okay with it, but we're not." I actually had students who for their final project proposed a modesty club. I'm sitting here thinking, This is Boston University. It made me think Shalit published her book 10 years too early, because the Left reviled her when she published it [in 1999]. For my class, she could do no wrong. I think that's really telling.

At different points I have received flak from scholars for the in-class resources I use. You're not supposed to teach Harris's I Kissed Dating Goodbye or Winner's Real Sex because they're not "ivory tower material"—except that it's in these books where robust conversations are happening about the things students care about. I'm a feminist and a liberal, but this is something beyond ideology. It's not a Left or Right issue. It's about responding to young people who are struggling. It's a mistake of many people to tense up about ideology in the middle of this kind of conversation. Part of my job is to figure out what professors do about the issues students are struggling with. They want modesty. And we can give them rich resources on modesty. So why don't we then?

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Lisa McMinn reviewed Sex and the Soul for Christianity Today.

Sex and the Soul is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

More articles on sexuality and gender are on our website.

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August 2008, Vol. 52, No. 8