Whilst significant research has been conducted on religious affiliation and on general levels of religiosity in the South African context, few studies specifically investigated the religious lives of South African university students in a comprehensive way. This is unfortunate as such research could significantly inform and support the effectiveness of youth and student ministries. As such, this article explored the religious lives of students at a university in the Gauteng province of South Africa, focusing specifically on students’ self-assessed religiosity, the maturity of their religious attitudes, their spiritual well-being, the religious practices in which they engage and the relationship between such practices and their spiritual well-being. Gender, racial and religious differences concerning these variables were also investigated. Data were collected from 356 undergraduate students by means of a structured survey consisting of the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire, the Religious Fundamentalism Scale and two other scales aimed at assessing religiosity and religious practices. Results indicated that 98.9% of participants were religious with the majority (86.9%) being Christian. Generally, students espoused highly fundamentalist religious attitudes but had high levels of spiritual well-being. Prayer and virtual or in-person attendance of religious gatherings such as church services were the most prevalent religious practices whereas fasting and meditation were practiced least. All practices were positively correlated with students’ spiritual well-being. Based on these findings, the article concludes with several specific, practical recommendations relevant to student ministries and those working with university students in religious contexts.
What do the religious lives of South African university students look like? Whilst several studies exist that report general levels of religiosity amongst the South African population (e.g. Diener, Tay & Myers
South Africa is generally regarded as a highly religious country in which between 85% (Diener
An important dimension of religiosity is the relative level of religious fundamentalism (versus religious maturity) that characterises a given group. This concept is distinct from religiosity itself as it is possible to be highly religious and highly fundamentalist, and it is also possible to be highly religious and highly religiously mature, and vice versa (Ellison … the belief that there is one set of religious teachings that clearly contains the fundamental, basic, intrinsic, inerrant truth about humanity and deity; that this essential truth is fundamentally opposed by forces of evil which must be vigorously fought; that this truth must be followed today according to the fundamental, unchangeable practices of the past; and that those who believe and follow these fundamental teachings have a special relationship with the deity. (p. 118)
The relative level of fundamentalism that characterises a given group of people is important to evaluate as it has been found to be predictive of a variety of (mostly) problematic outcomes such as aggressive, hostile and prejudicial attitudes towards minority groups. Such individuals were also found to be far more likely to support the hunting down, arresting, torture and even execution of radical, criminal and homosexual people (Altemeyer & Hunsberger
Relatively few studies have investigated fundamentalism amongst South African university students. In one such study, Pienaar, Beukes and Esterhuyse (
When investigating religiosity and spirituality, it is not only the nature and extent of individuals’ religiosity that matter but also their spiritual well-being. Gomez and Fisher (
Research on spiritual well-being in a South African context is extremely limited. Amongst the very few studies that have been conducted, scores on all domains of spiritual well-being (with the exception of environmental spiritual well-being) have been found to be relatively high amongst South African adolescents. The scores were also found to be positively associated with higher levels of life meaning amongst members of this group (Burnell, Beukes & Esterhuyse
An investigation of the religious lives of students, or any other group of people, requires
It would appear that relatively little research has been conducted on the religious lives of South African students (Moodley, Esterhuyse & Beukes
However, whilst religiosity is not infrequently measured as a demographic variable in social science studies, such assessments are usually restricted to an assessment of overall levels of religiosity and religious affiliation, and very limited information is typically gathered on the specific nature and extent of participants’ religious lives. This gap is unfortunate as such knowledge could be useful to those working within the contexts of religious institutions and student ministries in attaining a better understanding of the religious profile of university students. The findings could also be of use to universities in sensitising them to the religious beliefs, practices and needs of their students, which might lead to the establishment of structures, groups or activities that more effectively address the religious aspects of students’ lives. Such endeavours are likely to have significant positive consequences given the myriad of links between religiosity and various aspects of psycho-social well-being (Burnell
The study was based on a quantitative cross-sectional survey design, which, in turn, is derived from a positivist ontology (Sarantakos
In total, 356 students, comprised of two separate groups, took part in the study. The first group consisted of 110 undergraduate social-science students in their final year of study. To obtain more diversity in the sample, the second group of participants (
Characteristics of the participants (
Category | Variable | % | |
---|---|---|---|
Gender | Male | 192 | 25.9 |
Female | 263 | 74.1 | |
Race | Black | 328 | 92.4 |
White | 19 | 5.5 | |
Mixed-race | 4 | 1.1 | |
Asian | 20 | 0.6 | |
Cultural group | Sesotho | 145 | 41 |
isiZulu | 68 | 19.2 | |
Setswana | 43 | 12.1 | |
isiXhosa | 31 | 8.8 | |
Afrikaans | 15 | 4.2 | |
English | 15 | 4.2 | |
Northern Sotho | 20 | 5.6 | |
Other | 17 | 4.7 |
Data for the study were collected by means of a structured questionnaire that was administered in a pencil-and-paper format. The first section of the questionnaire was aimed at gathering biographical information about the participants in terms of their age, gender, racial and language group as well as religious affiliation. To measure students’ levels of overall religiosity, a single item was used which required students to self-assess how religious they considered themselves to be on a 5-point scale which ranged from 0 (not at all religious) to 4 (extremely religious). Previous research indicated that such a single-item measure is highly reliable in measuring religiosity amongst university students and that the results obtained from this item do not differ significantly from the findings obtained via multi-item measures of religiosity (Dollinger & Malmquist
To measure spiritual well-being, I used the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire (SWBQ), which was initially developed by Gomez and Fisher (
This study also aimed to investigate the degree of religious maturity and fundamentalism amongst the student group, and to do so, the revised 12-item Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RFS) (Altemeyer & Hunsberger
To investigate the type of religious practices in which students engage as well as the frequency with which they do so, a questionnaire was developed which listed a variety of religious practices and requested students to rate the frequency with which they engaged in each of these practices, if at all. These practices included praying, meditating, reading religious scriptures or books, talking about religion with others (excluding religious services), reflecting on life events in terms of religious beliefs, praying before meals, deliberately working on changing or aligning behaviour with religious values and beliefs, rendering service to others that is religiously inspired or motivated, using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, et cetera to practice or share their religiosity and providing religious teaching, guidance or counselling to others. These items were measured on a 6-point scale ranging from ‘never’ to ‘more than once a day’. However, given the nature of these activities, the remaining practices of attending religious services and gatherings, listening to religious services on the radio or television, taking part in religious or rituals and fasting were measured on a 6-point scale ranging from ‘never’ to ‘more than once a week’.
Data from the questionnaires were captured by the statistical consultation service department of the North-West University. The initial screening and analysis of the data were done in SPSS 21.0 and involved examining the data set for outliers and errors. Following this, the reliability and validity of the RFS and SWBQ was investigated by means of CFA in Mplus version 7.0 (Muthén & Muthén
Once the psychometric reliability of the above scales was established, descriptive statistics such as means and standard deviations were obtained in SPSS. Additionally, Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficients were computed between variables in order to identify their inter-relationships. To assess between-group differences concerning various aspects of religiosity, independent
The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Vaal Triangle Campus of the North-West University. All potential participants were informed of the nature and scope of the study as well as of what their involvement would entail in terms of possible risks (which were minimal) and the time required to complete the questionnaires. Participants were also assured that they would have the right to refuse participation or to withdraw their participation at any stage of the process without penalty and that their responses would be treated confidentially if they did choose to participate. Informed and signed consent was obtained from every participant, and questionnaires were administered in ways that did not interfere with students’ instruction time. To protect the confidentiality of participants’ responses, data was captured without any identifying particulars, and the data set was password protected.
The reliability and validity of the results were supported by the use of scales that have been proven to be psychometrically robust and by conducting both reliability and validity analyses (by means of Cronbach alpha coefficients and CFA) of the SWBQ and the RFS. Additionally, data collection was personally supervised by the researcher, and data capturing was conducted by an experienced statistician.
As an initial step in the data-analysis process, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the items in the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire was conducted in Mplus 7.1 to investigate whether the factor structure reported by Moodley
As with the SWBQ, the RFS was also subjected to CFA in Mplus in the current study. Results indicated that the reverse-phrased items loaded differently than the directly phrased ones. As such, it was decided to retain only the directly worded items, which measure fundamentalist attitudes in a more explicit manner. The re-specified model exhibited acceptable fit (χ² = 373.69,
Means, standard deviations, Cronbach alpha coefficients and correlations for religiosity, spiritual well-being and fundamentalism for the total research group.
Scale | α | Relig | SWB-Tra | SWB-Env | SWB-Com | SWB-Per | SWB-tot | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Religiosity | 353 | 2.63 | 0.83 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
SWB-Tra | 333 | 21.5 | 3.82 | 0.89 | 0.51 |
- | - | - | - | - |
SWB-Env | 345 | 17.06 | 4.01 | 0.87 | 0.23 |
0.25 |
- | - | - | - |
SWB-Com | 341 | 19.01 | 3.05 | 0.78 | 0.21 |
0.38 |
0.51 |
- | - | - |
SWB-Per | 343 | 20.5 | 3.23 | 0.8 | 0.27 |
0.47 |
0.44 |
0.65 |
- | - |
SWB-Tot | 307 | 19.53 | 2.69 | 0.91 | 0.40 |
0.69 |
0.73 |
0.80 |
0.82 |
- |
Fundamentalism | 315 | 1.71 | 1.48 | 0.75 | 0.49 |
0.65 |
0.04 | 0.21 |
0.23 |
0.37 |
SWB-Tra = transcendent spiritual well-being; SWB-Env = environmental spiritual well-being; SWB-Com = communal spiritual well-being; SWB-Per = personal spiritual well-being; SWB-Tot = total spiritual well-being.
Religiosity was measured on a 0 to 4-point scale.
Mean scores for all subscales of the SWBQ range from 5 to 25.
Fundamentalism was measured on a scale ranging from −4 to +4.
Mean scores and standard deviations for all scales according to gender, race and religion.
Scale | Gender | Race | Religion | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Male | Female | Black | White | Christian | African religious beliefs | |||||||
Religiosity | 2.52 | 0.93 | 2.67 | 0.79 | 2.64 | 0.83 | 2.47 | 0.91 | 2.7 | 0.79 | 2.21 | 0.71 |
SWB-Tra | 20.83 | 4.19 | 21.75 | 3.67 | 21.61 | 3.68 | 19 | 5.58 | 21.96 | 3.23 | 18.58 | 4.62 |
SWB-Env | 18.01 | 4.11 | 16.71 | 3.94 | 17.04 | 4.02 | 18.39 | 4.05 | 17.07 | 4 | 16.39 | 3.15 |
SWB-Com | 18.82 | 3.25 | 19.08 | 2.98 | 19.06 | 3.09 | 18 | 2.29 | 19.07 | 2.98 | 18.82 | 3.15 |
SWB-Per | 20.65 | 3.07 | 20.43 | 3.3 | 20.54 | 3.27 | 19.53 | 2.89 | 20.63 | 3.15 | 20.17 | 3.7 |
SWB-Tot | 19.54 | 2.76 | 19.52 | 2.67 | 19.57 | 2.72 | 18.77 | 2.42 | 19.66 | 2.61 | 18.92 | 2.49 |
Fundamentalism | 1.25 | 1.68 | 1.88 | 1.38 | 1.78 | 1.4 | 0.5 | 2.33 | 1.92 | 1.28 | 0.82 | 1.75 |
SWB-Tra = transcendent spiritual well-being; SWB-Env = environmental spiritual well-being; SWB-Com = communal spiritual well-being; SWB-Per = personal spiritual well-being; SWB-Tot = total spiritual well-being.
Religiosity was measured on a 0 to 4-point scale.
Mean scores for all subscales of the SWBQ range from 5 to 25.
Fundamentalism was measured on a scale ranging from −4 to +4.
As revealed in
The first part of the questionnaire assessed students’ religious affiliation as well as their self-assessed level of religiosity. Concerning the former, results revealed that, amongst the 98.9% of participants who considered themselves to be religious (or spiritual) to one degree or another, the vast majority of participants (86.9%) were Christian whereas 5.4% of participants belonged to traditional African religions, 3.4% considered themselves spiritual but not religious, 1.4% were Muslim, 0.3% Buddhist, and 2.6% belonged to ‘other’ religious groupings. These findings closely echo those reported in the 2013 General Household Survey where 85.6% of the South African population were found to be Christian, 2% Muslim, 5.6% atheists, and 5% belonged to traditional African religions (Statistics South Africa
Overall, the participants considered themselves to be quite religious. Expressed in terms of frequencies, 1.1% of participants considered themselves to be non-religious, 5.7% viewed themselves as mildly religious, 37.5% as moderately religious, 43.6% as very religious, and 13.6% of the participants regarded themselves as being extremely religious. As such, 98.9% of students in the sample were religious to one degree or another. Whereas no statistically significant differences in religiosity were found between either male and female or white and black participants, an independent
The Revised Fundamentalism Scale was used to assess the religious maturity of the participants. As shown in
As further part of the study, students’ levels of spiritual well-being were measured with the SWBQ. This scale measures four dimensions of spiritual well-being, which include transcendent, environmental, communal and personal spiritual well-being. Results (
A one-way, between-subjects, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted in order to assess the relationship between gender (as between-subjects factor) and the four dimensions of spiritual well-being (which constituted the dependent variables). Box’s test was non-significant, confirming that data did not violate the assumptions of homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices. Levene’s p was larger than 0.05 for both genders, indicating that there is equality of error variance between the two groups. Finally, moderate correlations exist between the dependent variables, all indicating that the results of a MANOVA test are likely to be reliable (Brace
Pearson’s product-moment correlations were used to examine the interrelationships between students’ levels of religiosity, fundamentalism and spiritual well-being. As is revealed in
In order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the religious lives of students, all participants in the study were also asked about the frequency with which they engaged in specific religious practices. The results of this inquiry are presented in
Descriptive statistics in relation to frequency with which students engaged in specific religious practices, and correlations with overall spiritual well-being.
Religious practice | Correlation with SWB | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Praying | 354 | 4.93 | 1.25 | 0.34 |
Attending religious services | 352 | 4.77 | 1.46 | 0.26 |
Saying grace before meals | 352 | 4.61 | 1.65 | 0.32 |
Listening to religious services on TV or radio | 354 | 4.56 | 1.74 | 0.38 |
Changing personal behaviour to align it with religious or spiritual values and beliefs | 350 | 4.32 | 1.47 | 0.42 |
Actively reflecting on life events in terms of religious beliefs | 351 | 4.19 | 1.46 | 0.37 |
Talking about religion or religious beliefs to others | 355 | 4.11 | 1.4 | 0.38 |
Service to others | 351 | 4.02 | 1.51 | 0.43 |
Taking part in religious rituals | 349 | 3.92 | 1.81 | 0.38 |
Reading religious or spiritual material | 350 | 3.73 | 1.43 | 0.33 |
Using social media to practice or share religion | 350 | 3.59 | 1.77 | 0.32 |
Providing religious or spiritual teaching, guidance or counselling to others | 316 | 3.02 | 1.66 | 0.37 |
Meditation | 348 | 2.74 | 1.75 | 0.26 |
Fasting | 355 | 2.22 | 1.63 | 0.22 |
Religious practices were measured on a 1 to 6-point scale with higher scores indicating higher frequencies of practice.
As is clear from
To investigate the relationship between students’ overall spiritual well-being and the religious practices in which they engage, Pearson’s product moment correlations were computed between these variables (
The aim of this study was to investigate the religious lives of students by examining their religious affiliation, level of religiosity, spiritual well-being, the maturity of religious attitudes as well as the nature of their religious practices in which they engage and the relationships between such practices and students’ spiritual well-being. Additionally, gender, religious and racial differences in these dimensions were also investigated. Taken together, the findings paint a picture of the student group in which 98.9% consider themselves to be religious to one degree or another, with most being moderately to very religious. The overwhelming majority of participants were Christian. However, the findings also show that a small but significant number of students actively align themselves with traditional African religious belief systems. As such, these indigenous belief systems still appear to be relevant to a small but significant subgroup of the student population. Several studies confirm that traditional religious belief systems continue to exist and have relevance amongst African communities (e.g. Peltzer
Furthermore, students’ attitudes towards their religious beliefs was found to be highly fundamentalist and, as such, are characterised by fairly high levels of conservatism, dogmatism and inter-religious intolerance. Black and Christian students were found to be significantly more fundamentalist in their beliefs than white students and those espousing traditional African religious beliefs. The notion of fundamentalism in the context of African traditional religion has been investigated by Sakuba (
Overall, students were found to experience high levels of spiritual well-being, especially in terms of transcendental and personal spiritual well-being. Furthermore, all facets of spiritual well-being were positively correlated with religiosity, suggesting that, the more religious students are, the more likely they are to experience higher levels of spiritual well-being. Christian students, especially, were found to have levels of transcendent spiritual well-being that exceeded those of students allying themselves with traditional African belief systems. Environmental well-being received the lowest scores (with males obtaining higher scores on this scale than females), which implies a disconnection between (especially female) students’ sense of spirituality and their experience of, and connectedness to, nature. The reason for the lower environmental scores are not clear from the data though it might be speculated that factors such as poverty, lack of access to areas of natural beauty, and urbanised lifestyles could be contributing factors. However, these possibilities remain to be investigated in future studies. With scores on communal spiritual well-being also being somewhat lower than the personal and transcendent scales, significant scope exists for interventions aimed at enhancing these specific facets of students’ spiritual well-being. Youth and student ministries could play an important role in supporting such well-being by emphasising the communal and environmental aspects of students’ religiosity. This could for example be achieved by means of conducting student camps or retreats in nature settings and by promoting communal religious activities.
The most significant and frequent religious activities in which the students engaged revolve around prayer (both generally and before meals) and attending religious services, either in person or, to a slightly lesser degree, listening to a service via a media channel such as radio or television. A relatively large number of students also spent time actively seeking to align their behaviour with their religious beliefs and engaging in acts of religiously motivated service. Fasting and meditation were the practices in which students engaged least frequently, suggesting that such activities are not very important to the student group. In terms of gender differences, it was found that more female than male students listened to gospel music and said grace before meals whereas males were more likely to attend religious services than females. Compared to white students, black participants reported higher frequencies of using social media such as Facebook to share or practice their spirituality and were more prone to listen to religious services or programs on television or radio. Whilst the reasons for these differences were not assessed in the present study, it could be speculated that restrictive financial circumstances and travel costs might make it more challenging for some black students to attend church in person, making virtual participation in such activities via media channels such as television, radio and Facebook a more viable alternative.
Finally, the results revealed that all spiritual practices that were assessed were positively correlated with higher levels of overall spiritual well-being. This association was especially strong in the case of religious practices such as engaging in acts of service and working to align personal behaviour with religious values, but they were less strong in the case of fasting and meditation. The association between religiously motivated service and well-being has been noted repeatedly in previous studies (Pargament
The findings made in this study could be of practical use to those concerned with student well-being in general and, specifically, to those working with students in religious contexts as is the case with student and youth ministries. By understanding not just the extent but also the specific nature of the religious lives of students and the ways in which these aspects differ between gender, religious and racial groups, religiously based initiatives and interventions aimed at such a population are likely to address the religious and spiritual needs of students more effectively. Several specific guidelines can be extrapolated from the findings: The fact that virtually all students are religious and that all religious practices were found to be positively correlated with spiritual well-being, suggests that efforts aimed at supporting and enhancing the religious lives of students are warranted and highly relevant. Religion constitutes an important avenue through which the spiritual and general psychological well-being of university students can be enhanced (Burnell
The study has several limitations. Firstly, whilst the sample included both genders and at least eight different cultural groups, white, mixed-race and non-Christian participants were under-represented. Because of the relatively small number of participants in these categories, statistically significant between-group differences might have gone undetected. As such, future studies would be required to investigate whether these findings can be generalised to white and non-Christian student populations elsewhere. Furthermore, whilst no compelling theoretical or empirical evidence seem to exist that imply that the religious lives of the black and Christian students in the present study would differ greatly from those of students in other parts of the country, this would also need to be verified by future research. As the study was based on a cross-sectional design, no inferences about causality can be made. For example, while it seems plausible to suggest that higher levels of religiosity cause elevated spiritual well-being, it is possible that the inverse could be true or that the relationship is mediated by a third variable such as meaning in life. Great scope therefore exists for investigating the causal relationships between specific religious practices and students’ spiritual well-being by means of experimental research designs. Finally, this article adopted a predominantly psychological and sociological perspective to the study of the religious lives of students. Future studies could therefore meaningfully supplement the findings reported here by approaching the subject from an overtly theological perspective.
Whilst generalisation from the findings need to be treated with caution, the results of this study, in which a cross-sectional survey design was used to explore the religious lives of South African university students, suggest that the majority of South African university students are religious with most being moderately to very much so. Although most are Christians, it was found that traditional African religious beliefs were espoused by a significant minority of students. Participants’ attitudes towards their religious beliefs were characterised by high levels of fundamentalism, but these were associated with enhanced rather than reduced levels of spiritual well-being. Overall, students had high levels of overall spiritual well-being but moderate levels of environmental spiritual well-being. Students engaged in a variety of religious practices of which the most frequent were prayer and attendance of religious services, either in person or via some form of media. Fasting and meditation were the least common religious practices. It is hoped that these findings will be of practical use to those such as student ministries who are working with student populations in religious contexts and within universities to better understand and more effectively address the spiritual needs of this group, thereby supporting the spiritual well-being of South African university students.
All aspects of this study (with the exception of data capturing, which was conducted by the statistical department of the North-West University) were conducted by the author.
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.