Church Attendance and Knowledge of Christianity

            The Louisiana College has administered an exam to incoming freshmen to define how well they understand the primary principles of Christianity.  The Belief Assessment of Spiritual Essentials (BASE) was designed to test the freshmen’s knowledge of the basic primary principles of Christianity, such has humanity’s lost condition, Jesus’ identity as God, the necessity of accepting Christ as the basis for salvation, and the resurrection of Jesus.  The study showed the majority of the students believed a person who was good had no need for a Savior and they could not identify a simple definition of being born again.  Other important questions answered by the survey demonstrated the students’ ideas that if a person believes and loves a god it will be sufficient for salvation, people go to heaven because of a perception of morality, and a lack of knowledge that the claim of Christianity is that Jesus literally rose from the dead.  Nearly one-third of the students surveyed did not know that the Bible consistently affirms that salvation can only occur by expressing a belief and faith in Jesus as the Deity of Christianity (Quarles, 2011).

            An appropriate null hypothesis for the study would be, the frequency of church attendance has no effect on the level of understanding of basic Christian doctrine by college freshmen.  A research hypothesis could be stated as, college freshmen who attend church services regularly have a greater understanding of basic Christian doctrines than those who do not attend church regularly.

            I would like to think that an increase in church attendance would increase a person’s basic knowledge of Christian doctrine.  The level of that person’s motivation, however, I believe would be the deciding factor on how well the doctrine is actually known.  In college classes, students who attended church 1-2 per week and devoted time to learning increased their academic achievements (Mooney, 2010).  The same would apply to those attending church to increase their knowledge of basic Christian principles.  Going to church, in addition to devoting time to learning more about Christian doctrine would increase the knowledge gained.  I predict the results of any study similar to the BASE survey to have similar results.

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References

Mooney, M. (2010). Religion, college grades, and satisfaction among students at elite colleges and universities. Sociology of Religion, 71(2), 197-0_6.

Quarles, C. (2011, August 17). Southern Baptists must learn to ‘choose our battles wisely’ | The Baptist Message Online. Retrieved July 11, 2014, from http://www.baptistmessage.com/node/7527