It is a quiet Sunday morning at Iowa State. The alarm clock wakes Janet Buckley at 8:30 a.m., and she rolls out of bed.

Buckley, sophomore in art and design, heads down to breakfast, where she meets some friends and makes plans to walk with them to church later that morning.

Just before 11 a.m., Buckley and her friends proceed to Memorial Lutheran Church, 2228 W. Lincoln Way, where they all squeeze into the pew to listen to the pastor’s sermon.

As Buckley is leaving the church around noon, her Sunday well underway, Dan Haskins, sophomore in civil engineering, is just waking up.

Haskins doesn’t set his alarm on Sundays; he usually allows the sunlight to wake him.

Once he has wiped the sleep from his eyes, Haskins pulls on some clothes and strolls down to lunch in time to grab a bite to eat, then returns to his room and begins his afternoon of homework.

An obvious contrast exists in the Sunday morning routines of these two students, and this difference is typical among most ISU students.

Roughly 44 percent of Iowa Staters identify themselves with one of the various Christian denominations, according to the registrar’s office. Thousands of these students choose to attend Sunday worship services on a regular basis when they get to ISU, while many others elect not to do so.

Why Go to Church?

Mark Heilman, associate pastor at Memorial Lutheran Church in Ames, said the No. 1 factor in a student’s decision to attend religious services is his or her upbringing.

“For a lot of students, going to church is a matter of what they were brought up with — it’s a habit,” Heilman said.

Brett Strait, director of Reformed Campus Ministries at ISU, agreed that religious background was an important contributor to the decision.

“If, before college, you have had a religious life, you are more apt to look for that when you come to ISU,” Strait said.

Graduate student Alayna Williamson is an example of this. “My first Sunday at ISU, I knew I wanted to go to church,” she said.

Williamson was brought up in the Covenant denomination in her hometown of St. Louis. “Growing up, my family just always went to church together, and it wasn’t something I ever really questioned,” she said.

When she got to ISU, Williamson said, she sought out a church immediately.

“I knew that my faith was the basis of my life,” she said, “and an important part of that was to find fellowship through a church.”

While some students who have been raised in the church look to continue their involvement when they reach college, others may wait a while before attending worship at ISU.

Despite her upbringing in the church, Buckley said, she was “a little off-track in high school.”

Peer Pressure

The lack of acceptance she felt from other church-going kids was one reason Buckley didn’t like church, but it wasn’t the only reason.

“Church was cramping my style,” she said. “If I went to church, I felt guilty about drinking and doing drugs. I wanted to avoid that at all costs.”

Buckley does not think she was religious when she was younger, despite her semi-regular church attendance. “Nothing meant anything to me,” she said.

Buckley partied her way into her first semester at ISU, but that scene quickly grew tiresome for her.

“Even before I started wanting to go to church, I just kind of wanted to start over,” she said.

Buckley met a girl on her dormitory floor at Towers who invited her to attend Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA. This had an impact on her view of religious people.

“I’d never met anyone my age so committed to church,” she said. “I didn’t think people did it because they loved God. I thought church was for old people.”

Strait affirmed that a student’s social group is a big factor in the decision whether to find a church.

“Depending on who lives there, freshmen generally will take on what’s happening on [the house they live on],” Strait said.

In attending FCA, Buckley said she “saw all these people there voluntarily … They just looked like they had something I didn’t. I wanted to have that same joy,” she said.

Buckley said she began attending Memorial Lutheran when she “realized that fellowship wasn’t enough.”

“As much as I hated church when I was young,” she said, “it did give me a strong foundation.”

Haskins also said his religious life has been affected greatly by his friends.

Haskins was confirmed in a Lutheran church, but went to an Evangelical Free youth group in the Chicago suburbs where he grew up.

He said he enjoyed attending the group, but not for spiritual reasons.

“I had a great time there, but it was mostly because my friends were in it,” Haskins said. “It wasn’t really a ‘church’ thing.”

When he reached ISU, Haskins said he considered starting to go to church, but it never happened.

At home, Haskins said church had always been about social interaction, and when he got to school, that was all he was really looking for.

“I was more in it to have a good time … and I was having a good time on Saturday nights,” Haskins said. “I was getting everything I really wanted.”

Who Really Cares?

Haskins’ view on church is not uncommon among college students, according to Heilman.

“The main reason [for not attending church] is because the average college student doesn’t see church as relevant to his or her life,” Heilman said.

“For very few of them is it a conscious choice [or] a negative thing,” he said. “They don’t necessarily think, ‘I’m not going to go to church,’ they just think, ‘Why?'”

The decision not to seek a church is not always a passive one, however. Many students have clear-cut reasons why church is not on their priority lists.

One of the biggest reasons someone might choose not to go to church, according to Heilman, is that their religious experiences in the past have failed to meet their spiritual needs or expectations.

Carrie Seim went to church regularly with her family while growing up in a suburb of Omaha, but after the arrival of a new pastor, her family stopped going.

“I think my parents took us to church until we were old enough to decide for ourselves if it was something that would be a part of our lives,” said Seim, sophomore in journalism and mass communication.

At ISU, Seim has had time to make that decision for herself, and now that she is on her own, she does not belong to a church.

“I have visited and attended services at several [churches], but I have not felt my faith inspired by any,” she said.

“I realize that for many people, church is a place where they can find that faith and share it with others, but for me, I find the entire [structure] and rules which are inherently part of organized religion a contradiction to my faith,” Seim said.

My Parents Made Me Do It

Strait said another reason a student might not want to go to church is because they felt constrained by the faith in which they were raised.

“We’ve seen students with strong religious backgrounds, predominantly parental, who choose a life of independence and back away from the parental guidelines and traditions to do their own thing,” he said.

Andy Rozendaal, senior in agricultural studies, grew up in a strong Christian family near Monroe.

“I remember praying before every meal and doing devotions together,” Rozendaal said.

When Rozendaal got to ISU, he spent his first semester going home on weekends, working on the farm and attending his home church.

“I did not find a church in Ames, because I did not feel the need to look,” Rozendaal said. “I was too independent and a long distance away from my parents to keep following the tradition of going to church.”

Strait said, however, that this rebellion doesn’t always last.

“Often we see that some of the students who [rebel], by junior year start getting involved [in a church] because they realize that what they’re into is meaningless compared to what their parents taught them,” he said.

Rozendaal’s experience confirms this pattern.

“I found that early on in my junior year, I had hit rock bottom,” he said. “I found myself partying every weekend and staying up late on Saturday nights, and still getting up once in a while to go to church.”

Over Spring Break that year, Rozendaal went on an FCA mission trip, where he rediscovered his faith.

Heilman said students must decide for themselves whether to find a church when they come to ISU, and choosing indifference is a decision in itself.

“To go to church, you have to make a positive, active choice,” he said.

And it is clear that once students make that decision — whether to stay out late Saturday night and sleep in Sunday or to set the alarm, rise early and head to church — their Sunday mornings will never be the same.