My Journey through Apostasy and Back

RM 216

This study shares my personal experience as a college student being challenged mentally and emotionally concerning my Christian beliefs. I experienced a level of apostasy, which is the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief, during the beginning of my college life. Through this auto ethnography, accompanied by personal narratives, interactive interviews and other ethnographic data, I seek to answer the question of how intellectually undeveloped Christians lose their faith while pursuing higher education. There is a possibility that college students like myself are challenged in measurable degrees to lose faith in God. Recent research shows that this conventional wisdom concerning higher education posing a threat to religious faith appears to be more “myth” than measurable fact. I take the stance to show that college students undergoing apostasy is not a myth by sharing qualitative data from an ethnographic study of my personal experience along other accounts of students’ experiences that show change in college students’ spirituality.