{"id":17496,"date":"2026-03-10T14:24:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/prayer-on-the-syllabus-faith-and-education-can-work-together\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:03:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:03:49","slug":"prayer-on-the-syllabus-faith-and-education-can-work-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/inspiring-stories\/stories-of-faith-and-hope\/prayer-on-the-syllabus-faith-and-education-can-work-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer on the Syllabus: Faith and Education Can Work Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Worried about what happens to your kids\u2019 faith when away at college? My youngest is back in school and I\u2019m not fretting about his spiritual growth even if he is on an \u201canything goes\u201d sort of campus that forgot its church affiliation years ago.<\/p>\n

First of all, there\u2019s always exam time. Face the experience of a really grueling final in something like orgo chemistry\u2014for me it was economics\u2014and you\u2019ll discover prayer. Real fast. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not completely joking. I was a confirmed atheist when I arrived on campus at one of those big Eastern Ivy League institutions. I left an intellectually curious, passionate Christian. What happened? Was it the dorm-room Bible studies? Was it my evangelical, physics major roommate? Was it the non-mandatory chapel services? Nope.<\/p>\n

It was Dante and Shakespeare and Chaucer and maybe some Dostoyevsky. It was having professors\u2014subversive Christians perhaps\u2014who made me look at what great writers were saying. It was a lecture on the medieval cathedral. It was singing Bach\u2019s St. Matthew Passion. It was reading the poetry of the King James Bible\u2014I\u2019m still a sucker for it.<\/p>\n

I was interested to read an article by Paul Raushenbush<\/a>, the current dean of religious life at my alma mater, Princeton, where he talks about the influence of a pluralistic campus on a student\u2019s spiritual life. Sure, I remember going to my first Seder in college or hearing a friend, challenged on why he went to church, exclaim, \u201cActually I was born and raised a Hindu.\u201d All those late-night gab sessions about what people believed made a difference, but even without them, God still crept onto the syllabus.<\/p>\n

Not so long ago, my agnostic son called me with great enthusiasm. \u201cDad, we were reading the Gospel of Mark and I realized the whole point of faith is that you have to accept some things on faith.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that\u2019s right,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

And why was he reading Mark? For a history class.<\/p>\n

Let the kids learn. They\u2019ll find faith. It might be a prayer during a test (by some miracle I passed Econ 101). But in a good liberal arts education, faith drops in. God has a way of showing up in the curriculum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Worried about what happens to your kids\u2019 faith when away at college? My youngest is back in school and I\u2019m not fretting about his spiritual growth even if he is on an \u201canything goes\u201d sort of campus that forgot its church affiliation years ago. First of all, there\u2019s always exam time. Face the experience of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[185],"tags":[203,15],"ppma_author":[476],"class_list":["post-17496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories-of-faith-and-hope","tag-community","tag-faith"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPrayer on the Syllabus: Faith and Education Can Work Together - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prayer on the Syllabus: Faith and Education Can Work Together\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Worried about what happens to your kids\u2019 faith when away at college? 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He is the author of several books on prayer, including Finding God on the A Train, Ten Prayers You Can\u2019t Live Without, and Pray for Me. Rick has also published three novels and a history of the Rose Bowl, The Tournament of Roses. A Pasadena native, he now lives in New York City with his wife, writer Carol Wallace.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/gpbookstore.org\\\/articles\\\/author\\\/rhamlin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Prayer on the Syllabus: Faith and Education Can Work Together - Guideposts Articles","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Prayer on the Syllabus: Faith and Education Can Work Together","og_description":"Worried about what happens to your kids\u2019 faith when away at college? 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