Postcard: Winchester

In the basement of Shenandoah University’s Goodson Chapel one chilly November Sunday morning, John Copenhaver, a tall, white-haired professor of philosophy and religion, folded at the waist to demonstrate how to bow like a monk. The eight students clustered around him watched closely. One, taking stock of the incredulous faces around him, volunteered the group’s unofficial credo: When in doubt, “find an old person, and do what they do.”

Outside, a van stocked with apple-cider doughnuts was waiting to take them to the Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va. While all the students were Christian, it would be their first Mass at a Catholic monastery. The trip marked the end of a 10-week series of visits to different churches–from Baptist to Quaker–sponsored by Shenandoah’s spiritual-life team, which oversees religious activities on campus, to help students find a good religious match. “In terms of looking at churches,” says the group’s co-leader, the Rev. Don VanDyke Colby, “it’s speed-dating.”

VanDyke Colby, director of church relations at the historically Methodist university in Winchester, Va., started the religious road trips last fall with his wife Rhonda, a Methodist pastor and the dean of spiritual life, to help students deepen their faith by expanding it. Research suggests that like everything else in one’s college years, spirituality is a protean thing. Most high schoolers tend to follow their parents’ religion, often without actually knowing many of its basic tenets and stories (half of U.S. high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married). That may be why religion doesn’t stick once they go off to college: a UCLA study published in 2007 found that undergrads become less observant as they get older, with 44% of incoming freshmen attending religious services frequently, compared with just 25% of juniors. At the same time, however, religion becomes more important to them, with 50% of juniors saying a spiritual life is very important or essential, compared with 42% of freshmen.

The VanDyke Colbys aim to help students explore their faith in an informed way. Each Sunday the students get a brief presentation by a representative of that week’s church and sit in on a service, taking notes and joining in worship when they’re so inclined. Afterward, they pile into the van and head back to campus, where they discuss the experience in the dining hall over sausages and waffles. “We invite them into some critical thinking,” says Don, by examining the core tenets of each faith beyond the feel-good trappings that his wife shorthands as “Jesus as Mr. Rogers in sandals.” (It’s not just Christianity; the VanDyke Colbys are planning an interfaith road trip in the spring.)

After the abbey visit, students’ reactions ranged from personal to philosophical. Nikki Wyne, 20, a sophomore in blue eye shadow and Jesus-fish earrings, spoke wistfully about the monks’ vow of poverty and the simplicity of the service. “Living in the nonmaterialistic environment is, I think, making a huge statement,” she said. “I get jittery if I haven’t checked my e-mail in an hour.”

Sophomore Bryce Donald, 19, admitted that even though he’s a Methodist–and therefore forbidden by the Catholic Church to take Communion–he broke bread with the monks. He suggested that the church ought to find a way to include all denominations in the rite: “Like a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of thing, you know?”

The students riffed on transubstantiation, the historical roots of incense and why it’s not O.K. to pour Communion wine down the drain (“You’re not going to flush Jesus,” noted Rhonda VanDyke Colby); other weeks, the conversation runs the gamut from politics to premarital sex. “The first task is deconstructing what people think they know,” she says. “A rigorous faith is going to serve them well. A rigid one is going to break when the first strong wind comes along.” Several past participants have joined new churches; others say they’ve come to a deeper understanding of God. In some way, most are still searching, a process their leaders hope continues. As Rhonda puts it, “Maybe the greatest sin of my generation is certitude.”

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