America is a nation founded on the freedom of religion. One could just turn on the TV and flip through the channels for proof. A few minutes of channel surfing should suffice to find preachers and pundits vigorously engaged in promoting, decrying, invoking or provoking religion.

Having grown up in a climate that generally affirms religious belief, some freshmen find themselves completely unprepared for the college environment, where intellectual certainty about any given piece of information, no matter how ostensibly trivial, never arrives but through the merciless gauntlet of a thousand dispassionate skeptics.

“I was originally a strong Christian,” Brandon Frye, a junior majoring in technology education, said. “I was big in leading youth groups, and putting together youth rallies. Once I got to college, I realized how big the world started getting, and I started to question a lot of the things I was brought up believing.”

According to Frye, college exposed him to a diversity of opinions, faiths, perspectives and ideas that challenged many of his long-held assumptions about religion.

“Growing up, everybody pretty much thought the same things, and went to church, and nobody ever really questioned anything,” he said. “It was a totally different experience than college, where you’re out on your own and you get to make your own decisions.”

Frye’s spiritual inquiry led to a growing skepticism that finally culminated in a complete metaphysical reversal, and he now calls himself an atheist.

“My family kind of worries about it, but my parents kind of think it’s probably just a phase, so they’re pretty calm about it now. … My dad asks me to come to church with them, and I’m like, ‘No, I’m not quite ready for that just yet.'”

Rikito Ogawa, a sophomore majoring in international studies, tells a similar story concerning his own spiritual development. According to Ogawa, college life influenced his religious views “significantly.”

“My mother is from Japan, so I wasn’t raised as a Christian, but I went to church with friends,” Ogawa said. “In high school, I did a lot of church activities, and I volunteered at a church day care.”

After arriving at N.C. State as a freshman, Ogawa said that blatant hypocrisy among many self-professing Christians on campus affected his faith. Now, he said, that cynicism informs his view of all religions.

“Personally, I’d like to believe there’s a god, because without God, there would be no purpose, and it would just be a boring life. But you have the prophets – you have Muhammad, bodhisattvas, and then you have Jesus,” Ogawa said.

“I tend to believe that all of them were men, human. Good guys, don’t get me wrong – from the endeavors I’ve read about Jesus, it sounds like he was a great guy – but personally, I can’t conceive of him being God.”

A comprehensive study conducted by UCLA measured the spiritual pulse of American college students. The results of the study show that Frye and Ogawa are not alone, but instead reflect a growing reality on college campuses.

According to the study, 52 percent of students said they actively participated in religious activities the year before entering college. By the third year of college, the number was down to 29 percent.

And according to Dave Owen, pastor for Providence College Ministries, “very few of the students who fall away from the church ever return.”

“It’s like these kids are out in the middle of the ocean,” Owen said. “They’re just lost, and they don’t know where to turn. They’ve left that sanctuary environment at home and now they’re out there and exposed to all these new freedoms and temptations and ideas, and they never really owned their faith, and that makes them vulnerable.”

Owen said alcohol, drugs and sex end up filling the time void left by church activities.

“That’s where we try to step in with outreach to try and provide resources that can help them with their faith.”

Brandon Kelly, a junior majoring in meteorology and active member of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, said getting involved with a Christian group helped him weather the moral temptations of the college social scene.

“My freshman year was a little hard, finding friends who thought like I did, who had the same morals and values,” Kelly said. “But eventually I got involved with Intervarsity my freshman year and I’ve made great friends through the bible study there.”

When it comes to intellectual faith challenges, Kelly said Christians should never be afraid of testing what they believe.

“I think it’s good to question your own faith. My big thing coming to college was, I don’t want my faith to just be my parents’ faith growing up, I want it to be my own, and find things out for myself, and question what I’ve been taught. I think that, ultimately, it strengthens your faith.”