Most and Least Prayerful Colleges

Princeton Review, examining America’s colleges for 2007, has come up with a list of schools at which students are most and least likely to be caught engaging in prayer.

The top 20 top schools where the Students Pray on a Regular Basis are:
1. Brigham Young University (ah, those Mormons)
2. Wheaton College
3. Pepperdine University
4. University of Notre Dame
5. University of Dallas
6. The Catholic University of America
7. Hillsdale College
8. College of the Ozarks
9. University of Utah
10. Texas A&M University-College Station
11. Baylor University
12. William Jewell College
13. Calvin College
14. Furman University
15. Grove City College
16. Valparaiso University
17. United States Air Force Academy
18. Samford University
19. Auburn University
20. Brandeis University

Notice that three of the twenty (in bold) are in the Great and Sovereign State of Texas.

Moving to the Evil One's side of the stadium, those schools where Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis are:
1. Reed College
2. Bard College
3. Bennington College
4. Lewis & Clark College
5. Sarah Lawrence College
6. Eugene Lang College -The New School for Liberal Arts
7. Emerson College
8. Simon's Rock College of Bard
9. New College of Florida
10. Vassar College
11. Marlboro College
12. Hampshire College
13. Oberlin College
14. Macalester College
15. Wesleyan University
16. Beloit College
17. Skidmore College
18. Grinnell College
19. Pomona College
20. Pitzer College

None of which are in Texas. The red-state vs. blue-state distribution, though far from exclusive, is telling.

Interestingly, those ranking as “least prayerful” are likely to rank high for the presence of Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians and Students Most Nostalgic For Bill Clinton, while the more Godly locations rank high in Alternative Lifestyles Not an Alternative and Students Most Nostalgic For Reagan. Who would have thought?

I do not have complete confidence in the lists, since they probably vary on a day to day basis. The University of Texas (Austin), for example, undoubtedly ranks much higher in the “prayerful” category when I give my exams! On the other hand, were I teaching at, say, Reed, perhaps my lectures would be more likely to inspire the casting of voodoo spells than to encourage prayer.