QUESTION (PROPOSAL)
In order to determine the
effects of religious beliefs on
fraternity and sorority lifestyles, we looked for the answers to several
specific questions regarding the juxtaposition of religion and social
life. First of all, we wanted to know the percentages of each
fraternity/sorority that attend church on a regular basis. We
believe that church attendance is a fairly easy statistic to report, and
gives a fairly good indication of the importance of an individual's
faith. People who do not truly appreciate their religion will most
likely not give up time in their busy schedules for something they do not
believe in. We asked each person taking part in the survey to rate
the importance of religion in their daily lives on a scale of one to
five. Although each person may use different criteria to judge their
own religiosity, this gives an idea of how religious one indeed is.
Next, we asked participants their reasons for joining their particular
Greek organization. We expected to find that a majority of the
members of Christian organizations joined for religious reasons, as
opposed to social reasons. In order to determine what influenced the
daily lives of the members of these Greek organizations, we asked them to
rank how important their religious beliefs were in their daily
activities. Another
interesting fact we looked for was the involvement of each Greek student
in other activities. How many people in the Christian fraternities
or
sororities were involved in other Christian groups on campus? Were
they
more likely to surround themselves with only people of the same
faith? The last two questions on the survey asked about four
different
controversial activities: drinking alcohol, taking drugs, using profanity
and participating in premarital sex. First each person was asked
which
activities they participated in, and then they were asked which activities
they felt were morally wrong. From these questions, we expected to
find a
smaller percentage of the members of Christian fraternities or sororities
participating in each activity, and greater percentage claiming to find
each activity immoral. We also expected a higher correlation of
belief
and action in the Christian group. Although, we hypothesized that
more
people would find drugs and premarital sex immoral than profanity and
drinking. Some individuals were also asked, through an interview, about handling difficult
situations similar to those which Rosenblatt, Walsh and Jackson studied in
Grief and
Mourning. We expected most members of the Greek organizations to
turn to
each other for help, and the members of Christian organizations to console
each other through prayer. Lastly, in order to compare our results
to the
findings of Christian Smith in American Evangelicalism, we asked
each
person if they considered themselves to be an evangelical Christian.
We
thought it likely for a greater proportion of the Christian organizations
to both consider themselves to be evangelical, and to live as evangelical
Christians.
Because religious groups
will tend to attract strongly religious
people, we proposed that overall, the actions of the members of the
Christian sororities and fraternities will better reflect their religious
conviction. Within the Christian organizations, we expected to find a
higher percentage of church attending members. We also believed that
more
sorority/fraternity events would be centered around religious activity
such as prayer or studying the Bible. In general, decisions of the
group
would more often agree with convictions of faith, and the focus would
shift more toward spiritual growth. On the other hand, although a
few
individuals in social sororities and fraternities may be religious, the
group as a whole would not demonstrate as strong of a loyalty to a
particular faith, or any group of religions.
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( -- 5/01/00 -- Harrell)