The pamphleteers are hard to miss. They stand in front of the big doors of Lobby 7, MIT’s main entrance, waving, preaching, and flagging down passersby with all the urgency appropriate to their task: saving young souls. Most students stream past, smiling politely, avoiding eye contact, and chuckling once they’re out of earshot. Some, feeling momentarily clever, stop to argue, hoping to outfox the proselytizer with a paradox about omnipotence and evil. Only occasionally does someone stop and listen. Fewer still will show up to a church, temple, or mosque.
When I arrived at MIT, I was among the indifferent passersby. After three years here, I’m not so sure.
The stereotype of the elite campus, on which faith survives mostly as an object of satire or neglect, is instantly recognizable. Thirty-five percent of American college students report having never attended religious services; just 17 percent attend “about weekly” or more. The pattern is especially pronounced at MIT, where a majority of students identify as atheist or agnostic. Those who speak openly about their religion or spirituality are even fewer. In a political science seminar I took last year, the professor asked us to list our most dearly held identities, ordered by importance, and then share them aloud. Not one person in a class of fifty listed a religious or spiritual affiliation.
At first glance, it seems that secularism has hardened here into scientism, the belief that science tells us everything knowable, and perhaps everything worth knowing, about the world. We are led to feel that we have two options—blind submission to faith or adherence to the scientific method—and that by virtue of our attending a serious technical school, we have chosen the latter. Religion belongs to a different sort of person—certainly not the sort who sits in this room. I am told that in the mid-to-late 2000s, to profess faith openly, or draw on it in class, was to invite cocked eyebrows and hallway snickers. Better to cite the theories of Marx than the Gospel of Mark. The Secular Society, a student organization active at the time, devoted itself to “help[ing] . . . members develop skills in counterapologetics and navigating life without religion.” The secularists winkingly invited you to “hang out with the best goddamned group on campus.”