Rice's religious communities
He is the son of God. He died for your sins. He loves you.
Growing up as a child in an affluent Houston neighborhood, I cannot begin to count the number of times I heard any combination of those three phrases. Evangelists around the area would go from door to door in my neighborhood, trying to convert born sinners destined to spend eternity in the fiery flames of hell.
How is that possible? Why would he do that? He does?
Believing in things we cannot see is a hard thing. Questions abound and answers slither away as we try and try to grasp the covenant known as faith. For a while, I could not begin to imagine something as intangible as God, and I grew up resenting religion for a period of time.
However, Rice has caused me to view religion differently due to the presence of an extensive network of religiously affiliated clubs. These clubs do not go from college to college in hopes of conversion. Instead of creating a Bible-thumping culture across campus, religiously affiliated clubs provide a way for students to connect with others, all while sharing the common bond of faith and devotion.
My teacher in high school once said belief in the unseen was in the very nature of man. After all, we are curious creatures, always trying to find an explanation for what we cannot perceive. But I can now say with confidence that my teacher was wrong. We are not innately religious, but rather innately social, and all my experience with the unseen has led me to believe religion's value is not in the belief, but in the bond.
Rice's numerous religious organizations, such as the Muslim Student Association, Rice Hillel and Catholic Student Association, provide students with a way to network across campus. Before I came to Rice, people stressed to me that there were only two real clubs: believers and nonbelievers. It comes as a refreshing surprise that at Rice, religion is not constantly in your face telling you what to believe. The bond of religion encourages openness, whereas the belief of religion encourages separation. Rice has showed me the true power of religion by emphasizing the connections it creates, unifying through association rather than separation thanks to the presence of the religious clubs.
Some may point to the disproportional amount of Christian organizations, which admittedly is a problem that needs to be resolved, but I feel that as long as the existing organizations are functioning as they are intended to, meaning that they provide students with an outlet to express their beliefs and foster relationships in their respective faith, then nothing needs to change. Religious organizations are here to stay, and everything that I have seen so far indicates that this is nothing short of a great thing for the student body as a whole.
Luke Samora is a Martel College freshman.
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