When the Princeton Review ranked Wesleyan number 15 on its “Students Ignore God On a Regular Basis” list, few people here seemed surprised. The ranking comes up almost any time someone mentions religion at Wesleyan, a pat sentence to sum up a school known more for its liberal attitudes and political views than pious devotion.

“People think of Wesleyan as not having a spiritual life at all,” said Joel Bhuiyan ’06, a president of the Muslim Student Association (MSA).

Like so many things in college, though, it’s not quite that simple. For the 40-plus members of the Wesleyan Christian Fellowship (WesCF), the 12 members of the MSA, the 60 regular attendees at Shabbat and countless others, Wesleyan is nothing if not spiritual.

“Saying that we’re secular and a God-hating campus, I don’t think that’s speaking for the majority,” said Jamal Ahmed ’09, a member of the MSA. “It’s at least overshadowing a huge number of people here.”

There are no exact numbers of how many students here consider themselves religious. Jewish Chaplain Rabbi David Leipziger estimates that 20-27 percent of students are at least “culturally Jewish,” though they may not observe any practices or beliefs of Judaism. Protestant Chaplain Gary Comstock estimates that half of Wesleyan students have no religious affiliation at all.

Many students arrive at Wesleyan after a childhood of attending religious services on Saturday or Sunday mornings with their parents. Some will abandon their religious upbringing the moment they move into their dorms, but others will continue with it on their own. Sometimes they even surprise themselves.

“I would never have pictured myself a leader of the Christian fellowship, at all,” said Lynn Allison ’06, a group leader in WesCF. “People are surprised that I’ve become more religious here. They haven’t necessarily been surprised that there are people of faith on campus, but there are people who have become more faithful.”

Charlene Chow ’08 had become interested in religion in high school but had little personal experience with it. She said she spent her orientation week at Wesleyan going to party after party, at least for a few days.

“Then I started to feel empty inside after a while,” Chow said. “[I thought], this isn’t what life is about.”

Chow passed by the Woodhead Lounge one Friday evening, where several students invited her to come to Large Group, the main meeting of WesCF.

“There was not a party starting at 7 [p.m.],” Chow said. “If I didn’t like it I could go to a party after it. What ended up happening was it really drew me in. You could feel the love in the room. I was like, ‘Wow, these people are real.’”

Rachel Bedick ’08 also unintentionally became involved in a religious community.

“I didn’t expect to really be involved at all,” Bedick said. “I found most of my friends in the Jewish community. To see them I had to go to the programs.”

While the religious communities that exist on campus vary in size and makeup, each can play a vital role in an individual’s personal faith.

“Salvation comes about by being part of the community,” said Catholic Chaplain Father Louis Manzo. “In the Catholic view of things, it is important to actually get together. The meeting is an important part of what we do.”

Maya Bery ’08, who is not affiliated with a single faith but has visited various religious services on campus, said she appreciates her friendships with other religious students because of the new perspective it has offered.

“For the first time in my life I have friends who are religious or spiritual because they choose to be,” Bery said. “They go to services because they want to, not because their parents are making them.”

Some students, like Allison and Bedick, develop strong friendships with other students who share their beliefs. But for CeCe Seiter ’07, who is Catholic, attending Mass means connecting with students she might not otherwise see.

“It’s nice to see a group of students who aren’t my usual friends or the kids in my classes, and we have something in common that’s sort of rare on this campus,” Seiter said. “Being Catholic at Wesleyan makes you sort of a curiosity, like, ‘Wow, you actually GO to MASS?’ or ‘Wow, you’re pretty normal.’”

That curiosity and skepticism from non-religious students is both a challenge and benefit of being religious at Wesleyan.

Jason C. Harris ’09, who is Christian, said he knew what he was getting himself into when he arrived here, but that was part of the appeal.

“If you’re a Christian at Wesleyan, you are indeed a minority,” he said. “By going to a university that is not predominantly Christian I’ll be challenged in being able to understand why I believe what I believe.”

For Muslim Chaplain Imam Mahan Mirza, it was a similar experience of questioning his faith that brought him closer to Islam in college.

“When I came to college I had never really been challenged,” Mirza said. “I’m sure there are others who encounter similar experiences.”

According to Rabbi David, one of the functions of the college experience is for students to examine and question beliefs they may have held their entire lives.

“I desperately want students to explore these things now,” he said. “There’s something about this time period, you get for four years an amazing opportunity to grow and learn and connect with people. The worst thing that can come out of your Wesleyan experience is [that] you never change.”

For Maggie Mitchell ’08, that change took a uniquely dramatic form; after reading the Qur’an for the first time during her freshman year, she converted to Islam earlier this year.

“I wasn’t struggling with anything in my life really, I wasn’t out hunting for answers or anything,” Mitchell said. “I was a very religious Protestant at the time, and consider myself no more or less religious now than before. I have merely accepted the existence of a more recent message from God—it came about 600 years after Jesus’s.”

Wesleyan’s liberal atmosphere works two ways in regard to religion. Students aren’t actively dismissed or harassed for their faith, but a kind of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy can emerge.

“Wesleyan is religiously diverse, but there is this not-so-written rule as to keep that in the closet,” Harris said. “Keep your religion in the private.”

“Christianity in particular, though I’m sure other faiths as well, is automatically associated with rightist politics, which is obviously not true in many cases,” said Tom Crosby ’06, a leader of the Catholic Student Organization. “I think some people find the idea of religion in general and at Wesleyan unsettling.”

For Alex Salzberg ’08, who observes Orthodox Judaism, even the smallest details of life at Wesleyan make practicing his religion harder. Orthodox Jews do not work on the Sabbath, which includes using electricity and driving a car. With dorms that open only with electric key card access and automatic lights in bathrooms, observing the Sabbath can be tricky, but Salzberg says he makes it work.

“It’s not as easy as I would like it to be,” he said. “There are only a few people who are traditionally observant. Wesleyan is not designed to accommodate it.”

Perhaps as a way to counteract the challenges of being religious at Wesleyan, spiritual communities often act as a refuge or safe space for students to discuss their faith.

“There are conversations that I can have with my Christian friends that I can’t have with people who aren’t part of the fellowship,” Allison said. “[In WesCF] there’s a lot of trying to build those relationships with people that can encourage each other and continue to look for God in those situations, and have people remind you that there is a greater purpose.”

When it comes to major holidays, especially those involving fasting like Yom Kippur and Ramadan, a religious community can be more like a support network.

“That’s really helpful, to have people to wake up with before sunrise during Ramadan and break your fast with,” Ahmed said. “Having a community there for you that understands what you’re going through.”

Groups like the WesCF are constantly welcoming visitors and new members; according to Allison, people will come to WesCF meetings who have never learned about Christianity before.

“There are definitely people who are coming who are just curious about Christianity,” she said. “[They] want to find out what it is about Christianity that makes 40 kids meet on a Friday night and not go out to parties.”

Vespers, a non-denominational spiritual service held each Wednesday, is specifically tailored toward those people with questions about faith. Bery, who was raised Hindu but does not consider herself affiliated with any religion, regularly attends Vespers.

“It provides a space where I can unwind and not focus on work for a half hour or 45 minutes,” she said. “It’s like a mini-breather to get back up and take on Thursday and Friday.”

In recent weeks Bery has attended both a Passover seder and the sunrise Easter service, and she hopes to visit a Unitarian church in New Haven sometime soon.

“Once you get down to it, people are generally very open about talking about [spirituality] and perfectly open to share,” Bery said. “I hope that I continue to have the opportunity to go to different events and have conversation with people and take it from there.”

According to all of the chaplains and some students, this willingness to seek spirituality is key.

“There is a second world,” Harris said. “The spiritual world is more real than the physical world in a sense.”

“I’m convinced that everyone has a spiritual aspect to their being,” Rabbi David said. “I would like them to explore that side.”

As a definition of spirituality, Comstock offered an anecdote. Last Sunday he led a sunrise Easter service at the Chaplain’s Department on the corner of Church and High Street. It was a mixed group, not all of them Christian, and the service included both Biblical scripture and an e.e. cummings poem. At some point during the service an entirely different group made their presence known—a group of late-night revelers across the street who had stayed up to watch the sunrise.

“Here were two groups of people within the same culture experiencing the sunrise completely differently,” Comstock said. “It was an interfaith thing, but it went beyond the religion. It’s about opening up and instead of just taking in the sunrise, you have to take in this whole other thing that’s happening and accept it.”

Comstock said he could have asked the other group to quiet down, but what he really regretted was not inviting them up for breakfast. For Comstock, it is the balance between all the different traditions and lifestyles and beliefs, both between different groups and within one person, that define spirituality. Comstock used the Hebrew word “nefesh,” roughly meaning “whole soul,” as an alternative definition of spirituality.

“For me spirituality is about becoming whole,” he said. “It’s not about tying yourself to something, it’s really about opening yourself to something.”