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In the field of religious beliefs and values, the college students seem to faithfully reflect the surrounding culture.

Their commitments are, for the most part, couched in a familiar idiom.

Students testify to a felt need for a religious faith or ultimate personal philosophy.

Avowed atheists or freethinkers are so rare as to be a curiosity.

The religious quest is often intense and deep, and there are students on every campus who are seriously wrestling with the most profound questions of meaning and value.

At the same time, a major proportion of these young men and women see religion as a means of personal adjustment, an anchor for family life, a source of emotional security.

These personal and social goals often overshadow the goals of intellectual clarity, and spiritual transcendence.

The `` cult of adjustment '' does exist.

It exists alongside the acceptance of traditional forms of organized religion ( church, ordained personnel, ritual, dogma ).

Still another segment of the student population consists of those who seek, in what they regard as religion, intellectual clarity, rational belief, and ethical guidance and reinforcement.