Are Students Losing Their Religion on Campus?

Dec. 6, 2005 — -- From the day she was born, Ashley Parrish was taught to put God first in her life. She attended a Christian school, did missionary work in Mexico, and gave youth sermons at her local church -- then she left home for her freshman year of college.

"When I came to college I was so excited to get out of the bubble that I'd been in, in high school and in my family, and i just kind of went crazy," Parrish said.

Parrish and her boyfriend, Ethan Colclasure, attend the University of Georgia. For them, partying five nights a week was the norm.

"It's definitely the norm to be drunk and to have premarital sex and just kinda live a very -- it's all about me, whatever I can get tonight," Colclasure said. "My grades suffered, I had a great social life but that's pretty much all I had. My spiritual life and my academics suffered a lot."

Parrish said she was having so much fun at first, she didn't realize she had lost something important.

"When I was a freshman my first semester I did not, I didn't go to church at all," she said. "I was having so much fun with all the boys and with all the partying, with all the friends. It didn't really occur to me that I was missing something."

Parrish's new priorities were disappointing news for her parents, Craig and Sherri Parrish, who were youth ministers back home in Nashville. The Parrishes recognized that kids raised in spiritual homes could be challenged by a whole new world of temptations on campus.

"I was very worried about Ashley getting drunk at a party and not being able to use her full mind and make poor decisions or have someone take advantage of her and hurt her in any way," Sherri Parrish said.

But her parents knew there was only so much they could do.

"You really, really do have to just trust that God is going to take charge and he is there, because you can't be there the whole time for them," said her husband.

Tony Arnold, the director of media relations for Campus Crusade for Christ, agrees with the Parrishes. "Often times you'll hear parents say: 'Well, we're just praying for our kids,' and I think that's very important," he said.