In 2021, the Religious Exception Accountability Project (REAP) brought a lawsuit calling for “an end to the U.S. Department of Education’s complicity within the abuses and unsafe conditions hundreds of LGBTQ+ students endure at tons of of taxpayer-funded, religious colleges and universities.”
The underlying premise of REAP’s suit is that the federal government “is duty-bound by Title IX and the U.S. Constitution to guard sexual and gender minority students at taxpayer-funded colleges and universities”—and this implies ending religious exemptions for schools, including many Christian colleges, which order student life in response to traditional theologies of sex and gender.
The REAP case, which is ongoing two years later, just isn’t the one reason the experiences of LGBTQ+ students on Christian campuses are closely scrutinized, in fact. And neither is REAP the one voice claiming Christian colleges are subjecting hundreds—perhaps tens of hundreds—of LGBTQ+ students to abuse and its effects, like poor mental health.
Until recently, there have been no studies testing that claim by comparing the mental health of LGBTQ+ students at religious and non-religious universities. While the person stories of scholars are crucial, it’s equally crucial to have rigorous, empirical studies evaluating the proposition that religious universities are causing harm. Our article, published within the Journal of Affective Disorders (one among the highest journals in the sphere), is the primary evaluation of this type.
Using data collected by the Healthy Minds Study, we examined over 135,000 university students from across the nation, around 30,000 of whom self-identified as LGBTQ+. We were capable of sort students in response to the form of school they attended, as determined by the schools’ self-descriptions as Catholic, evangelical, or an “other Christian” university (including Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Nazarene, and Lutheran schools). The data didn’t measure whether schools required students and/or faculty to sign a press release of religion or campus life code; it looked only at their denominational affiliation.
With this information, we were capable of compare LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ students at these religious universities to those at non-religious universities. Part of our purpose was to discover as many nuances as possible. Wheaton College psychologist Mark Yarhouse has noted that LGBTQ+ students on religious campuses should not a monolithic group. They hold “a variety of beliefs and values regarding their sexuality and behavior”—some mix a conventional sexual ethic with same-sex attraction, for example—and their stories resist an easy narrative.
We due to this fact examined not only whether LGBTQ+ students had higher or worse mental health (as measured by reports of suicidal thoughts and anxiety) at one type of school or the opposite. We also desired to see how these students’ engagement with religion and spirituality (as measured by religious activities) might affect their mental health at religious and non-religious colleges.
So what did we discover? The answer, unsurprisingly, is complex.
Initially, we hypothesized that student and university “fit” would result in reports of higher mental health. We hypothesized that non-religious students would do higher at non-religious universities and that religious students would do higher at religious universities. Further, while research has overwhelmingly shown that religion is correlated with higher mental health, we hypothesized that LGBTQ+ individuals wouldn’t profit as much (or perhaps under no circumstances) from being at a non secular university.
But our findings didn’t support our hypotheses.
First, we found that religiosity was correlated with higher mental health no matter LGBTQ+ identification.
We also found that students who’re less religious, whether LGBTQ+ or not, often reported higher mental health while attending a non secular university. (Religious students appeared to do exactly as well at any school.) For instance, students who said religion was unimportant to them typically reported higher mental health in the event that they attended a Catholic university than a non-religious university. And those that engaged in no religious extracurricular activities or weren’t religiously affiliated tended to do higher at evangelical schools than non-religious ones.
Remarkably, this pattern held even after we controlled for a number of things similar to the dimensions of the university, whether the university was public or private, the region of the country wherein the university was positioned, the variety of extracurricular activities the coed was involved in, the coed’s relationship status (married, single, divorced, etc.), whether the coed was international, the coed’s race, and more.
Our study couldn’t determine exactly why students who don’t value religion would experience higher health at schools that do. But it’s possible that non-religious students profit from being in a more religious environment because they’re less more likely to encounter or engage in risk-taking behaviors. Ample research has found that religious persons are significantly less more likely to develop substance use disorders and behavioral disorders similar to gambling disorder, compulsive sexual behavior disorder, and gaming disorder.
Two other findings are noteworthy too. One is that LGBTQ+ students reported higher mental health at “other Christian” universities in comparison with non-religious universities. This again was not according to our initial expectations.
The other is that one group of LGBTQ+ students was at greater risk at evangelical schools, while one other group of LGBTQ+ students was at lower risk at those self same schools. The difference appeared to be their engagement with religion, a difference we didn’t see with non-LGBTQ+ students.
For LGBTQ+ students at non-religious universities, the speed of suicidal thoughts varied by roughly 20 percent depending on whether or not the scholars were religious. For LGBTQ+ students at evangelical universities who participated in religious activities, that rate dropped to only 6 percent. However, for LGBTQ+ students at evangelical universities who didn’t take part in religious activities, the speed jumped to a staggering 34 percent—about one in three.
This suggests that LGBTQ+ students’ mental health may only profit from being at an evangelical school in the event that they themselves are religious. LGBTQ+ students who should not engaged in religion may feel doubly disconnected.
What does this mean for religious universities and LGBTQ+ students who attend evangelical schools? One big implication is that we should always not see these students as a monolithic group. Some are more likely to thrive in evangelical institutions, while others will probably be at higher risk of suicidal thoughts.
It’s essential to acknowledge that our research can’t determine why some LGBTQ+ students struggle with their mental health at evangelical schools. It could possibly be that these students disengage from religious activities due to how they’re feeling, not the opposite way around.
Also, students (and their families) select the schools they attend. In many cases, students pick a college they feel matches their needs—and sometimes which will mean a non secular school for a non-religious and/or LGBTQ+ student. Our study suggests that even without religious engagement, they might do a lot better in that environment than they might elsewhere. But the REAP lawsuit could make that selection unimaginable.
Instead of that maximalist approach, religious universities should examine themselves to find out the best way to best serve all their students. We’d also prefer to see further research into this query of how LGBTQ+ students fare at religious schools. Our findings didn’t support the image of widespread harm some have painted, but neither could our data answer every query that could possibly be raised.
Justin Dyer is a professor of non secular education at Brigham Young University and a fellow on the Wheatley Institute.
Jenet Erickson is an associate professor of non secular education at Brigham Young University and a fellow on the Wheatley Institute.
