Black students have the highest level of religious commitment on college campuses, according to a study released earlier this month by the Higher Education Research Institute.

"We did find that when we looked at the differences by race, African-Americans seemed to endorse more religious beliefs," said Helen Astin, a senior scholar at the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California in Los Angeles who helped perform the study. "Other races varied a lot, but with African-Americans it stood out."

The study surveyed about 112,000 undergraduate freshmen in 236 colleges and universities and asked about the participants' general attitudes and values, Astin said.

Of the students surveyed, blacks were found to be the most religious compared to white, Asian American, Latino, American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students on seven of the 12 categories.

The study found that 95 percent of black students believe in God and 91 percent of black students pray. Also, 53 percent of black students attend religious services frequently.

"Forty-seven percent of African-Americans showed a high level of religious commitment," Astin said. "Religious commitment is a scale we developed of a number of different items such as: 'I follow religious teaching in everyday life,' and 'I find religion to be personally helpful,'" Astin said.

The religious behavior of Marquette students appears to corroborate the study.

"I do find that a lot of my friends that are African-American are more religious than other students," said Angelique Robinson, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences who helped found the Christian Fellowship of Marquette, a new Christian study group for students.

Diamond Archibald, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences and member of the Marquette Gospel Choir, agreed with Robinson.

"A lot of us were raised in the church," said Archibald, who, like Robinson, is black. "One hundred percent pray to God, believe in the word, depend on him," Archibald said. "I would have to say they are the most spiritual. It goes back to slavery; they had church services, that's all they had when they came over and it's still a big part."

"A lot of us have been taught that no matter how tough it is God will never change," Robinson said. "He's the same yesterday, tomorrow and forever more, that's in the Bible."

Although Archibald and Robinson agree that blacks are religious, they also feel that other students at Marquette have religious commitment.

"Marquette is a little different because there are a lot of Caucasians that are religious too," Archibald said.

"I think there are certain individuals within each race that are very religious," Robinson said.

Even though the study found that blacks are more religious than other races on college campuses, the study also concluded that college freshmen overall are religious.

"Basically we found that students are very concerned with spirituality. Quite a few of them consider themselves to be religious and many indicated that they pray," Astin said.

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on October 13, 2005.