By Luke Luedy

Eighty-two percent of the La Roche Community said they believe in God.

Students and faculty members of La Roche University completed a survey on religion.

The purpose of this survey was to gauge the importance of religion in the La Roche community. Students of different ages and different majors, ranging from criminal justice to chemistry, gave their responses. Faculty members and staff additionally filled out the survey.

One hundred people took the survey on religion. The respondents took it in September of 2023.

The La Roche community filled out three primary sections of the survey. The first focused on one’s religious identity.

Most major religions are built on beliefs in a god or multiple gods. Three respondents said that they were unsure or on the fence when it came to beliving in God.

But what specifically does the La Roche community believe in?

There are an estimated number of over 4,000 religions in the world. Some of the most widely worshipped are Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Of the La Roche community, seventy-three selected Christianity, four selected Islam, three selected Hinduism, two Buddhism, and eleven other. Some of the responses of the other category included Paganism, Sikhism, and Creature Intelligence.

The survey asked the respondents to rate their religion’s importance to them on a scale from one to ten. One being not important at all, and ten being the most important.

Thirty percent of respondents gave values of ten. The data for this question suggests that the La Roche community places their religion in high importance.

Religion can have many benefits. These range from a sense of community, spiritual life, guidance, and hope. Respondents were able to circle more than one response.

Twenty-one out of one-hundred respondents said that they gain guidance from their religion. 28 percent of survey-takers identified hope as a key benefit.

Responses from the other category, which took up 2.7 percent of answers, were more varied. One respondent said that they looked forward to seeing lost family in the afterlife. Another respondent said that they gained a better understanding of the origins of humanity.

Judging by the survey, religion plays an important role in the lives of the La Roche community. This may be in part because of the current state of the world.

One could see the world today as a cruel and unforgiving place. The survey asked respondents to gauge how hopeful they were that the world would improve. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they were hopeful. Twenty-two percent said they had no opinion.

If respondents held a positive view on the world’s improvement, was religion a prominent factor in their belief? Seemingly not, as 52 percent of the hopeful individuals said that their religion played no part in their response.

Life is difficult. Many people have a multitude of ways for coping with it.

Of the survey takers, 63 percent indicated that religion helped them get through rough patches. Fifteen out of one hundred takers said that their religion helped them get through hard times about as enough as needed.

With La Roche University being a Catholic institution, Catholic students may have placed their shared religion as an important factor in attending.

Was La Roche’s Catholic roots influential in convincing Catholic students to attend? As 66 percent of Catholic respondents indicated that it wasn’t, this implies otherwise.

From a scale of one to ten, the survey asked Catholics how prominent Catholicism was in La Roche as a whole. For the most part, respondents were split down the middle, with 16 out of 61 Catholics rating the school’s religious influence as a five. Twelve out of sixty-one respondents additionally gave La Roche a Catholic rating of seven.

The survey asked Catholic La Roche students if they believed the university should lean more into its religious identity. The results were divided about equally, with 11 respondents saying the university should not, and 12 saying they should. Thirty-eight of the sixty-one Catholic takers said that the university’s religious identity is fine as is.