I grew up in suburban NJ, too, and religion was sort of ... something your parents made you do. There was a kind of strict divide between Jewish kids and Christian kids until high school, too.

A huge percentage of the kids I went to high school with were Catholic, and the thing to do was attend 5 p.m. mass on Saturday night, which meant collecting a program from the church and hanging out somewhere until you could safely go home and show it to your parents as proof you'd attended.

There was one group -- Young Life, I think -- that tried to make inroads for a while, and did with some kids, but it was a little ... culty-seeming to the rest of us. Most of the kids in it had "Godsquad!" written on their notebooks, and for a bunch of disaffected 80s teens who were heavily into smoking and drinking, etc., Young Life was a whole different, and not entirely appealing, world.

I was thinking mostly about college when I first responded. In high school tons of people went to church each Sunday with their families, myself often among them. In university dorms regular attendance probably would've raised some eyebrows, though not to any greater extent than the girl who called her mother every day or the person who had a car but wouldn't give people rides.

At NU, the sidewalk along the main drag was pretty regularly covered in giant chalk "YAY JESUS" murals whenever one of the Christian student groups had an event. There was nobody in my immediate circle of friends who was a regular churchgoer (except for one girl who converted to Mormonism freshman year, but there was a whole complicated backstory there), but it wouldn't have been considered unusual in the general student population.

I went to Catholic college, so it was not at all unusual for students to go to Mass on Sundays. It was also not unusual for students to NOT go. And while excessive religiosity was a bit raised-eyebrow among the theater crowd, "excessive" was pretty loosely defined, given that several of the church-goers were gay, at least three of my friends went on to get their MDiv, and I know of at least two ministers from that group...

I went to Marquette, a Jesuit university, and Mass attendance was pretty high, but you didn't get the fisheye if you didn't go. You had plenty of choices for which mass to attend--Saturday evening or Sunday morning at the huge Gesu Church, Saturday midnight at one of the dorms, Sunday morning at Joan of Arc Chapel, or Sunday night at your dorm (which many of us girls went to in our pjs, since it was a single-sex dorm). There were also Baptist and other Protestant churches relatively close by or at least accessable by city bus.

If you didn't go, though, or professed yourself as atheist/agnostic, it was no big deal to most of us. The Campus Crusade for Christ people would fuss if you were out as being a/a, otherwise it wasn't anyone's business other than your own.

I do remember the rather horrified reaction one of my dorm neighbors, who was Campus Crusade, had to seeing Jesus Christ, Superstar for the first time. "That's blasphemous!!" she said while my roommate and I walked back to our dorm singing "What's the Buzz?" at full volume.

See, all y'all are making the mistake of talking about student religious behavior in real reality. The whole "closet Christian" thing doesn't exist in any known universe, but is a really common trope in the Christian fiction market, which sells the hell out of stories about how Christians are an oppressed minority.

I went to a small Anglican college that rang the chapel bell several times to a day to let you know when prayer service was, and even then the religious people were ghettoized as "the God squad". Still, it was small enough that people mingled somewhat outside their groups.

which sells the hell out of stories about how Christians are an oppressed minority.

Oh, cry me a goddamned river.

...So to speak.

I think Amych is dead-on. Although you can't hold higher elected office in this country without visibly and loudly being one, a certain brand of Christianity is dedicated to the premise that they are an oppressed minority.

The whole "closet Christian" thing doesn't exist in any known universe

I think the premise of those books -- teens at a snooty, exclusive private school in San Francisco -- is that, while there doesn't seem to be any shame in being *culturally* Christian (C&E, and maybe even church on Sundays), in that particular snooty-ass, disaffected, promiscuous teen culture, it's uber-UNcool to be all "I LOVE Jesus!!!!" And BEYOND uber-uncool to not have sex with your hot-ass BF because God wants you to save it for your wedding night.

So in that scenario, I'm imagining a Jesus Camp-type fundie Christian trying to be part of the popular crowd at this snooty private school, but being afraid of being outed as a great big square.

Does that make sense?