Most college students raised in a Christian home leave the church after going off to college. In a study that was released in 2019, Barna reported that sixty-four percent of 18-29-year-olds who were active in church as a child or teen have withdrawn from church involvement.^[1] There are a plethora of reasons for this exodus, but one big one is an inability to answer doubts.

Children and teenagers who grow up in church are often told what to believe, but they’re not always told why they should believe it. Many are never exposed to other belief systems, and they have blindly believed what their parents and Sunday School teachers have taught them (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Some have even been scolded for asking any kinds of questions about their faith.

Then, they go off to college and enroll in a religion or philosophy course, and that’s when things go south. Their entire belief system is challenged by older and seemingly wiser professors, and they have no idea how to rebut the arguments. Instead of searching for the truth, they go with the flow and accept the theories and philosophies of the sacred texts of their universities (aka college textbooks). They leave true, biblical Christianity for a pseudo-Christianity, atheism, or another religion altogether.

This is obviously a big problem, and to help solve this problem, scholar Michael J. Kruger wrote a book called Surviving Religion 101.