Certain characteristics of the religiousness of university students

Abstract

In the past few decades, the number of people attending services held by the historical churches decreased considerably, while the rate of the Christian small churches increased by one and a half. Atheism has been spreading, individual religiousness has been gaining strength, and the number of people not practicing any religion has increased to a large extent (KSH 2014). At the same time, religiousness is becoming more and more accepted and confidence in the churches is becoming stronger (Tomka 2009). By means of a research sample, we found it important to disclose, on the one hand, to what extent tendencies of secularization are present among university students. On the other hand, we attempted to reveal to what extent religiousness can fulfil a social profit producing function among students actively doing paid work (Pusztai 2004, 2009; Orbán-Szántó 2005).