“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” [1] The same might be asked by any prospective student about Yale College. The faith of generations past glows everywhere at this institution, originally founded in 1701 to train ministers for the Congregational Church. It is seen in the Commencement Weekend exercises, the residential college namesakes, the alma mater and coat of arms. This light reaches everywhere, everywhere except perhaps, the students. Where then, and in what state, might one find religious life on campus today?

In 1968, at the height of the enormous religious, cultural, and social upheavals tearing through the West and the United States in particular, Pope Benedict XVI, then known as Father Ratzinger, wrote his classic spiritual work, “Introduction to Christianity.” In the book, Ratzinger explains that both the believer and unbeliever are mutually haunted by each other’s existence; the one’s inescapability from the other creates a persistent, mutual self-doubt in both men’s beliefs, preventing either from being too shut in himself and becoming the “avenue for communication” between the two.

How insightful he was.

On campus today, religion, for both the believer and unbeliever, finds its clearest expression in this uncomfortable tension. The mutual inescapability of the two sides — their constant, unavoidable dialogue — defines the faith experience at Yale.

I am a practicing Catholic: I arrived at Yale in August 2021 as one and will leave as one four years later. When I first stepped on campus, I came with many preconceived notions about religious life here, almost all negative. I imagined the bulk of my fellow classmates as a great mass of atheistic temptation threatening my soul and my education, spiritual hazards to be avoided during my time of study. But as the months and years passed, my self-constructed fortress, the intentional shutting in of myself, could not, and did not hold in the face of the reality of the unbeliever.

As the token religious friend in many circles, my non-religious friends and classmates increasingly would ask me questions about doctrine, rituals, and moral or political positions; they came to me when they wanted to know what Catholics thought about this or that topic. I began to have ever deeper conversations, and arguments, with them about the nature of faith and religion. They would challenge me directly. “Why do you think you’re right and everyone else is wrong?” “Why does religion matter if I’m already happy without it?” And I would respond with equal force. “Why are you so sure that this is all that there is?” “What do you stand to lose if you’re wrong?”

Yet, just as my faith perhaps sparked some of their doubt, their doubt, too, led to greater reflection on my faith. From these encounters, I realized these people were not the obstacles or temptations I had so made them out to be, but rather individuals just like me, whose different backgrounds and experiences led them to their current convictions. In fact, some of the reasons I gave for my belief were the very same reasons for their unbelief: the dogmatic claims, the counter-intuitive paradoxes, the hierarchical structure. My futile attempts to close off this avenue for communication had ultimately revealed my own spiritual failings: my pride and my lack of charity towards others.

Also, much to my surprise, most of those whom I met at Yale were not hostile to religion, not the atheist caricatures celebrating the death of God that I had envisioned when I first arrived on campus. Rather, many showed genuine curiosity, even openness, toward exploring religious faith. Several friends who had never before been to church have asked to join me for Sunday mass, to check out for themselves the faith which I spoke and argued about so passionately. And in the local Catholic churches, I have witnessed the extraordinary growth of student conversions, reversions, baptisms, and confirmations over the last four years.

The search for that mysterious, unfamiliar Other — which calls out from beyond ourselves — is undeniably alive at Yale. While it is seen most explicitly in the vibrant religious communities and student groups, a quieter spirituality also stirs beneath the surface, an undercurrent of latent faith perhaps moved by the inescapable specter of the believer floating above it.

I cannot help but see the rhetoric on issues such as the environment, the popularity of courses like “The Good Life,” and the widespread embrace of meditation and mindfulness practices as signals of an unspoken yet profound desire for a deeper, more spiritual life. All of this gives me great hope that Father Ratzinger remains correct today: that the believer and unbeliever are simply unable to ignore each other for very long — they exist not as isolated entities, but as mutually dependent participants in an enriching and enduring faith conversation.

Saint Mary’s Church sits prominently on Hillhouse Avenue, its noon bells marking the rhythm of university life. Every day, students head to and from Science Hill, passing Saint Mary’s along the way. They exchange glances with people, like me, entering and leaving daily mass. It is in precisely interactions like this — brief moments of shared curiosity and acknowledgement — that one most clearly sees this religious dynamic, with all its complexities and contradictions, as it exists on campus today.

To the casual observer, Yale may appear as just another secular institution, where religion faded away generations ago, never to return. But beneath the surface, something more nuanced, more mysterious, is unfolding. So yes, when the Son of Man returns, He will indeed find faith at Yale; it just might not look quite like what anyone expects.

[1] see Luke 18:8

EVAN KWONG is a senior in Ezra Stiles College studying History. He can be reached at evan.kwong@yale.edu.