A certain number of college students seem to be converting from Protestantism to Catholicism. Some whispers note that this is relatively frequent at Hillsdale College; others have noticed it as a prominent phenomenon in conservative political circles. But a 2025 Pew Research Study finds that in the country as a whole, Catholicism is losing far more members than it is gaining, and more to the religiously unaffiliated than to Protestants. Whatever the dynamic of conversion of college students to Catholicism, it would seem to be a relatively minor component of modern American religious demographic changes.

Crossing the Tiber is a longstanding phenomenon, particularly for intellectual conservatives of a certain cast of mind. The grounding of ultimate authority, the accumulated weight of Catholic tradition, the elaborations of doctrine and liturgy, the rigor—these attract. Some Protestants and Catholics convert to Orthodox churches for similar reasons. Some Americans, indeed, turn to the Church of England or to Reformed churches from similar motivations. The common denominator is a disenchantment with religious practice and doctrine that substitutes some flavor of Moral Therapeutic Deism for more traditional Christian practice and belief.

More such converts may turn to Catholicism simply because it is a larger presence in America than its rivals. Protestants as a whole may still outnumber Catholics, but they are split into a multitude of denominations, relatively few of which offer a strong challenge to Moral Therapeutic Deism. The Orthodox Churches are still fairly small. Catholicism is itself home to many different forms of practice, and intellectual conservatives may find some of these practices uncongenially woolly. A Catholic Church that promulgates an encyclical on climate change can hardly be deemed the MAGA movement at prayer. Indeed, a large number of college students who convert to Catholicism may be attracted to it precisely because many of its leaders now present it as a champion of environmentalism, social justice, and post-nationalism. Not all religious seekers are traditionalists, and the Catholic Church, like other denominations, has positioned itself to attract the non-traditionalist devout.

Still, the Catholic Church has the advantage for some cerebral traditionalists of size and reputation. John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion might satisfy the intellectual conservative as much as Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, but the Institutes have less name recognition than the Summa. And name recognition does matter: seekers may be content with the first house they find.

Then too, Catholicism’s bulk may be a particular attraction in a day when the overwhelming trend is toward secularism—indifference to religion, inflected among many American leftists with outright hostility to Christianity and Judaism. With secularism so great a threat to religious survival, there may be a semi-conscious desire to seek out a large lifeboat. Catholicism and—Baptism, perhaps?—may be struggling for preeminence, to qualify as the last remaining lifeboat to resist the rising tide of secularism. And these concerns may be particularly salient for those who choose to fight for religion in the political realm.

For those of us who work primarily for higher education reform rather than for a particular religious denomination, we must continue to favor a somewhat detached pluralism. The lifeboats we care most about are disciplines, not denominations. Generally, we should favor Biblical literacy as an essential component of learning about Western civilization. Beyond that, America was founded by English Protestants, and Americans should continue to learn the thought of Hooker and Milton, of Bunyan and Wesley. But they also should learn the thought of theologians in a wide variety of Christian denominations, and of other faiths as well. Our universities should teach students about Thomas Aquinas and Abraham Kuyper, about Martin Buber and Rudolf Bultmann, about John Keble and Vladimir Lossky. Our universities should make it possible for students to learn the most compelling works of all faiths.

If they do so, they will complicate the dynamics of conversion to any one faith, simply by making it possible for American students to stumble across compelling works in a dozen faiths, a score, a hundred. But that is one of the businesses of education—to serve the individual as he seeks to develop his soul. And American colleges and universities should be American enough that they ultimately cater to the individual.

That’s American universities as the broadest collective. Of course, denominational colleges can and should seek to form their students within their faith. The pluralism of American universities should be the pluralism of our colleges by the thousands.

American higher education should not suppress the love of God that leads college students to deepen their faith, or to switch from one faith to another. Neither should it guide students in only one direction. It should help students to educate themselves in faith, by teaching them about many faiths. Our colleges and universities should not be a system of seminaries, but they may be proud if their work helps bring students to the Tiber or Geneva, to Jerusalem or Canterbury, or Mount Athos.

Colleges and universities should educate their students to know of many doors for the soul’s delight and repose.

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