"It's hard to quantify, but this place is buzzing," Steinberg says.

Smaller religious groups have also gained members.

The Baha'i Association and Interfaith Forum drew three entering first-years this year, a significant jump in its membership, according to Susana R. Castillo '97.

Reorganization

Not everyone believes that all this increased religious activity can be attributed to an increased number of students participating.

Rev. Stuart S. Barnes of the Episcopal Chaplaincy attributes the growth in religious activity to a redistribution of the religious population.

Barnes says that although the percentage of Christians in the undergraduate population has remained constant, subtle shifts within generic groupings have led to an increased number of religious organizations on campus.

He also attributes the perceived growth to the interest of the media.

"It's as if you've been around a long time in a room with the same furniture but rearranged," he says. "My observation would be that there hasn't been much change on a University level."

J. Bryan Hehir of the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Student Center also downplays the perceived expansion of religious life. Hehir believes it is too soon to tell whether the 1990s can be viewed as a decade of religion.

Hehir says increases in religious intensity are not reflected in student attendance at his weekly mass. The number of worshippers has remained fairly constant, fluctuating between 500 and 650 students for most of the last few years, he says.

Religion's Visibility

But Hehir, also the senior chaplain of St. Paul's Catholic Church, says there is palpably more interest in religion and in religious questions than there was when he was a graduate student at Harvard about 25 years ago.

Specifically, he points to religion's visibility in the modern age.

"I think that the role of religion is visible on a lot of fronts: war and peace, family life. [There is] more openness to religious response, more openness to religious questions, and more involvement in religious practice," Hehir says.