“It’s my guess that students who are familiar with theology are also familiar with how much people can waver between points of view, and they gravitate towards older, more conservative faiths that adhere to the points of view that they ascribe to.”

“I’m Kirkland An — I grew up in a nondenominational church, but now I attend an Evangelical Free church in Wheaton. How about you?”

Have you heard sentences like these injected into a dialogue before? I must have used them, 11, maybe 12 times. If you have too, you might — like me — go to school in Wheaton, Illinois, deemed the most “churched” town in the US.

Because of the high density of churches around my college campus, more often than not, the response I get is similar in form, and includes a denominational change. Sometimes it’s a very small shift.

“I went to a Presbyterian church and now my church is nondenominational.”

“I used to be Baptist, but I’d just call myself Calvinist now.”

But sometimes, it’s what some might call a big shift.

Joshua Knowlton, a sophomore at Wheaton College, is from Waupun, Wisconsin, and was raised at Edgewood Community Church, which ascribes to the Evangelical Free denomination. His father is the pastor there. When he arrived on Wheaton’s campus, he joined the herd of freshmen “church hopping” around town, and inspected Church of the Resurrection, a popular local Anglican church.

“I went with my family during the first week of college,” Knowlton said. “My youth pastor from home said that Church of the Rez would be an interesting church to check out.”

It was.

In fact, the sensory experience was overwhelming for a teenager who spent his entire life in a different denominational tradition.

“There was every sense you could have,” Knowlton told me, thinking back on his first attendance. “You’re standing at different times, like when they’re reading the Gospel, which focuses your mind on it. During times of confession, people like to kneel, which makes me feel penitent. There’s a fountain of holy water, which provides a peaceful background, and I always sit by the fountain. During the season of Lent, they have incense that they spread throughout the church, but because smell is closely tied with memories, smelling the incense focuses my mind on Lent last year and connects my experiences with God. The Eucharist is in the center of the service. We have communion every week, and I always take the real wine, which some would say is a mini rebellion to the Wheaton covenant, but I realize the specialness of the body and the blood.”

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