Faith with Benefits: Hookup Culture on Catholic Campuses

Hookup culture has become widespread on college campuses, and Catholic colleges are no exception. Indeed, most studies have found no difference between Catholic colleges and their secular counterparts when it comes to hooking up, despite the fact that most students report being unhappy with casual sexual encounters. Drawing on a survey of over 1000 students from 26 institutions, as well as follow-up interviews, Jason King argues that religious culture on Catholic campuses can, in fact, have an impact on the school's hookup culture, but the relationship is complicated. In Faith with Benefits, King shows the complex way these dynamics play out at Catholic colleges and universities. There is no straightforward relationship, for example, between orthodoxy and hookup culture--some of the schools with the weakest Catholic identities also have weaker hookup cultures. And not all students see hookup culture the same way. Some see a hookup is just a casual encounter, but others see hooking up as a gateway to a relationship. Faith with Benefits gives voice to students and so reveals how their faith, the faith of their friends, and the institutional structures of their campus give rise to different hookup cultures. In doing so, King addresses the questions of students who don't know where to turn for practical guidance on how to navigate an ever-shifting network of hookups.