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Naomi Schaefer Riley is a journalist and adjunct fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and has written for the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, The New York Times and many other publications. In her new book God on the Quad, she explores the rise of religious colleges in America. In an effort to understand the evident growing evangelicalism in America, NPR has undertaken the task of researching a variety of topics they see the American religious community as being deeply concerned with. Because of her extensive research into her book God on the Quad, in which she explores the rise of religious colleges in America, NPR's Tal Barak interviewed Naomi Riley to determine why Americans are turning more and more to religious education.

Riley is refreshingly outspoken and brilliant in her observations, recounting how she first became aware of the shift of education when she noted that very bright students were turning down good, sometimes Ivy League schools, to attend religious colleges instead. She calls these new, Christian trained upper graduates, the "missionary generation," and notes that they are highly motivated, study hard, vote, don't experiment with drugs or sex, marry early and plan ahead for family life. They are also becoming lawyers, doctors, college professors, businessmen, psychologists, philanthropists . . . and many join the Army.

When asked if she thought this "missionary generation" would change American society, Riley said she believed they would. "They are determined to have careers in the highest echelons of our elite institutions, and they also are moving increasingly to the cultural and political centers of the country," she said.

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