Yes, I understand that. My comment was in response to the part of her quote I highlighted in red, about not having to vow allegiance to any particular god. I don't think we can make a generalization about that.

No, you don't have to be a devout follower of Confuciounism(sp) to appreciate the golden rule..;)

OP-

You are making this much more of an issue than it really is. At their core, NIC fraternities are social groups, not religious cults. We really dont put as much emphasis on religion as you think we do..really. You may run into an occasional reference to God in certain rituals and creeds but that doesn't mean you're pledging yourself to God because you read or repeat such rituals or creeds anymore than it would if using money with "in God we trust" printed on it would. Make sense? Personally, I'm areligious and I never had an issues with participating in any rituals, neither did my Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu brothers.

The golden rule is from the Jewish tradition. :D

I like the "in God we trust" mentality brought up by Pike2001. Ritual is meant to describe the ideals of the organization in which you belong. Most were written at a time in which religion was the driving force in the lives of the educated. Times have changed, but we are able to still find value in the thoughts of our Founder's with out being dogmatic about the source.

Wow...I wonder how that happened. What a coincidence! :p

Which he probably learned while living in Babylon, where he was born, as it dates back to at least 1500 years before him to the Code of Hammurabi. The reality is almost every religion (if not every religion and indeed every society) has some form of the Golden Rule.

Lilgiant2016, check these threads:

Atheists as members

Christianity in ritual

Religion and GLOs

As you will see from these threads, there are (a few?) fraternities that will expect members to affirm belief in a Supreme Being (the main one I can think of being one that you have mentioned), and there are fraternities where the religious aspects will be more pronounced than others. (Again, a handful come to mind.) There are also many fraternities that will be pretty much non-sectarian.

Go to rush events, get to know the guys and I bet you'll get a good feel for where you'd fit in.

^^ I'm going to kick all of y'all in the shins lol

I don't have to be a devout ANYTHING to appreciate the GR :)

Actually, there are three (Alpha Omicron Pi, Delta Phi Epsilon and Phi Sigma Sigma). AOII may not have explicitly stated it, but the fact that the founders were both Jewish and Christian pretty much says it for me.

As far as fraternities, Pi Lambda Phi comes up as the first non-sectarian fraternity through a quick googling. However, part of their creed is that they "pledge allegiance to my country, and to its national symbol."

Lilgiant2016, have you sat out the PoA because of the under God part, or because of the concept of the thing?

I failed to catch this earlier, but with most fraternities (there are a few exceptions), you will not be initiated immediately. You'll pledge, which also involves a ceremony. Initiation will happen a number of weeks or months after that, and the time in-between will be spent learning about the fraternity and building bonds with other pledges and with the chapter.


There is at least one fraternity whose members have said on GC that inability to affirm faith in a Supreme Being would indeed render a man ineligible for membership. How strictly a particular chapter might enforce that rule is, of course, a different matter.

Honestly, I think you are limiting yourself unnecessarily if you won't even consider a fraternity because of what might happen to be in its ritual. Some of us choose to view ritual as a historical connection to our founders, that reflects the time in which it was written, and not modern-day realities. Putting my hand on a bible means nothing, because the bible means nothing to me. Believe me, nobody in my initiating chapter cared.

When you go through rush, I think it will be obvious if a fraternity's brothers are especially Christian (or Jewish, I suppose), and you would truly be a bad fit. But for the most part, lot of people (everyone?) question their faith in their college years, and you are not betraying your brothers to go through the motions of ritual without meaning some parts.

I can think of at least 2, and possibly three fraternities that require a belief in a Supreme Being.

This.

Honestly, when I saw the title for this thread, my first thought was "and so?"

I think that in some parts of the country (like the Deep South) it truly would be an issue. I give the OP major credit for not wanting to promise anything he doesn't believe in. We're always getting told to "live our ritual," well, he is doing that before he even gets a bid. Which is awesome. It doesn't sound like this is a "questioning" thing, rather, this is something he's studied and thought about a lot and truly committed to.

As a lifelong southerner, I think that what DeltaBetaBaby said makes sense. Meet the men, and he'll get a sense for how important it is for that group. Some may care; others certainly won't.

While Pi Lambda Phi says non-sectarian, all three of their founders were of Jewish ideals. They can even be considered the first Jewish fraternity, except they didn't limit their admittance like ZBT would a few years later. A lot of their chapters back in the day (one of our chapters brothers is a legacy) pushed the Jewish aspect.

By whom?

And to give an example from Phi Mu's open creed, it says I should "reverence God as our Maker, striving to serve Him in all things." What does is even mean to "live my ritual" in that sense?

Contrast with "To be to others what we would they would be to us." That one's pretty clear. Live the golden rule. Okay!

I think, at their core, fraternity and sorority values are more alike than different, regardless of how they were expressed in words 150+ years ago. I also think that their expression in individual chapters does not correspond to the rituals themselves, i.e. the most religious chapter on campus does not necessarily have the most references to god in its ritual. In the example Jazing posted just above me, a guy could join thinking "non-religious, cool" and then find himself feeling out of place when everyone goes home for Rosh Hashanah (see also: Theta at U of M).