The search began on Ash Wednesday. The soot-smudged foreheads left no doubt. Christian, yes. But Methodist? Hmm …

Students and faculty do not have to be Methodist to be members of the SMU community, but it may come as a surprise that the majority of the Hilltop population is not affiliated with the United Methodist Church. As of February, about 60 percent of the student body reported a religious preference, and of those students, 24 percent claimed to be Catholic and only 20 percent United Methodist.

That means in an intro class of 35 students, only four would claim to be United Methodist.

“It’s not really all that important what the percentage of students may be United Methodist, and it isn’t even terribly important whether they become Methodist. What really matters is whether the institution, which the United Methodist Church owns, is doing the best job it can do to educate people for the society,” said William Lawrence, dean of the Perkins School of Theology.

According to Lawrence, the statistics are probably accurate but incomplete. Because a student’s religious preference is self-reported, a student could say they are Protestant or Christian, when they are actually a member of the United Methodist denomination.

“Most people who are Roman Catholic and take the time to identify themselves won’t indentify themselves as Christians. They will identify themselves as Catholic or Roman Catholic,” said Lawrence.

To get a more realistic view of what these statistics looked like, I asked more than 50 Mustangs the question: what religion are you?

Junior English major Erin Elliot is Methodist. In fact, she gave SMU special attention when applying to colleges, strictly because of its Methodist affiliation. She was hopeful that being Methodist would qualify her for scholarships, as it did at McMurry University, a Methodist institution in Abilene. Elliot quickly learned that SMU did not grant scholarships for being Methodist, unless she was the daughter of a Methodist minister.

Methodist students can apply through their church conferences for scholarships, but the university does not offer any benefits for being Methodist.

“The United Methodist Church owns Southern Methodist University. It’s not that the university is historically tied to the denomination,” said Lawrence, who also serves as the appointed director of church relations for the office of the president.

SMU came into existence because Methodist people raised the first dollars to build it. Dallas Hall was built, and is still here, because Methodists during the first two decades of the 20th century raised the money to build it.

Since Methodism was created in the 18th century, the church has found it a duty to participate in higher education at the university level. The hope is that the university will prepare people to be better doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, ministers and so on, said Lawrence.

For students, like sophomore psychology major Blake Danner and junior finance major Alex Igleheart, the school’s Methodist affiliation had nothing to do with their application process. They heard that the “Methodist” didn’t really mean anything anymore, so they just took it for face value.

Sophomore Maddie Holmes is Catholic, and junior Lisa Rodriguez is Jewish, but that didn’t stop them from coming to SMU and being sorority sisters.

“Well, I’m Baptist, so the Methodist doesn’t really mean anything to me,” said Samantha Thomen, a junior Spanish and biology major.

Even the university’s associate chaplain, Judy Henneberger, isn’t Methodist. She’s Catholic.

On the other hand, the “Methodist” made all the difference to some students when they matriculated.

“I don’t know if I would’ve come here if it wasn’t Methodist,” said Methodist sophomore Chirs Hamilton. He said it’s weird to think about it like that, especially since SMU isn’t very Methodist, and there are now more Catholics than actual United Methodists.

Originally, it was the “M” in SMU that put the Hilltop on junior Stefi Tracy’s radar, but in the end her decision to attend SMU came down to other factors like scholarships, people she had met and the campus’s proximity to home.

When the university was created, it was determined that the name of the institution would not be the same as the name of the church’s denomination. Instead, it would just include the denomination’s identifying term, Methodist, explained Lawrence. If the University had been named directly after the church, it would have been Southern Methodist Episcopal Church South University.

It is significant the church chose not to use the denomination’s name. A church that creates a university wants to make it clear that “this is a university, not a church,” said Lawrence.

In the ’60s, there was a move in church-related institutions to shift away from theology as the central focus of the community, said Associate Chaplin to the University, Judy Henneberger. Thus, it became more secular. Chapel was disbanded and residence hall Bible studies were stopped, but that didn’t take away from the religious activity of students.

Elliot, the Methodist English major, thinks there is very little “Methodist” evident in SMU. Compared to other church-sponsored universities, like Baylor, whose students have to attend chapel, SMU is not overtly religious, she said.

“In fact, I think it tries hard to stray as far from being labeled ‘religious’ as possible -which is a good thing in the eyes of the general public and the academic world, but might not be such a good thing in the eyes of the United Methodist Church,” said Elliot.

Over the years, SMU has changed the way it promotes itself. The Pony Up campaign and the SMU abbreviation alone, lend itself to little religious spotlight. Although the United Methodist Church’s South Central jurisdiction owns every inch of the sidewalks and every brick of the buildings, you won’t find the church and steeple on the university’s letterhead.

It’s not just the secular world that is responsible for this shift in focus on the church’s relation to the college. This generation of students has learned to compartmentalize their lives, said Henneberger. It is second nature for some of them to keep religion pegged to Sunday mornings and Sunday mornings only.

The Methodist tradition and heritage is that education happens when you open it to all, said Hennenberger.

“Religious denominations may properly establish institutions of higher learning, but any institution which is dedicated solely to the perpetuation of a narrow, secretarian point of view fall far short of the standards of higher learning,” said SMU’s first president, Dr. Robert Stewart Hyer in 1916.

The “M” in SMU is by no means an evangelical funnel that narrows the student body to just Methodists. It is more like a “made-by tag” that reminds students of the school’s origin and owner.

Actually, the “U” is the most important letter in SMU, said sophomore Catholic Maddie Holmes.

Junior Claire Allen agreed, saying the “U” represents a collective student body and that’s what SMU is all about.