Journal of College Student Development

Abstract:

This paper focuses on how undergraduate students on five public university campuses perceived and reacted to religious coercion. We identified three sources of coercion: (a) public proselytizers, (b) peers, and (c) academic faculty whose expression of beliefs was perceived as implicitly coercive by students who often connected religious beliefs to political ideology. This paper makes significant contributions to conversations about the place of religion in education, a topic that is often neglected by educational researchers. Our findings demonstrate that worldview coercion is complex, multi-dimensional, and not restricted to explicit or public forms. Further, the findings provide insights on the manifestations of Christian privilege in the public sphere and invite further discussion about religion in education.