When Spiritual Coercion Shows Up on Campus

Well, the day finally arrived—just as I told her it would.

Almost a decade after our first conversation about it, my daughter was ambushed at lunch with “God’s plan for salvation.”
Spiritual coercion in broad daylight.

When she was ten, I wrote a blog getting her opinion on The Four Spiritual Laws. Her clarity and wisdom caught me off guard. Talking with her felt a bit like sitting with medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich—grounded, intuitive, and utterly unbothered by fear-based theology.

So when I dropped her off at college, I knew it was only a matter of time.

Within the first few weeks, hints began to surface:

• enthusiastic new upperclassmen friends
• pickleball and movie night invites
• a slight… “agenda” in the air

After attending one group gathering at their request, she told them it wasn't her thing so would not go again, but she'd be happy to play pickleball and hang out with them.

“Time will tell if they’re in it for the long haul with me as their project,” she said.

So when they asked her to lunch last Friday, she sighed,
“I’m sure it’s not just to enjoy my company.”

She was right.

“Mom, it was like they were possessed,” she told me later.
“I just watched them go through a script. They asked questions they didn’t actually want answers to—or only wanted the right answers.”

They began questioning her beliefs about God and humanity's relationship with God, trying to usher her toward Original Sin. She responded:
“I see evidence of God in nature and art. Every piece of art reflects the artist.”

Polite nods.
But hands tightening on the steering wheel.

So she stopped them.
“I believe in Original Goodness, not Original Sin.”

She said it with the same matter-of-fact wisdom she had at ten years old when she critiqued the cross-as-bridge drawing (read: A 10-Year-Old's Response to the 4 Spiritual Laws).

But they carried on with Adam and Eve, shame, guilt.
How did she describe it to me?—Inherited trauma dressed as gospel.

“They just couldn’t accept that I was okay with my spiritual life,” she said. “To them, it didn’t count until I repented according to the script.”
“Yeah, well,” I told her, “Good News needs no convincing.”
"Seriously!" she responded.

They continued the questions, asking if she grew up in church and if she was a part of one now. Yes, she went to church for a long time but no longer attended. Each Sunday morning she FaceTimes her family for reflection and prayer. She went on to share she how her mom was a former youth pastor who got her Masters in Divinity.

But none of it counted.
Not because it wasn’t spirituality--
but because it wasn’t their definition of church.

“And, let's be honest, Mom, your training and position don’t matter to them because you’re a woman.”

I asked her how she felt afterward.
“Gross,” she said, with a full-body shudder. 
“Angry. And honestly, I pity them. Their image of God is just awful.”

She added:
“It’s not that I don’t believe in sin—obviously evil exists. It’s just not the starting place. They weren’t going to listen so I just left it there.”

My daughter wasn’t merely disagreeing with their theology--
she was naming something ancient.
Original Goodness.

This isn’t progressive sentimentality.
It’s the first declaration of Scripture:
God saw all that was made and called it very good.

Before sin, before shame, before doctrine--
blessing comes first.

Julian of Norwich knew this.
The mystics never forgot the divine starting place.

Original Goodness doesn’t deny the reality of harm.
It simply refuses to make sin the headline of the human story.
We begin in love, not in lack.

And any gospel that relies on pressure or shame isn’t Good News at all.

After our conversation, I opened ChatGPT and—with a few prompts and some playful imagining—began co-creating an imagined dialogue between Julian of Norwich and the college evangelists in the presence of my daughter.

Let’s just say Julian holds nothing back.

I can’t wait to share it with you next week.
__________________________
A few questions to ponder: 

• When have I felt pressured, coerced, or “managed” in a faith conversation?
• How might embracing Original Goodness shift the way I approach my own spiritual life?
• How do I sense the difference between genuine spiritual friendship and evangelistic recruiting?
• Have I ever tried to “fix” someone else’s beliefs instead of listening?

-Reprinted with permission by Kasey Hitt, MDiv, WTC Co-founder & Director of the School of Spiritual Direction