Abstract
Fluid socio-cultural ecologies that reflect historical events and their actors have led to particular religious groups being promoted or persecuted. This article explores how religiously minoritized youth are identified considering local and global contexts. I apply a phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) to understanding regularities and variations in development through a person-centered, relational, holistic lens that considers the intersection of multiple identities. Relatedly, I outline broad conceptual tools that center on how orientations to in-group vs out-group religious and intersecting identities and related experiences align with a range of research methods to reflect such complexity. I suggest ways to study religious and spiritual influences of religiously minoritized youth that are specific to the faith tradition and particular youth’s circumstances in a holistic manner when these issues are a focal area of study, and when they emerge as relevant to other inquiries. Finally, I consider how understanding religiously minoritized youth, their peers, and mentors can be applied to educational, health care, and community settings to inform equitable practice and policy.
Scholars leading the study of the psychology of religion have acknowledged that a Protestant Christian orientation has dominated the field (see Hill & Pargament, 2003; King & Boyatzis, 2015), with limited attention to contextual and cultural variations (Cohen, 2009). The focus on “dominant [research] practices serve[s] to overlook, silence, or dismiss knowledge by and for racial/ethnic minority populations” (Syed et al., 2018, p. 2), which marginalizes the complex experiences of youth who are religiously, and often multiply, minoritized. Beyond the psychology of religion, more broadly, the field of psychology naturalizes patterns observed in WEIRD settings (i.e., Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic; Henrich et al., 2010) and ascribes them to the global majority. To support redressing these omissions, I 1 propose strategies to help understand regularities and variations in the development of religiously minoritized youth.
Understanding religiously minoritized youth locates their development within a broader conceptualization of the role of religion and spirituality in human functioning. Within contemporary psychology scholarship, religiousness and spirituality (R/S) have been studied as separate constructs and also separated from other dimensions of human development (see Benson et al., 2012; Mattis et al., 2006; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2005). Instead, we focus on the personal, social, and theological factors historically included within the construct of religion in the psychology of religion literature (James, 1902). These factors are also integrated in many cultural and religious worldviews (Mattis et al., 2006) and salient to youth and adults in myriad ways. An integrated R/S framework encompasses public (e.g., worship service attendance) and private aspects (e.g., beliefs, salience, identity, and prayer/meditation; Hardy et al., 2019).
Recognizing that fluid socio-historical realities designate individuals within R/S groups as being religiously minoritized or privileged, this article provides criteria for designating religiously minoritized status. Furthermore, it suggests a conceptual framing to account for person-context variations. Next, it outlines salient aspects of social contexts and religious content, noting their implications on youth’s development and functioning. While acknowledging a growing understanding of youth’s religious developmental trajectories, this article responds to calls to better elucidate religious processes. Specifically, Hardy et al. (2019) note that, “we know a lot about the ‘what’ in terms of ‘what’ outcomes R/S are linked to, but we know less about the ‘who,’ ‘where, ‘when,’ ‘why,’ and ‘how’ in terms of the processes linking R/S to such outcomes” (p. 244). Accordingly, this article explores how religiously minoritized youth navigate contexts that include discrimination through identity development, socialization, and preparation for bias. It concludes by outlining implications for researchers and practitioners, including how our ability to recognize religious references (i.e., religious literacy) promotes development for all youth while contributing to ecologically inclusive scholarship.
Defining key terms and constructs
Understanding key constructs salient to religious minority/minoritized status reflects the comparative numbers of people with particular religious affiliations within a social context, and their relative power. The Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights of the United Nations (UN, 2023) defines a minority group as: An ethnic, religious or linguistic minority is any group of persons constituting less than half of the population in the entire territory of a State whose members share common characteristics of culture, religion or language, or a combination of any of these.
Numeric vulnerability, along with possible asymmetric power relations, contribute to the marginalization of groups. The UN and humanitarian groups seek to safeguard rights of minoritized groups and to ensure that civic societies maintain adequate social inclusion and cohesion (UN, 2023). Despite shared definitions and espoused values, shifting socio-political contexts contribute to inconsistent designations of which groups are afforded protected status and how to manage alleged violations of human rights, particularly as related to religiously minoritized status (UN, 2023). Historic and contemporary migration, missions, and colonization contribute to changing dynamics of which groups have religious minority/minoritized status. Ironically, legal protections often shelter groups in power, rather than protecting vulnerable groups or addressing broader humanitarian concerns (Ghanea, 2012). Although relevant, an analysis of religiously implicated genocidal events (e.g., Holocaust, British Civil War in Ireland, Bosnian War, forced removal from land of Indigenous people, and Muslim Rohingya targeted by Myanmar military) is beyond the scope of this article (c.f., Bartov & Mack, 2001; Midlarsky, 2019). Rather, we focus on the ways religious marginalization affects development through particular R/S experiences. For example, religiously minoritized individuals may have religiously or culturally informed symbols, holidays, rites and practices, pilgrimages, dietary codes, calendars, and language of worship that differ from those of the majority community (Ghanea, 2012). While religious practices that differ from those prevalent among the numerical majority do not dictate their marginalization, complex intergroup dynamics affect how majority groups and institutions accommodate people and their underrepresented practices within a shared context.
Fluid and relative religious minority status
The socio-cultural context determines which affiliations are rendered minority or majority. Furthermore, the context designates the status of a particular religious majority or minority affiliation, and of religiousness generally. Multiple and fluid contextual features include the international climate of religious minority-majority relations, including national and regional circumstances. For example, the historic 1960 election of John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic president in the United States was record setting, but current Catholic political contenders are considered “normative” given changing attitudes in the United States about the relevance of the Protestant-Catholic divide (Brewer, 2003). Relatedly, individuals with a dominant religious affiliation may alter their practices or attitudes about other religions if a change in context renders them a religious minority (e.g., a US Protestant Christian family that accepts a work assignment in Saudi Arabia or India).
Within the United States, Christians remain the dominant religious group who enjoy privileges, such as having primary religious celebrations recognized as federal holidays, and other benefits that are inaccessible to adherents of other faith groups or to non-religious people (Schlosser, 2003). In addition, within Christianity, some denominations have marginalized status (e.g., Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses), with less status relative to their counterparts from larger or more “mainstream” Christian groups (Schlosser, 2003). The institutional and psychosocial impact of Christianity is so profound that Schlosser (2003) describes it serving as the “nonconscious ideology” (Bem & Bem, 1970, p. 89) of the United States. For example, the First Amendment to the US Constitution is largely referred to as the Establishment Clause and describes the separation between Church and State. As evidenced by the language, there is an assumption that the Christian term “Church” represents a shared sacred meaning (Schlosser, 2003). Because not all people who are religious refer to their place of worship as a church, more inclusive language would describe a separation between religion and/or spirituality and state or government.
Within the United States, scholars have described three broad tiers of religious status: all Christian denominations, including those that may be marginalized within Christianity (noted earlier), non-Christian (e.g., Ba’hi, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh), and atheist, agnostic, or un/disaffiliated (Small, 2011). For religiously minoritized or non-religious individuals, exclusionary religious language and differential treatment based on religious affiliation are examples of institutional insensitivity, with material and psychological effects on the individual that may be similar in form and function as other systemic forms of discrimination (Schlosser, 2003).
In addition to context defining religiously privileged or minoritized status, the socio-political context informs the level of religious salience. For example, youth living in areas with hostility or violence between religious groups may have encounters that raise the salience of their own religious identification, particularly compared to peers who have not been exposed to religious hostility. In social contexts where conflict between religious groups or where religious affiliation determines in-group vs out-group membership, societally salient features are likely to emerge as salient to individuals (Allport, 1954). In generally secular, low-practicing, or religiously homogeneous communities, religion is less likely to play a prominent role in society and, by extension, for many individuals. The degree to which an individual’s R/S practices “fit” within a particular context, then, may vary by how their religious practice and salience relates to norms within regional or geographic contexts, such as the “Bible Belt” in the South, or New England representing the least religious area of the United States (Smith & Denton, 2005).
Complex factors within a socio-historical context contribute to people being privileged or marginalized for intersecting religious, economic, cultural, race-based, and gendered reasons. Some members of marginalized religious groups cope with stressors of discrimination (e.g., religious slurs) that create qualitatively different identity tasks with negative implications on mental health (Nadal et al., 2010). Furthermore, coping with discrimination and a barrage of toxic messages about one’s group may lead to internalizing negative attitudes (Tatum, 2003). For example, the post 9-11 socio-political climate in the United States resulted in Muslims being de-Americanized and “religionized” because of their affiliation with Islam (Mir, 2014, p. 6). Beyond religiously minoritized status, the global conflict and fears of backlash escalated the stakes of identity development for Muslim youth, who needed to reconcile whether to center or downplay their religious affiliation to feel safe (Sirin & Fine, 2008). Consequently, religious coping and functioning for Muslim and other religiously targeted groups may reflect intergenerational trauma and internalized oppression given colonial or other forms of unjust histories and their contemporary manifestations (Awad et al., 2019; Deloria, 2023).
Given that religious practices of religiously minoritized youth differ from those prevalent within the “mainstream,” religiously minoritized youth may navigate a range of reactions by members of the majority. Some may encounter dissonance or ridicule of “foreign” practices, contributing to challenges to reconcile beliefs and practices (Bowman & Small, 2013). Experiencing negative peer or societal reactions may contribute to pressures for youth to disaffiliate or code-switch, where they vary or suppress practices based on the context. Nested within societal contexts, religious enclaves (e.g., religiously based organizations, clubs, and schools) provide intentional alternatives where otherwise religiously minoritized individuals can experience varied degrees of in-group membership or shared affinity (e.g., Jewish student at a Jewish day school, Hindu student at a Quaker school). Given differing contexts, youth may experience a mix of marginalization and affirmation based on religion or culture, which may create dissonance between private regard (i.e., a feeling about one’s own affiliation and beliefs) and public regard (i.e., how an individual responds to other people’s perceptions) of their religious group (Rivas-Drake et al., 2009). Considering that local and global socio-historical contexts define which groups are religiously minoritized, we provide a conceptual framing to account for regularities and variations in the development of religiously minoritized youth.
Conceptual framings within socio-cultural contexts
King and Boyatzis (2015) posit that, “there is no satisfactory ‘grand theory’ of religious and spiritual development” that captures the depth and complexity of R/S development (p. 980). In addition, early R/S developmental theories have been critiqued for reflecting a mainly Piagetian cognitive framework of universal learning stages (King & Boyatzis, 2015), which diminishes emotional and social aspects of beliefs and religious experiences. To provide an inclusive conceptual framework of R/S development that reflects interlocking physical, cognitive, social, and emotional domains and accounts for regularities and variations of youth, including those who are religiously minoritized, we draw from the holistic, ecologically grounded, and intersectional perspective represented in the phenomenological variant in ecological system theory (PVEST; Spencer, 1995, 2006). PVEST provides a framework for understanding people’s direct lived experiences and their meaning making about their realities (i.e., phenomenological), while explicitly outlining systemic factors, such as racism and asymmetrical power relations, that are particularly salient to individuals with minoritized identities.
Other R/S theories have drawn from cultural developmental psychology (Jensen, 2012, 2015), with relational developmental systems (RDS) highlighting the bi-directional connections between individuals and systems surrounding them (Lerner et al., 2015; Overton, 2013). While RDS explores the fit (i.e., coinciding and conflicting) between individuals and their contexts, the lack of direct attention to the imbalanced interplay between individuals and cultural, religious, and social systems masks the experiences of negotiating intersecting identities across contexts. To further support understanding religiously minoritized youth’s diverse experiences, the “Specificity Principle” from acculturation science facilitates considering interactions between specific individuals, at specific times, in specific places, through specific processes (Bornstein, 2017). In particular, we highlight interconnections between salient aspects of context that inform youth’s personal meaning making regarding specific religious content.
Context
Context specifies which groups are in the numerical minority or majority, as well the degree to which diversity is linked with harmonious religious pluralism or socially stratified developmental systems with asymmetrical status resulting in marginalization. PVEST acknowledges that youth and families are anchored within socially stratified contexts, where discrimination, oppression, and segregation affect the developmental competencies of all youth, marginalizing some while privileging others (García Coll et al., 1996; Spencer, 2017). For example, negative sentiments like prejudice or religious bias (e.g., anti-Semitism, Islamophobia) may result in violence (e.g., religiously targeted hate crimes, genocide), particularly within contexts with asymmetric power. Because violence can extend beyond perceived religious affiliation and include additional identity categories, an intersectional perspective accounts for multiple identities simultaneously (e.g., ethnicity or tribe, class, gender, sexuality, and immigrant status) to explain the unequal distribution of status and vulnerability across contexts (Crenshaw, 1989; Spencer, 2017).
Person-centered interpretations in context
Across stratified contexts, a phenomenological approach (i.e., accounting for an individual’s perspective on a phenomena or experiences) highlights a person’s meaning making (Spencer, 2017). Moving beyond deterministic assumptions highlights that similar events may have varied implications on the people who experience them, depending on the nuances of the situation and how a person reflects on them at that point as well as over time. For example, focusing on an experience, such as being labeled as religiously minoritized, does not have a “standard” or singular effect on people. Reductionist approaches presume a particular reaction, obscuring the varied ways people may navigate and make meaning of life events. For example, while some people may be willing, pressured, or actively seek to “represent” or be a spokesperson for their religious group, others may prefer to remain inconspicuous and perhaps disassociate from marginalized religious affiliation. Some individuals may fluidly code-switch or vary behaviors in response to internal and external indicators or factors (Abo-Zena, 2011). To reiterate, a PVEST framework attends to person-specific variations in how individuals react to similar experiences (i.e., being considered religiously minoritized), within stratified systems and proximal ecological contexts.
Religious content as context
Understanding the influential role of R/S on youth’s development within particular contexts requires attending to the specific content embodied in R/S teachings. Particularly for religiously minoritized youth, religious constructs salient to them may differ or be unrepresented within broader social contexts, including scholarship on R/S (e.g., ritual impurity and sexual purity). Fundamentally, R/S teachings may differ from scholarly developmental perspectives of “lifespan” that are typically linear and range from “cradle to grave” or birth to death. Other worldviews include varied phases of prelife and/or afterlife or circular views of life or time that may reflect connections with Ancestors, place, or reincarnations of body-spirit (Deloria, 2023). The nature of beliefs about life and time or “lifespan” affects how one lives and guides others to live.
R/S teachings vary in the values they promote (e.g., enlightenment, glorifying and worshipping God, leading an ethical life, nurturing the cardinal human and place relationships) and the nature, form, and frequency of behaviors they encourage or require (e.g., chanting, prayer, meditation, pilgrimage, missionary work, almsgiving, and serving people in need; Smith, 2009). Particularly for religiously minoritized youth, beliefs and behaviors prioritized in their tradition may vary or even conflict with those of other faith traditions or ones normalized within “mainstream” culture or modern society, such as substance use and premarital sex (Abo-Zena & Ahmed, 2014).
A range of intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect whether youth adhere to or possibly seek guidelines that reflect religious content. Especially for socially conservative religious groups, many of whom are also religiously minoritized, youth’s negotiations are visible in everyday decisions, including religious appearance (e.g., kesh or uncut hair, daggar, wig, veil, and kippeh). Particularly tenuous negotiations include intimate and romantic relationships, given religious and/or cultural guidelines on the sanctification of sex. Although coupling and dating are common and often an informal rite of passage during adolescence, some religious youth or ones from religious families may face challenges navigating desires and pressures related to sexual intimacy prior to marriage (Regnerus & Uecker, 2010). Similarly, religious teachings may inform attitudes about pursuing relationships with those from other ethno-religious groups or same-sex relationships, contributing to stressors (Brewster et al., 2016). While certain exploring behaviors may be of limited concern to some adolescents and their families, for others, many of who are religiously minoritized, the sanctions may be considerable.
Finally, familiarity with religious content helps scholars recognize and better understand religious practices and symbols that may not have analogs or might differ qualitatively from ones represented in scholarship. Examples of religious content that may be central to religiously minoritized youth but are underrepresented in scholarship include women’s ritual impurity within Judaism and Islam (Abo-Zena, 2019; Yanay & Rapoport, 1997), required or recommended mission work for Jehovah’s Witnesses or Latter Day Saints (Cole, 2019; Neilson, 2015), and how the Gurung people Indigenous to Nepal center the five elements of earth, air, fire, water, and ether (Ty et al., 2023). Familiarity with diverse religious content is essential to contextualize how common and underrepresented R/S experiences, beliefs, and practices may lead to different cultural and developmental expectations and outcomes. Accordingly, a PVEST-influenced understanding of religiously minoritized youth attends to the socio-political and stratified context, youth’s personal interpretation of experiences, and the specific content of R/S teachings in order to detect regularities and variations in development.
Regularities and variations experienced by religiously minoritized youth
Starting as young children as part of “normative” developmental processes and across diverse contexts, youth of all identities make meaning around varied experiences, including ones with R/S import. R/S experiences include experiences within and beyond traditions in which they are being socialized as well as their own processing of R/S beliefs, doubts, and transcendence.
Regularities in R/S development
Major theories of adolescent religious development (see Levesque, 2002) suggest three major themes (Barry et al., 2022). First, rules regarding participation in religious practices (e.g., prayer, membership in a religious community) promote the formation of a mother-structure which frames how youth relate to a higher power. The structure’s content is formed through contexts, people, and experiences and is incorporated into a person’s larger cognitive structures of beliefs and judgments. Second, faith development anchors what people believe and center their lives around. This meaning-making process is thought to occur in a stepwise sequence fueled mostly by cognitive development where adolescents form a synthetic-conventional faith, which may integrate contradictory beliefs and values. As youth develop critical thinking and they can articulate personal faith commitments beyond adhering to conventions or rules, youth form individuative-reflective faith (Fowler & Dell, 2006), which may continue developing through adulthood. Third, faith development integrates what individuals are exposed to, taught, or socialized into, and reflects their subsequent cognitive interpretations of earlier experiences (Elkind, 1971). This theoretical approach integrates socialization influences with cognitive processes to explain how children internalize particular values, beliefs, and morals.
Variations in R/S development for religiously minoritized youth
Building on R/S theoretical approaches to account for person-centered variations among all youth, we now focus on varied patterns related to religiously minoritized status. Contexts and youth’s meaning making about experiences within them reflect religious content. Based on stratified contexts, we focus on religiously minoritized youths’ differentiated sensitivity, identity development, socialization, and experiences of discrimination or bias.
Differentiated sensitivity
Starting in early childhood, religiously minoritized youth may sense that their identities and practices are rendered invisible in public contexts as compared to celebrated ones (e.g., Santa Claus in the mall, Christmas lights decorating public and private property, Christmas songs on the radio and television). Like preparing racially and ethnically minoritized youth for bias (Hughes & Chen, 1997), religiously minoritized youth (many of whom are also ethnically or racially minoritized) may be prepared by their caregivers to be cognizant of messages that threaten their religious beliefs, practices, or identity. As such, religious socialization within religious groups (i.e., at home, community contexts, religious schools, and places of worship) may contribute to differentiated or heightened sensitivity to religious messages, including discriminatory ones. Caregivers may reluctantly yet intentionally socialize children toward heightened sensitivity to proactively counter implicit, negative social messages about their faith group. For youth whose families seek to support a high level of religious commitment, religious socialization may increase awareness of perceived religious discrimination to help counter social expectations that tend toward secularism or reduced levels of religious practices. Similarly, youth who consider religion or spirituality salient to them are more likely to have heightened sensitivity to religious issues.
Identity development
Religious beliefs and attitudes were features of Erikson’s (1950, 1968) original identity scholarship, and questions about religion were incorporated into the protocol developed by Marcia (1966) and reflected in the statuses (i.e., identity diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement). Regularities and variations related to identity development as a whole and R/S identity in particular can better be understood by drawing on the Specificity Principle. Generally, exploration outside a faith tradition may be discouraged depending on religious content and ideological (in)flexibility, or the level of desired orthopraxy by the family or youth, particularly if strict (De Bruin-Wassinkmaat et al., 2019). Beyond identity statuses, current scholarship considers process-oriented exploration in breadth (i.e., multiple identity options), commitment making, exploration in depth (i.e., concentrated investigation of a single option), and identification with commitment, which may facilitate and deepen identity (Luyckx et al., 2006).
Both the content and the context of a particular religion may affect the likelihood and consequences of inter-religious and intra-religious exploration. For example, particularly in highly religious families where parents stress control, there has been mixed evidence about the short and long-term results of control (i.e., minimal intra-religious exploration) on youth religiousness as they develop and experience autonomy (Armet, 2009). Within religious communities, caregivers may learn communication strategies to promote “safe” dimensions of exploration and meaning making, particularly if families have prescriptive discourse styles (Dollahite et al., 2018; Dollahite & Thatcher, 2008). Lack of exploration, particularly in highly religious families, may preclude the possibility of youth developing their own capacity to integrate their faith commitment into their overall identity. For example, youth who are socialized into orthodox religious beliefs but have not explored them may experience tensions navigating issues including abortion, medical treatment, and defining values regarding personal autonomy, tolerance, and individuality (Armet, 2009; Boyatzis et al., 2006). Attitudes about inter-religious and intra-religious exploration may be informed by the doctrine of the religious tradition itself, as well as the socio-cultural context. For example, theologically liberal traditions (e.g., Unitarian Universalist) allow for greater degrees of inter-religious exploration, while more conservative or fundamental religions (e.g., Orthodox Judaism) are generally less likely to encourage deep inter-religious exploration but promote intra-religious study. Additional variability in exploration patterns emerged in a longitudinal study of how 16 second-generation Muslim, Bangledeshi-American youth integrated Western and Islamic ideologies, describing some as internal seekers, exploring faith matters within their religion, and others as external seekers, exploring outside the religion or disaffiliating (Chaudhury & Miller, 2008).
Societal contexts affect boundaries of religious identity explorations, with implications for commitments and practice. Within the United States, religiously minoritized youth are more likely than peers from mainstream religions to incorporate aspects of other religions (Smith & Denton, 2005). Particularly for religiously minoritized youth, centering intra-religious exploration through gradual immersion in broader social contexts and relatively more sophisticated relationships may support developing nuanced understandings of R/S experiences (Good & Willoughby, 2008). Furthermore, some argue that being religiously minoritized provides an opportunity for developing intentional commitments given that strongly held religious beliefs that are reinforced by the surrounding group may make it difficult for religious majority youth to construct complex or divergent thoughts about religion (Kroger, 2007).
Given holistic identity development, religious identity relates to other domains including ethnicity, gender, and vocation (Erikson, 1968), with religious identity thought to progress later in adolescence and early adulthood (Archer, 1982; Kroger, 2007). Holistic identity development of religiously minoritized immigrant-origin youth includes navigating acculturation stressors (i.e., pressures to assimilate and remain ethno-religiously distinct) at personal, familial, and community levels, often with limited support and conflicting expectations (Abo-Zena & Rana, 2015; Phalet et al., 2018). For example, a study of Muslim college student participants in the United States living on campus reported some seeking “fundamental” religious teachings to parse sacred religious teachings from culturally influenced ones they had been socialized in at home (Levitt et al., 2011). Particularly for highly “devoted” youth, cultural and ethnic influences became less salient in favor of religious ones (Levitt et al., 2011).
Cultural, ethnic, and religious communities are often gendered, as evidenced by gender-differentiated practices, rituals, and leadership roles across faith traditions. Although the gendered aspects of religious communities may be readily observed, Mattis (2014) contends that there is inadequate scholarly linkage between gender and R/S outcomes throughout the lifespan. In addition to complex ethno-religious values, limitations are due partly to the conflation between gender, sex, and sexuality and the complex ways they affect expectations, roles, relationships, and emotions. Analyzing how gender operates in the social world, particularly within feminist theologian and religious contexts, provides nuanced insights into authority, leadership, and caregiving/caretaking (Mattis, 2014). Furthermore, gender constructs may be perceived differently within and across faith traditions, ranging from binary or distinct categories to historically affirming and acknowledging third-gender people (e.g., Hijra of India). Yet, inclusive or fluid gender representations may violate some religious teachings with varied implications for religiously minoritized groups and individuals depending on how youth make meaning regarding particular religious teachings. Similarly, how individuals integrate LGBTQ and religious identities depends on the content of religious teachings and the nature of acceptance within a particular congregation or religious group (Fuist, 2016). In a study of Latter-day Saint youth with same-sex attraction, attempts to reconcile sexuality with conflicting religious teachings led to compartmentalization of identities despite considerable psychosocial costs, integration usually through the support of family or community members, or disaffiliation or rejection of one of the identities (Dehlin et al., 2015). Understanding the R/S identity of religiously minoritized youth considers their identity development holistically (e.g., incorporating gender, ethnicity, sexuality, vocational, and political), occurs in a contextual manner that accounts for broad and proximal influences, and includes particular religious teachings and their salience to identity processes and meaning making over time. Individuals develop over time, and in relation to others, which highlights the importance of religious socialization.
Religious socialization and transmission
By intentional design or default, caregivers usually lead religious socialization across generations of families (Bengtson, 2017). Socialization processes include identity agents (i.e., who and how), and particular socialization content (i.e., what; Hardy et al., 2011). Klingenberg and Sjö (2019) review how religious socialization has been conceptualized and researched, defining it as “the process in which an individual comes to hold preferences in relation to dimensions understood as religious in the surrounding context” (p. 174). Developmental psychology and family science scholars describe religious socialization processes, which include symbolic references and meaning making, observing spiritual and religious behavior models, engaging in religious rituals and activities, and channeling children into social groups and contexts that support religious identity (see Barry et al., 2022; Oman, 2013). In their study of intergenerational religious transmission, Smith and Adamczyk (2021) report that a majority of parents attempt to pass religion on to their children partly through “osmosis,” where religion is cultivated through indirect, everyday ways. Curating elements of R/S in their children’s physical and social spaces may be part of a parent’s subtle religious socialization within the broader goal of religious transmission (Stanford et al., 2023). Furthermore, families may engage in regular service such as preparing, delivering, or serving food to families experiencing food scarcity, practically conveying multiple religious messages about the value of service, compassion and empathy toward others, thankfulness for blessings, and the import of doing good.
Caregivers may intentionally expose their children to specific religious behaviors, environments, or communities within and beyond their household (e.g., religious youth group, religious camp or retreat, interfaith event, and shrine), a mechanism that reinforces religious socialization that scholars have described as “channeling” (Cornwall, 1988; Martin et al., 2003). Channeling practices serve robust functions. For example, caregivers may channel learning by enrolling their young children in religious education programs, which may include instruction in a liturgical language. To illustrate, young Jewish children receive Hebrew language instruction, which prepares them for bar/bah Mitzvah in early adolescence. For Jewish families supporting youth with developmental or language processing disabilities, religious preparation requires navigating challenges of literacy-based requirements of the ritual (Vogel & Reiter, 2003) along with immersion in the festive and social dimension of the rite of passage.
Channeling socialization experiences occur within interconnected ecological regional, neighborhood, school, and family contexts. To illustrate, an exploratory study of identity formation among Jewish adolescents in two Canadian cities attempted to identify the role of neighborhood context for Jewish youth in Jewish dominant and non-dominant neighborhoods (Markstrom et al., 1998). The neighborhood context co-varied considerably with the school type, where many parents in the Jewish-dominant neighborhood also enrolled their children in Jewish schools. Choices parents make regarding schools and neighborhoods highlight the need to study the range of parental socialization practices related to religion and the degree to which families are agentic. Parental decisions about residential neighborhoods reflect socio-economic status, ethnic differences related to being Ashkenazi or Sephardic, and religious differences rooted in the branches of Judaism (Markstrom et al., 1998). Even within a single religiously minoritized group (i.e., Jewish), within-group variations inform developmental contexts and processes and how individuals orient to them (James et al., 2014).
The channeling process includes selecting identity agents who help youth mediate larger social influences (Schachter & Ventura, 2008), which is often a particularly high priority for parents of religiously minoritized youth. For example, within the Jewish-public religious sector in Israel, a study of 2691 students (grades 9–12) in 152 classes of 25 schools investigated the effects of religious education on student religious identity over and above parent religiosity by examining student perceptions of teacher caring and teachers as role-model. Results found that in addition to parental religiosity, adolescents perceived their teachers as role models and their religious studies as meaningfully affecting their religious identity processes when students considered the educational context as accommodating religious exploration (Cohen-Malayev et al., 2014). In addition to religious schools, community leaders and families develop programs that facilitate youth development, including mission trips, religious youth groups, religious retreats, and religious summer camps, where mentors are primary identity agents. Summer camps have been found to bring a range of positive influences on youth related to self-efficacy and exposure to nature, with a particular focus on religiously focused summer camps (Schnitker et al., 2014).
Religious peers and social media are potential identity agents that provide pervasive socialization influences on youth, with varied effects depending on the source, content, and intended recipient (Schwartz et al., 2006). For example, while religious youth are less likely than their peers to use alcohol, a longitudinal study of Indonesian Muslim peers found partial mediation effects based on involvement with alcohol-using peers, suggesting further research exploring the role of mediators and moderators to explain multidirectional, gendered influences on youth religiosity (French et al., 2022). In channeling the selection of friends, a family’s socialization efforts often go beyond specific religious identity messages to encompass related values and identities. For example, a review of scholarship on immigrant-origin youth and families indicated that many select events that are co-religious and co-ethnic, to integrate religious transmission with ethnic or cultural socialization (Abo-Zena & Rana, 2015). Relatedly, families of Sikh and Indigenous parents report incorporating positive ethno-religious socialization messages in community programming, partly to counter negative external social messages about in-group memberships (Rana & Lara-Cooper, 2021). These programs illustrate how youth, families, and social groups seek to integrate marginalized identities by co-creating a hybrid “third space” that houses alternative social representations between dominant and unequal cultural models (Bhabha & Rutherford, 2006).
Religious socialization and pride
Drawing from intentional messaging by African American parents to help Black children cope with racism and promote well-being, we build on two dimensions of the racial socialization literature (Hughes, 2003): Cultural Socialization (i.e., messages about ethnic pride, history, and heritage) and Preparation for Bias (i.e., messages about discrimination and racial bias) to include religious history and heritage. While the earlier discussion of religious socialization focused on the transmission of knowledge and faith tradition, this dimension of religious socialization centers on emotional transmission related to pride in the history of the religious group and its members. Focusing on positive messaging may expose religiously minoritized youth to content about their group designated as God’s “chosen” people (Gurkan, 2008), to contemporary scientific findings that confirm messages in their holy texts (Abo-Zena, 2013), or to current or historic heroic actions or values by faith partners. Religious socialization that focuses on pride promotes youth’s positive connections to their faith and other believers. Functionally, positive religious socialization provides a buffer to negative messages, bias, or discrimination regarding their religious affiliation.
Preparation for religious bias
Given stratified contexts, religiously minoritized youth are more likely to cope with religious discrimination, bias, and microaggressions than peers of mainstream religious affiliations (Nadal et al., 2010). Religiously minoritized youth face singular or repeated experiences of perceived religious discrimination, including current or historical trauma, pervasive institutional stress, and hostile institutional and interpersonal interactions (Awad et al., 2019). Having their ascribed religious affiliation singled out by others or questioned makes their affiliation notable, even if their faith was not particularly salient to their identity. Religiously minoritized youth, those with no religious affiliation, or whose commitments are seen as requiring conservative behaviors (e.g., refraining from alcohol, or sex, requiring prayer) may be stigmatized by peers, adults, and media (Smith & Denton, 2005). This stigma includes the general relegation of religion in US society, and the prevalence of negative social images about Islam and Muslims (Amer & Bagasra, 2013).
Being socially marginalized and experiencing religious discrimination may contribute to physical or psychological fear, with risks to well-being and ongoing group affiliation. Strong anti-Islamic sentiments after 9/11 resulted in an uptick in hate crimes targeting Muslims, with Sikh men and boys suffering through cases of mistaken identity. An interview study of 23 Sikh parents from 12 families examined parents’ ethno-religious socialization regarding their children’s retention/relinquishment of outward identity markers including boys’ turbans (Rana et al., 2019). To protect Sikh young men from potential harm, most families in the study raised boys to give up wearing the indicators of their ethno-religious group, while taking responsibility to educate the wider community about their ethno-religious practices through direct communication, participation in cultural events, and support of other ethno-religious minorities (Rana et al., 2019). In other cases, Muslim families and Islamic and social organizations (e.g., religious schools, mosques, and mental health providers), prepared children to cope with messages demonizing Muslims and Islam in political discourse and the media (Abdalla & Chen, 2022; Abo-Zena & Saif, 2021). For many youths, including Somali and other Black Muslim youth, marginalization due to intersections between race, religion, and class results in varied outcomes, including distancing themselves from religious practice, moving toward disaffiliation and perhaps drugs or crime, maintaining “mainstream” religious affiliation, and opting for “radical” practice (Abdi, 2015; McGuire et al., 2016). Like other developmental experiences, the range of possible positive and negative developmental outcomes depends on personal and contextual factors. While an experience of discrimination is categorically negative and requires psychological and other assets to cope, such encounters reflect how preparation for bias includes positive religious socialization which can facilitate ongoing awareness of self and others.
Implications, applications, and future directions
Future research and applied practice can broaden understanding of diverse experiences of religiously minoritized youth and inform interventions in a range of educational, health care, and community settings to ensure equitable practice and policy. Because religious discrimination, bias, and bullying based on religious affiliation historically and currently have been state-sponsored forms of violence (e.g., genocide of Indigenous people, anti-Semitism, and Muslim ban), public safety for all requires structural interventions to promote social justice in practice and policy (Abu-Ras et al., 2018). Research regarding the diverse experiences of religiously minoritized youth, guided by the Specificity Principle, can help tailor program features to particular youth. Documenting ineffective approaches (e.g., programs that are poorly attended or evaluated) in engaging youth can guide strategies that reflect religious literacy and support holistic inclusion.
Religious literacy
Researchers, educators, health care providers, and public servants need ongoing opportunities to develop religious literacy to more effectively recognize variations in experiences related to religion and respond accordingly. Religious literacy fosters “the ability to recognize and analyze the fundamental intersections of religion and social, political and cultural life through multiple lenses” (Moore, 2015, p. 4) and is embedded in historical and current globalization and migration that links people and societies of different faiths and cultures. Religious literacy neither promotes nor denigrates religious beliefs or practices and includes non-religion. Alternatively, religious illiteracy leads to overlooking variations within a religion or similarities across religions by flattening perceptions, diminishing respect for diversity, and reinforcing stereotypes, which may contribute to religious extremism or intolerance (Moore, 2016). Relatedly, discrimination based on religious or other affiliation needs to be countered by anti-oppressive efforts to help prepare youth and adults to interact in ways that promote diverse religious identities and just actions around diversity of all types, such as incorporating religious literacy in teacher education programs (Soules & Jafralie, 2021).
Religious literacy helps researchers and practitioners gain rapport and support ecological validity in research with religiously diverse children and families. For example, in-home visits, researchers and practitioners would develop etiquette to respect religiously informed practices (e.g., removing shoes, accepting food, and moderating physical contact) and know how to inquire about features with R/S import, such as wall hangings with religious meaning or faith symbols like altars (Levitt, 2007). Recognizing R/S symbols provides an entry point to engage with youth and families and better understand how R/S influences development holistically.
Religious and intersectional inclusion in applied contexts and scholarship
To prevent religiously marginalized youth from feeling marginalized (Zine, 2022), youth need to be and feel included. Currently, public educational spaces are common contexts for religiously-rooted bullying or marginalization by students and educators, but schools and classrooms can be places where youth are included (Ahmed, 2022). In addition, interventions can build a network of critical care providers who are positioned to advocate for ways to support religiously and multiply minoritized youth and their peers. More broadly, collaborations involving scholars and other stakeholders can reduce religious and other forms of discrimination and increase education about partnering effectively with minoritized communities. Applied efforts can address intergenerational trauma and internalized oppression perpetuated within Muslim and other religiously minoritized communities (Awad et al., 2019). Furthermore, religious pluralism can highlight ways religious, cultural, and social values converge across religious traditions to support sustaining and preserving nature and place given the centrality of environmental stewardship shared by many faith traditions (Szrot, 2021), as well as how to include and navigate important religious and intersectional differences.
Future research can evaluate the efficacy of religiously inclusive interventions, and partner with youth in action research that maps challenges and resources and co-designs multi-level interventions with a range of stakeholders. Researchers can incorporate methods that describe the diverse experiences of religiously minoritized youth in an ecologically valid manner. Some quantitative methods, particularly those with measures or scales not normed on religiously inclusive samples, risk essentializing groups and decontextualizing aspects of religious life (e.g., religious practice) from personal and shared meaning (Dollahite & Marks, 2009). Instead, studying R/S influences of religiously minoritized youth that are specific to the faith tradition and particular youth’s circumstances can be cultivated through mixed methods where R/S issues are the focus of study, and when R/S themes emerge as relevant to other lines of inquiry. To explore regularities and variations in R/S influences, Schachter and Hur (2019) recommend using both idiographic (unique to a specific faith tradition or a particular child) and nomothetic (pancultural) approaches to guide broader understanding of the role of religion and religious socialization agents on development.
Conclusion
Due to their religiously minoritized status, youth experience religious and intersecting dimensions of marginalization, with implications on their religious socialization and identity development. Whether a religious group is high-status or low-status varies over time and given geographical context and transnational events. Given the complex interplay between religious status, culture, and other personal and social factors, understanding the experiences of religiously minoritized youth requires exploring broad socio-historical contexts, specific religious content, and the complex meaning making of individuals about their experiences. While religiously minoritized youth share aspects of religious socialization and identity development processes with their majority peers, their marginalized social status contributes to differentiated levels of sensitivity and variations in person-context fit given particular religious behaviors, beliefs, and social influences. Identity development processes may vary widely given challenges encountering discrimination, bias, or stigma associated with religious status. To counter these issues, youth and families engage in specific types of channeling to promote ethno-religious socialization that builds pride and history, coupled with preparation for bias. To reduce religious and other bias in the socio-cultural context, practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders can develop religious literacy. Increased religious literacy guides how stakeholders include religiously minoritized youth in applied settings and research so that our scholarship reflects the nuance of all youth’s lived experiences.
