identity, religion, and fidelity: an observation of adolescence

Identity, Religion, and Fidelity: An Observation of Adolescence. John Paul Sharp

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John Paul Sharp

February 2013

Identity, Religion, and Fidelity:

An Observation of

Adolescence.


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I am a writer, director, and performing artist living atop the Capitol Hill

neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. For the purposes of furthering my

learning in human development, I sent out a public request on Facebook

with detailed questions for any friends’ adolescent children to answer

regarding development and culture.

I received two responses: one from a singing colleague’s White fifteen-year-

old daughter in Mill Creek, Washington (i.e., “Sally”), and one from my

White seventeen-year-old niece in Wichita, Kansas. Because I do not know

Sally at all, I decided to analyze and compare her answers to my own

experiences, rather than use my niece’s response which may be influenced

by our family relationship.

Freudian ego-psychologist Erik Erikson is perhaps the most well-known

theorist when it comes to adolescence. He expanded upon Freud’s stages of

development and believed adolescents, of approximately twelve to

eighteen years of age, search for their predetermined identity based on

successful resolutions of earlier conflicts (Cramer, Flynn, & LaFave, 1997).

Erikson believed the end-goal of this identity search is fidelity, or purpose

in life. When an adolescent struggles or fails to choose an identity, his or

her individual ego suffers a crisis with consequences that extend far into

adulthood (Côté & Levine, 1982, p. 45).

Religion can be strengthening.

I asked Sally about her goals for her adult life and whether they’ve

changed in the last year. I wanted to get a sense of how great a purpose she

has chosen for her own life:

“Probably (I want) to graduate high school and to get into BYU with a

scholarship. I want to get at least a bachelors degree and get married in the

temple. I want to get married and have a family, but first I want to do something

with my education. I don’t know what yet though. I don’t know if I want to do


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volleyball anymore. It used to be a pretty significant goal for me to possibly get a

volleyball scholarship, but now I think that I’m going to pursue music more.”

It is striking to me how her career and education goals are relatively

unclear, but her relationship goals are very specific. She knows she wants

to get married at a temple and have children. I believe her seemingly

strong sense of fidelity is greatly influenced by an early development of

religious identity. Sally is a Latter Day Saints Mormon and she is regularly

surrounded by peers, adults, and instructors who are of her same faith:

“Um…. I don’t really identify with a specific heritage, but I’m going to count

Mormonism as a culture. I’ve been raised in the LDS church my entire life, and it

has been a major influence on who I am as a person. Whenever I can, or if the

opportunity ever arises, I love to talk to people about Joseph Smith and the

origins of the church. There are quite a few LDS kids who go to my school. Every

morning before school, I have seminary, a scripture study class, with all of the

LDS kids that go to my school. Plus I have classes and extra-curricular activities

with them.”

Studies and literature searches have shown solid, continued participation

and involvement in a religious community greatly contributes to the

formation of child’s religious identity (Wang, 2012). I believe Sally’s sense

of fidelity is seemingly so strong because Mormon education has always

been so pervasive to her world.

Sally’s background and life context is moderately similar to those of

adolescents interviewed in an early 1990s study performed by

psychologists to investigate the relationship between fidelity, religion, and

identity formation for religious minority adolescents, specifically 36

Mormon adolescents and 47 Catholic and Protestant adolescents. While

Mormons can be seen as minorities in the broader context of America, this

particular study was performed in an environment where the

demographics of the area the adolescents lived in was 90% and Catholic

and Protestants made up approximately 2% of the local community

(Markstrom-Adams, Hofstra, & Dougher, 1994, p. 458).


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The basis for measuring fidelity in this study was a questionnaire based on

James Marcia’s operationalization of Erikson’s theory, which proposes

identity formation occurs through two processes of exploration and

commitment yielding four possible statuses:

Identity Achieved High Exploration,

High Commitment

Moratorium High Exploration,

Low Commitment

Foreclosed Low Exploration,

High Commitment

Diffused Low Exploration,

Low Commitment

(Markstrom-Adams, Hofstra, & Dougher, 1994, p. 458).

The researchers indicated their results provided support for their belief that

Mormon adolescents share similar developmental experiences as ethnic

minorities through assigned identity, in which their identity formation is

created through low exploration and high commitment. The results of the

study found Mormon adolescents who go to church regularly showed

significant interpersonal identity achievement and ideological foreclosure

over both Non-Mormon adolescents and Mormon adolescents who do not

attend church regularly (Markstrom-Adams, Hofstra, & Dougher, 1994, p.

465). Because Sally is highly and positively integrated into her religious

community, I believe she has a higher chance of experiencing a successful,

relatively painless transition into adulthood than I did.

Religion can be destructive.

In my own experience, I grew up mostly nonreligious. When I was ten

years old, I began attending an evangelistic Southern Baptist Church in

Wichita, Kansas with my best friend and his family. At first, I had a great

time socializing with my peers and having fun. Soon, I started asking my


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mother to come with us and she began to find her own connections to

others in ways she needed.

As I began to reach the age of adolescence, grappling with my identity as a

gay male, I started receiving messages of shame from authorities and peers.

Each week, I learned more and more how my identity was considered

unacceptable by not just the people at my church, but the people at my

school, the characters in television and movies, and just about everyone

around me.

As I progressed through high school in the mid-1990s, I had no gay male

role models. To meet and learn about other gay men, I often put myself in

dangerous situations and behaviors (e.g., drinking, doing drugs,

unprotected, and statutory rape from men twice my age). The Gay-Straight

Alliances of the new millennium were not as common in high schools

when I was student and I often was scared of physical danger from peers

when at or around school.

Because Internet technology evolved quickly when I was young, I was able

to secure a better future for myself outside of Kansas and moved to San

Francisco at age 18 to work for a gay and lesbian media corporation. As

stated previously, Erikson’s theory indicates adolescents who struggle with

fidelity can have a long-lasting crisis period before reaching adulthood. I

believe this is what happened with me. Even though I had a successful

career and was surrounded by great role models, my identity formation as

a gay man was so unexplored through healthy avenues that I continued to

put myself through the same dangerous situations and behaviors.

The consequences of those behaviors as well as the consequences of the

economic bubble from the Internet industry left me unemployed by the

time I was nearly 21 years old and I developed a serious addiction to

methamphetamines and sex for two years. During the height of my

addiction, I almost permanently lost control of my mental faculties due to

the accumulation of 1) a long-term lack of sleep, 2) a long-term lack of


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proper nutrition, and 3) the psychologically destructive nature of the

relationships I had with men who manipulated me into having sex with

them for drugs and men who sometimes raped and abused me.

When I turned 23, I knew if I didn’t leave San Francisco, I would die. So, I

put everything I could in some luggage, bought an Amtrak ticket and went

back to Kansas. For the next nine months, I underwent intensive therapy

paid for by my godmother. I was able to reestablish relationships with my

family members and after ten months, moved to Denver to start my career

in music, learning, and performing. I don’t believe I achieved the kind of

confidence Sally expressed in her response until I reached 24 years-of-age.

Warning: Religion is powerful and life is fluid!

By comparing Sally’s experiences with my own, I think religion and

religious identity can be extremely strengthening as well as extremely

destructive, depending on how well our predetermined background (i.e.,

unchangeable circumstances like the color of our skin, our sexual

orientation and gender identity) matches the appropriateness of our

childhood culture. Whereas Sally may have experienced little conflict from

her religion, I experienced traumatic conflict. Because people and our lives

are not static, there is possibly a constant potential for religion to harm

individuals who experience life-changes or make life-changing decisions

which do not meet the acceptable standards of their religious community.

Because of this, I believe one’s identity formation is mutable throughout

our entire lives.

The role of the secular community is equally important to ensure

individuals are equipped to make better decisions about life and in

learning and expressing who they wish to be. I suspect the greater

exposure and therefore, tolerance, a child has for a diverse range of people,

the better equipped a child will be to successfully, confidently, and

healthily achieve and express fidelity for themselves and their society.


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References

Côté, J., & Levine, C. (1982). Identity statuses, neuroticism, dogmatism, and

purpose in life. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 12(1), 43 – 53.

Cramer, C., Flynn, B., & LaFave, A. (1997). Erik Erikson’s 8 stages of

psychosocial development. Retrieved February 27, 2013 from the State

University of New York College at Cortland:

http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/ERIK/stage5.HTML

Markstrom-Adams, C., Hofstra, G., & Dougher, K. (1994). The ego-virtue of

fidelity: A case for the study of religion and identity formation in

adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 23(4), 453 - 469.

Wang, T. (2012). Religious identity formation among adolescents: The role

of religious secondary schools. A Journal of the International Christian

Community for Teacher Education, 7(2), n.p. Retrieved February 27,

2013 from http://icctejournal.org/issues/v7i2/v7i2-wang/

http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/ERIK/stage5.HTML

http://icctejournal.org/issues/v7i2/v7i2-wang/


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Appendix – Interview Guide

What does having family mean to you and what needs do you have that

your family is able to provide for you?

What does having friends mean to you and what needs do you have that

your friends are able to provide for you??

Where did you grow up and what was it like for you?

What are the most important goals in life that you have?

How are your plans different than those of your friends and family

members?

Most all people in America are of mixed heritage, with what culture(s) do

you most strongly identify and do you express the history of your

culture(s) to other people?

Are you aware of other people in this school who are also from the same

culture group as you are?

identity, religion, and fidelity: an observation of adolescence

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