Spirituality and Identity

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SPIRITUALITY AND IDENTITYWITHIN/WITHOUT RELIGION

Dr. Daniel G. ScottSchool of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria,

British Columbia

Introduction

This chapter will explore the interface of religion and spirituality in the lives of youth, paying attention to its impact on their identity and spiritual development. It is,in part, inspired by my experience of working both in religious and secular contextswith older adolescents who frequently claimed that they were spiritual and notreligious. My attempts to consider this distinction in their self-definition influencedmy perspective on and interest in spirituality and identity. The interplay of religionand spirituality, which is deeply embedded in the socio-cultural actualities of youngpeople’s lives and experience, had a profound effect on their spiritual identitydevelopment. They were expressing something of their time and culture in makingtheir claim differentiating spirituality and religion while simultaneously passingcomment on religious institutions.

I will weave together several strands in order to explicate my approach to spiritualdevelopment and spiritual identity formation. An introductory strand will explore theentanglement of culture and identity, touching on some implications for research inchildren and youth spirituality. A second strand will describe qualities of adolescentdevelopment that are aspects of spiritual development and part of the process of spiritual identity. Another strand will explore the dynamic relationship of spiritu-ality and religions and how they contain/do not contain one another and includeexamples from the growing body of literature on spirituality, religion and spiritualdevelopment. I will then consider the impact of context/culture on the development

of adolescent spirituality and identity formation addressing the relationship of sociallocation and the shaping of a spiritual identity through belonging, resistance, partic-ipation, believing and choosing.

M. de Souza et al. (eds.), International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions

in Education, 1111–1125.

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009



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Strand: Identity and Context

In order to address identity and context I want to clarify that I do not see context andidentity as completely separate. Mistry and Diez (2004) treat ‘culture as context’ and

as ‘meaning-making’ (p. 150) and consequently understand the interactive natureof culture and development. If culture is meaning making, that is, a way of makingsense of and interpreting the world through its frame of reference, it is significantfor any consideration of spiritual development because, as Mistry and Diez claim:

behaviour is shaped by the context of the cultural activity in which it occursand is observed. Particular modes of thinking, speaking, and behaving arise

from and remain integrally tied to concrete forms of social practice (Coles,1990; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1985) (Italics in original. Mistry and Diez,2004, p. 148).

Culture provides a through line to thinking, speaking and behaving that crossesgenerational experience and is expressed in the day-to-day practices of people ina culture. Adolescents are shaped by their contexts even as they strive to establishindependent identities. Their resistances and independence struggles are alwaysmediated through their ‘home’ culture even as they occasionally serve as critiquesof that culture.

Religious and spiritual cultures are also forms of social process and constructsof human cultural activity. All identity is shaped by culture, as are any articula-

tions of identity. Spiritual identity grows out of, is a response to, and is shaped bysocio-cultural location. This has a significant impact on how we come to under-stand children and adolescent spirituality, particularly through research. Responsesto research surveys and interviews collected from children and youth as data tounderstand spirituality are firmly embedded in context. Participants answer fromwithin their culture and cannot step out to formulate non-contextual responses.The developmental capacity of younger research participants means that they arelikely to echo their context in honest but non self-reflective ways. They may onlybe able to tell what they think or believe, mirroring their family culture, but be

unable to reflect on those beliefs as they lack critical distance. Younger childrenare accustomed to giving answers to adults that attempt to be what they think theadult expects. Some researchers (Hay & Nay, 1998) working with children underthe age of ten are clear about the difficulties implicit in spiritual research becauseof the influence of context on the children’s responses and on their willingness torespond. They note children will call on available cultural vocabulary to describetheir experiences and insight, using religious cultural language even when theirfamilies are not religious because they lack alternate ways to express themselves.

In contrast, a child who attends a religious school who participates in a study on

spiritual life will respond to questions about his or her spiritual life in language thatmirrors the norms of their religious setting. To assume that children’s understandingcan be generalised is to miss how much context shapes answers. There is need forcaution in interpreting children’s senses of meaning without attention to contextual



Spirituality and Identity Within/Without Religion 1113

influence. Mistry and Diez, (2004) outline the problem of understanding meaningpointing out the difficulty of ascertaining how meaning is made:

Since it is assumed that culture and behaviour are essentially inseparable…the

goal is to understand the directive force of shared meaning systems and howthese meanings are constructed in given contexts (D’Andrade & Strauss, 1992;Harkness & Super, 1992). Understanding context, therefore, includes under-standing the tacit social and interactional norms of the individuals existingwithin those settings and whose behaviours and expectations both shape andare shaped by the institutional structures of which they are a part (Harwood,Miller & Irizarry, 1995) (Mistry and Diez, 2004, p. 150).

Meaning making as a cultural process that shapes identity development requires adouble alertness for researchers studying spirituality. Identity is always interactiveand grows out of response to context. How do adolescents take up spiritual identityin the midst of cultural interactions and respond to the expectations of home cultureas they make meaning and claim identity?

One advantage of looking at the adolescent shift to adult identity is that it is atime of deliberate choice and self-authored claims where resistance to and departurefrom cultural norms can and does take place—although within cultural boundaries.Resistance to ‘home’ is still a response but may include a degree of self-awarenessand deliberate distancing that is less common in younger children. Almost all aspectsof development are in an extended period of perturbation in the early adolescent

years. Physical growth peaks. New cognitive skills are being developed. Socially andemotionally, young adolescents move from social settings that are frequently limitedto family, neighbourhood or village, school, place of worship (if any) to settingsthat are more varied, and more complex. Primary schools give way to secondary orupper level schools with more diverse populations, different social configurationsand a wider range of social and emotional relationships and community contacts. Insome cases, the geography of life expands to include entry into the world of workwith contacts based on demands other than familial responsibilities. In many casessocial encounters include romantic and sexual first time experiences.

In contemporary urban settings some youth, by the beginning of adolescence,live in diverse cultural and social milieu and may have acquired experience andskills in multiple cultural contexts. Young people living across cultures may formmultiple identities in order to survive socially, emotionally and spiritually in theirdaily experience where home, religion, school, community, and peer contexts maybe culturally diverse (Nesbitt, 2004). Their mirrors may have multiple facets thatthey turn one way or another in response to contextual demands, demonstratinga valuable skill set of living in complexity. The identities that they construct are,and will be, their best response to the expectations of complicated contexts. They

employ a variety of personal strategies to make their lives livable and acceptable:embracing, testing, experimenting, questioning and resisting.Their engagement with spirituality and spiritual identity may or may not include

a religious belief or practice. Their responses to the thinking they encounter and



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how they take up the meanings of their milieu will vary. They may, as did thecentral character in Yann Martel’s (2002) Life of Pi, be trying to live in severalreligions at once, much to the distress of family and religious leaders with theirmore restricted views of belief options.

There are no guaranteed outcomes in the sifting and choosing of what will matterin life or what will be valued; nor is there certainty that a young person reacheswhat his/her context would see as a ‘culturally desirable outcome’ (Mistry & Diez,p. 160). Being raised in a culture does not guarantee adherence to it or its ways of making meaning. However, the impact of culture as context remains central in theprocess of identity development.

Strand: Spiritual Development

I outline here elements of adolescent development that pertain to spiritual formationand spiritual identity to suggest a framework for understanding and interpretingadolescent spiritual experience. This strand looks at experience in the middle of adolescent life. Children who are beginning adult life are already enculturated but ata threshold where their work of forming identity requires new behaviour, thinkingand responses in taking up adult roles and responsibilities. It is a time of testingout and trying on various identities and styles. With their increase in skills andcapacity, young adolescents may question their own contexts paying attention to its

‘truth’ for them, studying its claims and testing its integrity and congruity.The transition through adolescence begins as children take the first steps of becoming adult during their tenth to fourteenth years. Traditional developmentaltheory and psychology have not offered much help in understanding spiritualdevelopment. There are aspects of cognitive, emotional, social, and physical devel-opment that have significance for spiritual identity formation. I suggest that theseoverlapping developmental qualities form the nexus of spiritual development.Just as spiritual identity is embedded in cultural contexts and constructs, sospiritual development is embedded in the spectrum of development processes and

constructs.As children come of age they enter a time of wonder/wondering (Hart, 2003)and begin to re-experience the world as new. Their cognitive capacities andtheir emotional lives are changing and thus their (relational) consciousness (Hayand Nye, 1998) and sensibilities are also changing. They engage the world withintensity, developing new skills, insights, questions and speculations. They establisha beginning adult identity that includes a more self-aware acquisition of meaningand values. They must move from believing under the influence of external author-ities to owning and claiming values and meaning with their own interior authority.

This involves the development of their voice (Gilligan, 1982; 2002; Gilligan,Lyons, & Hanmer, 1990) and the ownership of their own claims.Changing and developing voice is not only a physical ability but is an important

marker of self. The formation of inner authority and self-belief is part of the




development of personal integrity. It involves both a capacity to own and to artic-ulate what matters in one’s own way with one’s own voice. Meaning, values andmattering are to be claimed and lived. Adolescents draw on all available resources,not only the familiar ones of home culture but also the myriad options to which

their emerging status as adults gives them access.As well as meaning making, there is often a new sense of looking toward the

future. A vocation or life interest may take hold of an adolescent’s imagination,offering a sense of purpose and direction. The future, which felt far away inchildhood, becomes more present and possible in adolescence. It can take on a senseof immediacy or even urgency. Choices in the present become important definersof possible futures. An adolescent with a sense of purpose or calling may becomedeliberate and focused in interests, skill acquisition and educational goals. A senseof calling, known as vocation in some religious traditions, is part of becoming adult

and can shape many lives (Hillman, 1996).As cognitive and emotional capacities develop, adolescents have a remarkable

ability to see into and through things. Their vision is shaped both by their newthinking skills, with sharpened critical capacities and by the complexity of newemotional insight awakening in them as they assess others, the world and waysof living. They are in search of what will be important and meaningful for them.Sometimes their critique is part of a peer process: young adolescents have aremarkable capacity to share insight, sometimes without words, when assessingsocial and emotional situations. They can be highly attuned to hypocrisy, misrep-

resentation and compromise. Their vision may be shaped by clear but simplisticvalues that see situations as either/or: right or wrong.

Some adolescents have visionary experiences that seem to give them insightacross time (Hart, 2003; Robinson, 1983) and can include mystical experiences,prophetic insights or far reaching dreams. For some the dreams are warnings of danger or harm to themselves or others (Scott, 2004). Their visionary experiencecan produce a range of emotions from fear to elation for adolescents and equallystrong, frequently negative, responses in adults around them.

Their experiences of voice, vocation and vision are part of their search for

belonging. They seek the places where they will belong but also places wherethey feel embraced as belonging—I call this ‘being belonged’—where there isa congruency between what they seek for themselves and what they see in awelcoming place. Belonging is mutual: ownership requires owning and beingowned. A search for belonging may involve a series of trial and error tests of beliefs, contexts and life styles.

Threaded through these experiences is a process of identity development.Becoming adult and taking ownership of what matters; of what will be treasured;of an acceptable self, is a life journey. Developing an adult spiritual identity occurs

simultaneously with and through the other developmental processes of adult identitymaking. Maintaining congruency between a sense of self and life choices is criticalin developing an acceptable identity. It includes grappling with a spiritual sense of self and with religious belief and adherence.



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Strand: Religion Spirituality Secularity

In order to situate the spiritual identity process this section will examine thecultural dynamics of religion, spirituality and secularity as factors in the contextual

landscape contributing to the identity process. Between those who argue that spiri-tuality must be and is always, inevitably a matter of religion—religious practice,education and adherence to a tradition—and those who argue that spirituality ispersonal, open-ended and primarily an interior experience that may not include areligious adherence are a variety of positions that expect more or less of religiousinvolvement. As much of the contemporary world is influenced by a secularity thatassumes neither religion nor spirituality, one’s orientation to matters of spirit is notsimply an either-religion-or-spirituality dynamic. In considering the spiritual identitydevelopment of children and youth it is necessary to step out of religious/secular and

spiritual/religious dualities and address the mixed influences and multiple locationsof contemporary culture. There are many complexities and nuances possible insocio-cultural location and impact.

Contemporary spirituality literature has an on-going discussion regardingthe religion/spirituality interplay that identifies some of the possible positions.Zinnbauer, Pargament and Scott (1999) maintain that ‘religion is a broader moregeneral construct than spirituality’ and ‘religion encompasses not only the searchfor sacred ends (spirituality) but the search for secular ends through sacred means’(p. 910). They claim religion as the meta-container for secular and spiritual

experience. However, Benson, Roehlkepartain and Rude (2003) opt for a moremiddle position in which, following Reich (2001) four options of ‘religion andspirituality as synonymous or fused; one as a subdomain of the other; religionand spirituality as separate domains; and religion and spirituality as distinct butoverlapping domains’ (p. 209). They adopt the fourth perspective of religion andspirituality having both distinct and shared qualities and territory, embracing a morecomplex view of contextual realities.

The theoretical debate of religion/spirituality/secularity in the emerging field of youth spirituality studies is as much about the contemporary socio-political struggle

over the role of religion in the public domain as it is about a critical understandingof children and youth spiritual development. There are a number of tensions aboutthe role and significance of religion in public life and the emergence of spiritualityas a distinct area of study outside of the religious domain. Is the public space toinclude religion? Can it include spirituality? Must the commons be secular? Theseideological questionsunderlie thedebateand indicate thetensionsover therelationshipof religion, culture, spirituality and secularity. In some cases it appears religiousadvocates are using spirituality as a re-entry point into the public domain, evokingresistance from otherquarters.Secular resistance to religiouspractices in publicspaces

can also provoke strong reactions in religious adherents multiplying the tensions.These debates obscure the significance of research with children and youngadolescents that explores their spiritual experience as a basis for understandingspiritual development. In the research-based literature of children’s spirituality,




a number of the major figures do separate spirituality and religion. Robert Coles(1990), writing from his psychiatric orientation, notes that one of his young patientsConnie let him know:

…that her religious life was far more many-sided than I had been preparedto admit—and that there was a personal spiritual life in her that was by nomeans to be equated with her religious life. It is this evolving distinction Imost recall today; its emergence constituted a critical place in my work withConnie and also in the recent research that preceded the writing of this book(Italics in original, p. 14).

Coles’ colleague and clinical supervisor Dr. Abraham Fineman further clarifieshis thinking by suggesting about Connie that: ‘She’s an unconventionally religiouschild. There’s a spirituality at work in her, and we might explore her spiritualpsychology’ (p. 15). Coles (1990) titles his book: The spiritual life of children. Inspite of the number of children he interviews that use religious language and arelocated in distinct religious contexts, he is clear that the religious and spiritual arenot the same.

David Hay (1998) makes a similar delineation but from a quite different vantage.He draws on Alister Hardy’s work and biological assumptions to point out that:

Spirituality is not the exclusive property of any one religion or for thatmatter of religion in general. Spiritual awareness could even be signified, and

perhaps would be bound to be signified, in secular and even anti-religiouslanguage amongst those who for historical reasons are alienated from religiousculture (p. 11).

Hay cites Catholic theologian Karl Rahner who argues that even if the terms forGod were to disappear from language ‘in the decisive moments of our lives wewould still be constantly encompassed by this nameless mystery of our existence’(p. 19). Hay then uses Rahner’s words ‘It is possible to talk about God withoutbeing spiritual’ at the beginning of his chapter ‘ A Geography of the Spirit ’ and

proposes the inverse: ‘it is also possible to be spiritual without talking about God’(p. 57). He stresses:

It is important not to get caught into the assumption that spirituality can onlybe recognised by the use of a specialised religious language. I have spokenabout the difficulty with almost all research on children’s spiritual life, upto the very recent past, in that it has been focused on God-talk rather thanspirituality (p. 57).

Tobin Hart (2003) offers a similar insight:

Most often when researchers have looked at children’s spirituality, they havelimited their consideration to ‘God talk,’ that is, how children think and talkabout God. These researchers have generally concluded that children do not



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and cannot have a spiritual life prior to the development of formal reasoning,usually sometime in adolescence…When we, as adults, use these assumptionsto filter our understanding of children, we miss their innate spirituality. Butspirituality lies beyond the rational and beyond thoughts about God (p. 4).

Differentiating religion and spirituality is significant in the identification of childrenand youth as inherently spiritual. A child is spiritual without instruction andregardless of cultural context. It is not a matter of whether a child is or is notspiritual in a particular way or with a particular religious formation or style. Spiri-tuality is as normative and natural as physicality or emotionality. Children arespiritual. Children are physical. Children are emotional. This assumption is vitalfor any approach in research, in pedagogical practice and in how we view childrenand our expectations for them as spiritual beings. How they take up their identity,

how they engage voice, vision and vocation, and whether they can acknowledgeand integrate their own spirituality are shaped by their culture’s assumptions abouttheir inherent spiritual nature.

I suggest two axioms regarding spirituality and religion in contemporary secularculture that offer a more open space for a consideration of children and youth incontext. First, spirituality may or may not be a nest for religion. For some, religion isnot a necessity for spiritual formation or identity, while for others, religion may besignificant in giving shape to spiritual identity. I assume in keeping with Ó Murchu(1997), that spirituality gave rise to religions. The structuring and codification of

religious practice did not produce spirituality but were a response to the spiritual thatis already part of being human. This is not to dismiss or diminish the significanceof religious beliefs but to see them as socially constructed forms that grow out of human experience and cultures, and in turn, shape cultures and human experience.The interplay of religion and politics in current public life demonstrates the powerof beliefs and claims to influence social life, public policy and options for identity.

Identity and spiritual development, whether they are personal, communal orcultural are interactive processes. All of us arrive at identity and do spiritualdevelopment in the midst of things, even as we, in turn, contribute to the re-making

of our context through our ways of living.In the second axiom I propose that religion, and all other communal settings, arealways nests for spirituality. Spiritualities produced in different settings may varyand be either positive, adding to life and value, or negative, reducing life and itsmeaning. Having assumed the spiritual to be normative it is essential to attend tothe quality of the spirituality being engendered in any setting. Not all spiritualitiesare life giving. Nor do all religious contexts create positive spiritualities. As youthdevelop identities the spirituality they claim will shape their values and life choicesand can be assessed for their assumptions, quality and affect. As spiritual identity

has such lasting impact on family and community its full impact may take years tobe clear. A spirituality is neither neutral nor isolated.I have an additional concern regarding the spirituality-religion discussion. Where

the debate ignores children and their experience privileging theoretical concerns,




there is a danger that children’s natural spirituality will be marginalised and madeinvisible. If it is assumed children are only spiritual when they are religious in aparticular way, the potential danger is that, if a child rejects religion, he/she maybe judged (and come to judge her/himself) as unspiritual. Children must be seen as

spiritual, not requiring instruction, a particular kind of intelligence, decision makingcapacities or interventions to be spiritual. They already are. How they are formedby their culture and how they respond to that formational process becomes theconcern. They may move in and out of their home context as they figure out theirown direction clarifying their experience of spirituality and its meaning for them.

There is, however, a need to be realistic about contexts and influence. Childrencan and do have bad religious and/or spiritual experiences. Negative responses tothe beliefs of a community or family can arise from being violated or abandoned;from feeling misunderstood, unduly pressured, silenced or excluded; or from feeling

that the community structure offered no clear limits or so many restrictions as tobe oppressive. Those who mistrust a spiritual or religious environment becauseof their experience do not necessarily have a diminished interest in spirituality.They too will be developing spiritually with their own forms of voice, vision,vocation, sense of belonging and ‘being belonged’. In their experience it may benecessary to hold spirituality and religion apart and consequently, their spiritualidentity development may occur outside of religious frames of reference. They mayseek religious experience or insight from traditions outside their familial one.

As well, there may be people in non-religious settings whose context carries an

understanding of religious traditions that makes them feel and seem negative. Wemust not assume that they do not have spiritual insight, interest or concern. Theircultural location may delimit their access to religious communities yet they mayseek spirituality in other ways. Their response to religion may be an act of resistanceor self-preservation in the face of colonialism, oppression or social inequities. Theytoo will develop spiritual identities.

A community’s fears or aspirations are like containers that surround adolescentidentity in formation steeping it in the community ethos. Youth make themselvesand their lives from what is familiar, what they know and what they hope for. The

tenor of a community matters as it is formed by the culture; influenced by social,economic, historical and political realities, as well as by natural circumstances.There are no neutral communities. All are influential in the identity developmentprocess of the young.

Cultures also present the young with role models to be emulated, admired andcopied, and sometimes figures to be shunned and dismissed. They have impactbut not always the one intended. Adolescents have individual trajectories that drawon their own sense of self and emerging subjectivities shaping their response torole models. Integrating the values being modeled is not a straightforward, linear

process. It is entangled in context drawing on a range of messages and signals fromthe culture.In contexts that had or have deliberate coming of age ceremonies the shaping

influence of culture was understood and carefully nurtured (Eliade, 1975; Turner,



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1967; Sullwold, 1987; Scott, 1998; Westerman, 2001). During a coming of ageprocess, a young person moved from the form of a child to the form of an adultand during this liminal time he/she was malleable and could be re-formed. It wasunderstood that during this critical spiritual time those who were without a set form

were at risk and could be mis-formed by experience and other influences. Becominga successful adult was acknowledged as difficult. A great deal of socio-culturalenergy and attention was paid to the young to assist them to make this transition inways that best suited the culture. The goal is and was to produce capable, acceptableand competent adults.

Rites of passage use ceremony, ritual, periods of teaching, carefully constructedrule breaking, confrontations with mortality, explorations of sexual identity, guidingelders and communal participation in various combinations to affect the adultidentity making process. The process includes attention to spirituality, to the

meanings and values necessary for life in the culture and to the skills needed foradult life. Spirituality is acknowledged and woven into the cultural process.

Weaving the Strands

InthelastsectionIbegantoweavethestrandstogetheraddressingthequestion:Towhatdegree does ‘culture as meaning-making’ shape the formation of a spiritual identity?In contexts that use deliberate rites of passage there is awareness that the processof becoming adult can be deliberate cultural action that must include spiritual sensi-

tivity. In many religious communities residual forms of coming of age ceremoniesmark acceptance into the adult ceremonial life of the community. What is lackingis the parallel cultural process of acceptance as adults with symbolic markers inthe broader social context. I have written about this elsewhere (Scott, 1998) andnow want to turn to consider how in becoming adults, adolescents develop spiri-tually based on the developmental qualities described above while in the midstof a primarily secular culture. What might we expect to see in their experiencesas signs of spiritual identity development? What are some of the challenges thatadolescents must face? And how does context act to shape spiritual development?

I want to be clear that I do not see identity as essential or fixed, or self assomething that already exists and is to be uncovered along the way. Rather identityis a continual re-formation process of shifts, adaptations, and renewal. Identityformation requires responsiveness to change. Rites of passage literature speaks toidentity as being formed as a vessel or container where the cultural knowledge canonly be added after the vessel acquires an appropriate shape. The passage processis intended to provide that shaping. The process assumes a stable culture withstable adult roles performed capably in culturally necessary ways. It is a conservingform that produces cultural continuity. Contemporary culture is not stable, with few

adult roles that will last over the decades of a lifetime. Life is now being livedin communities that are shifting and changing. Becoming adult requires differentskills and capacities. What shapes are now appropriate? What knowledge will makefor a ‘good’ adult?




Young people are required to incorporate a wide range of influences and experi-ences from their contexts in becoming adult. Changes in their lives and contextappear to be more constant than sameness or stability. Adolescents becoming adultsare doing so in the midst of flux and in response to it. Youth living in secularised,

individualist societies with daily experiences mediated by electronic technologiesof communication, advertising and representation are attuned to and influenced bythat culture. They cannot escape some culture-at-large impact. Identity formationis not solitary work. It is interactive.

In spite of appeals for singular, clear stances that seek to simplify spirituality,I believe it is necessary to consider spirituality as a significant window into thecomplex actuality of late modern/post-modern life experience for contemporaryyouth. Life is multi-tracked, uncertain and ambiguous. Nesbitt (2004) points outyouth who are being raised in religious environments are often living multiple

identities in the pluricultural realities of their wider lives. Their experiences areneither simple nor singular with identity formation based on an assemblage of manyvoices and images, which can change rapidly. Life may be tinged with irony orcynicism, and simplistic positions have a limited capacity to meet these challenges.

I will now turn to voice, vocation, vision, belonging/being belonged andownership, addressing them briefly in terms of how they may be taken up in contextwith some implications for spiritual development.

Voice, Vision, Vocation

Voice is a critical part of spiritual development in adolescents. Gilligan’s (1982)work underlined the quality of a different kind of voice as part of moral decisionmaking for young women. In later work, Gilligan (2002) pays more attention tothe loss of connection to one’s own true voice and expression of feeling andits implications for both men and women. In a study of girls’ adolescent diariesSinats, Scott, McFerran, Hittos, and Craig, (2005) explore the maintenance of one’sown voice through diary writing as a way of preserving sensitivity and spiritualself-awareness. Sinats (2005) further explores the consequences of being severed

from one’s sensitivity and voice, illustrating the kinds of loss and self-destructivebehaviours that arise in response to perceptions and awareness that cannot be safelyexpressed.

It is not a matter of an adolescent having the correct answers or merely knowingwhat a cultural demands. Voice is a matter of integrity and congruity. To be ableto express insights and questions, to explore how the world seems with languageand ideas is part of taking up a spiritual identity that has inner authority and issustainable. Having a link from what seems right and true from within to the capacityto voice that sense externally is necessary for spiritual development. The ability to

address context and integrate experience through knowledgeable articulation allowsownership and authority to develop.In coming to one’s own voice, an adolescent is expressing his/her own character

as well as articulating what matters. It is interesting to note that some religious



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traditions contain stories of young adolescents who grapple with a combinationof voice and visionary experience (In Judaism: Samuel in the temple as a youngadolescent hears the voice of the Divine giving him instructions to speak of thefall of Eli’s family and priesthood) or voice and vocation (In Christianity: Jesus

in the temple precincts claiming to his family that he needs to begin his vocationbefore they are ready to accept his calling). Response to the young experiencing andclaiming voice, vision, and vocation determines whether a context is promoting theirspiritual well being. To acknowledge adolescent insight and visionary experiencerequires communal sensitivity. Being denied that space will force adolescents tosever either from themselves or from their community in order to preserve theirown sense of self and of what matters. The ability to come to one’s own voice,have one’s insights and visions acknowledged and be able to take up a calling doesmatter for the whole community and needs the support of the community.

In a composite study (World Vision Canada, January, 1993) of parenting stylesand the maintenance of family values, families and communities that practicedthe most authoritarian styles had the least success in passing on values andthe least satisfaction in parenting. Parenting styles marked by more openness(permissive and authoritative), shared decision-making, and less rigid barriers tooutside influence had more success in teaching values and more satisfaction inparenting. The community’s capacity to pass on its values and traditions is affectedby the way it tries to do so. Some approaches create learning environments thatare more successful in engaging adolescents, giving them support and space to

follow communal wisdom in forming their adult spiritual identities. This is not tosuggest that there is a simple way to indoctrinate youth into accepting a culturalperspective. The successful parenting models require openness, flexibility, negoti-ation and shared decision making. Those qualities model the values to be passedon. They do not guarantee an outcome.

Belonging, Being Belonged and Ownership

How a community welcomes adolescents into adult life will make a difference

to the long-term acceptance of and participation in that community. A contextprovides implicit and explicit messages that shape its capacity for acceptance andthey will be perceived by the young maturing in those contexts. Some youth,because of their strong need for belonging, will choose compliance and adaptationto cultural messages. Others, because of their own character or sense of vision andvocation will resist, demanding more of their community or will leave in search of a more open space that gives back a sense of ‘being belonged’ without demandinga compromise of voice and integrity.

Context can function at many levels. In an environment of social and political

uncertainty strong singular positions with definitive claims marked by certainty canbe appealing. Where fear is a dominant social factor the young may be drawn tosocial identities that promise surety and make clear borders between insider andoutsider, acceptable and unacceptable behaviours. True believers (Hoffer, 1951)




may be convinced of the supremacy of their own position and beliefs. The strongpositions offered by fundamentalist movements may provide certainty against theseeming chaos of world conflicts and cultures (Armstrong, 2000). Their essen-tialist positions, although often seen as reacting to the fragmentation of post-

modern life, may be better understood as part of that fragmentation, creating andsustaining enclave thinking and oppositional social and cultural politics in responseto contextual pressures. Because belonging and ‘being belonged’ are so importantfor adolescent development, the embrace and support given by these communitiesmay offer adolescents a way of living that meets their immediate needs and conse-quently is not questioned by them. The values and perspective of the social locationwill be accepted and absorbed.

The distinction between religion and spirituality becomes significant in thesecircumstances as there is more at stake than beliefs. Do the values and ethics

of a community provide a young person with a life giving orientation? Do theylead to tolerance of others? Respect for differences and diversity? What does thecommunity demand of the young person to achieve their goals? How much mustthe young give up to be included or to succeed? Fundamentalist environments mayprovide a strong sense of security but demand the suppression of voice in exchangefor belonging. Although appearing successful, the underlying spirituality may bedestructive.

If young people are becoming adults in a world that requires them to live globally,they will need skills, insights and emotional and spiritual capacities to deal with

the changing and pluricultural nature of the world. They need home communitiesthat can foster those capacities.

In a world that functions on a market place model, including in the religiousand spiritual domains (Bibby, 1987; 1993) how people construct their religiousadherence and loyalties is constantly being shaped by the shifts and trends in thelarger culture. Young people in religious contexts will choose their own level of acceptance and engagement with the community’s assumptions and claims; as willyouth in any other location, secular or spiritual, choose for their lives. A communitywith clear boundaries and a prescribed means of approach to the Divine may

provide certainty and legitimacy for some. For others, the certainty itself will beunattractive. They may be more at ease in uncertainty and complexity and viewthe ambiguity of the world as preferable. Other adolescents will feel compelledto be critical of their native context in response to seeing more of the world’soptions, setting them on a quest to become something other than the familiar formof ‘home’.

Religion may play a significant role in the formation of self by providing definingstructures and integration into a community but it may also serve as a site of rejection. Many contemporary youth have no identifiable religious context. Religion

may appear unhelpful and outside of their acceptable experience as they seekdynamic locations that can provide the options for engagement, resistance, and self-definition. They seek sites that will provide belonging and membership, matteringand being valued.



1124 Scott

It is necessary for those concerned with the spiritual development of adoles-cents to resist an oppositional reading of social spiritual location, inviting a morecomplex understanding of spiritual identity and providing a richer, more complexenvironment for understanding the possibilities for spiritual development and

identity. Spiritual development goes on in every context. In every context the criticalconcern must be for the quality of the spirituality being developed and whether,within or without religion, it is a spirituality that respects the spiritual journeyof each young person, his or her integrity. The concern must also see individualspiritual identity in the context of the community, respecting the connection to thatcommunity and its health and integrity. Spirituality must be contextually grounded.The community has to provide space for the development of voice, the honoring of vision and vocation. It has to welcome and embrace. And it must trust that the youngthemselves have access to and are attending to spirit. They may be teachers, have

insight, knowledge and concern that comes from their spirituality. Their wisdommay be necessary for the health and well being of their communities. Spiritualdevelopment is an interactive mutual exchange.

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Spirituality and Identity