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Developing a Frameworkfor Research on ReligiousIdentity Development of HighlyCommitted AdolescentsElsbeth Visser-Vogel a , Janneke Westerink b , Jos deKock b , Marcel Barnard b & Cok Bakker aa Utrecht University , Utrecht , The Netherlandsb Protestant Theological University , Utrecht , TheNetherlandsPublished online: 05 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Elsbeth Visser-Vogel , Janneke Westerink , Jos de Kock , MarcelBarnard & Cok Bakker (2012) Developing a Framework for Research on ReligiousIdentity Development of Highly Committed Adolescents, Religious Education:The official journal of the Religious Education Association, 107:2, 108-121, DOI:10.1080/00344087.2012.660413

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DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCH ONRELIGIOUS IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHLY

COMMITTED ADOLESCENTS

Elsbeth Visser-VogelUtrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Janneke Westerink, Jos de Kock, and Marcel BarnardProtestant Theological University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Cok BakkerUtrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a framework for studying the reli-gious identity development of highly religious Christian and Muslimadolescents. Building on existing theories on identity development,the authors define highly religious Christian and Muslim adoles-cents as orthoprax adolescents and explore the consequences of thisfor reflection on the religious identity development of these groupsof youngsters. This study is a first step toward gaining qualitativeinsights into the religious identity development of orthoprax adoles-cents and filling up a perceived gap in research on religious identitydevelopment.

We live in a religiously pluralistic world. Within the broad rangeof religiously committed people, some groups differ from the restby an exclusivist view on religion. In this study we focus on thesehighly religious groups in the Netherlands, both Christian and Muslim.Highly religious persons differ in beliefs and life style from those inthe secular mainstream and from religiously committed persons whoare more open and liberal.

To meet the needs of a pluralistic society, a huge variety of strate-gies could be imagined and is actually developed. Inter-faith dialogueis one of the strategies that individuals and groups practice. In general,highly religious groups keep distance from this kind of open interac-tion between faiths. In research on religious education the attitude of

Religious Education Copyright C© The Religious Education AssociationVol. 107 No. 2 March–April ISSN: 0034-4087 print

DOI: 10.1080/00344087.2012.660413

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these highly religious groups toward a pluralistic context has receivedcomparatively little scholarly attention. For this reason this article isdedicated to highly religious Christians and Muslims.

Beside that, highly religious people are often portrayed by themedia in a poor or even unfavorable light. In the last thirty years,tolerance of the Dutch people toward Muslim and also Christianbelievers has declined (De Hart and Dekker 2006).

Bert Brussen, for example, blogger of a popular website in theNetherlands, considers himself to be a vigorous fighter against any-thing related to religion or morality. He frequently ridicules highlyreligious Christians and Muslims. In his opinion, voicing sharp crit-icism is the only way to destroy fundamentalism (KleinJan 2010).Regularly, the strong way of belief as held by some Christians andMuslims becomes an object of derision (Ellian and De Winter 2007;Koelman 2010; Umar 2010).

Additionally, highly religious parents experience difficulties in ed-ucating their children and struggle how to prepare them for living ashighly religious Christians or Muslims in a religiously pluralistic soci-ety. A reason can be that whereas these parents want their children toadopt strict religious beliefs and a corresponding way of life, yet theyalso want them to be familiar with important aspects of the secularcontext (Assor et al. 2005). Religious leaders and youth workers goon to look for ways to educate these young believers and to influencetheir religious identity development in line with their own exclusivistbeliefs.

Gaining current knowledge of and insight into religious identitydevelopment of the young will be of considerable importance to par-ents, teachers, policymakers, politicians, religious educators, and themedia. This study attempts to get attention to the missing voice ofhighly religious adolescents in actual debates in religious education.Above all, this study is a first step toward filling up a perceived gap inresearch on religious identity development.

DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM

This academic study focuses on religious identity developmentof highly religious adolescents and requires answers to the follow-ing preliminary questions. Who are these highly religious people?What does religion mean for their lives? How do they perceive the

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relationship between their own religious identity development andthe society they live in? How do highly religious adolescents perceivethe role of persons and institutions in their religious identity develop-ment? How does their specific religious identity develop?

In this article we present a framework for gaining insight into thereligious identity development of highly religious adolescents. Such aframework is needed because we do not consider each of the existingtheories in itself to be fully applicable when comparing both our groupsof highly religious adolescents.

Since Erikson (1968) developed his theory about ego identity,there has been a growing scholarly interest in the various aspects ofidentity development of adolescents. Interestingly, Markstrom-Adamsand Smith (1996) noted a gap in theories on the relation between iden-tity and religion. This gap is remarkable, as Erikson (1968) once indi-cated the importance of religion for gaining identity. Recently, newerstudies on religious identity development appeared as related to dif-ferent groups of adolescents (Bertram-Troost, De Roos and Miedema2006; Chaudhury and Miller 2008; Cohen-Malayev, Assor and Kaplan2009; Markstrom-Adams and Smith 1996; Verkuyten and Yildiz 2010).Yet, very few studies about religious identity development focus eitheron highly religious Christian or Muslim adolescents (Armet 2009). Theaim of our research project is to focus on both of these highly religiousgroups at the same time and contribute to a further improvement onan academic understanding of the gap between religion and identityin adolescence.

In our study we take Marcia’s theory of identity development aspoint of departure (Marcia 1966, 1980). His identity status modelhas been a popular means of elaborating and refining Erikson’s(1968) original theoretical notions on identity (Bosma and Kunnen2001; Kroger and Green 1996; Luyckx et al. 2006; Meeus et al.1999). Beside that, Marcia’s model has been a progenitor in reflec-tion held on vocational and ideological identity (Bertram-Troost, deRoos, and Miedema 2006; Kiesling et al. 2006). Nonetheless, weargue that Marcia’s theory is insufficient for investigating religiousidentity development of highly religious adolescents. We go on toexplain this inadequacy and propose applying different theories forapproaching the religious identity development of highly religiousadolescents.

A majority of existing studies on identity development arequantitative and have been focused mainly on categorization; this

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has resulted in a paucity of general information on the unique and dif-ferentiated lived realities of young people. Several scholars mentionthat most studies pay little attention to the stories of youngsters them-selves, in their specific situation and with their personal experiences(Alma and Heitink 1994; Good and Willoughby 2007; Van der Ven1995; Vergouwen 2001). For this reason, our framework enables qual-itative studies that focus centrally on the perspective of highly religiousadolescents.

Another reason for requiring a qualitative approach is a certainlack of factual knowledge about the religious identity developmentof highly religious adolescents. A qualitative approach enables re-searchers to study the issue in an explorative way. Bertram-Troost(2006) argues that studies about religious identity development shouldnot be merely quantitative. Undertaking a qualitative study takes bet-ter into account the life story of highly religious adolescents (Goodand Willoughby 2007). An explicit inclusion of their life stories in theresearch is required in order to reliably understand why these ado-lescents differ so significantly from their mainstream counterparts inmodern society.

As said before, this research focuses on specific groups, namelyhighly religious Christian and Muslim adolescents residing in theNetherlands. The characteristics of these groups determine the con-struction of the conceptual framework. What are the distinguish-ing characteristics of these highly religious Christians and Mus-lims? How can we distinguish them from other religiously commit-ted persons, who practice their religion in a more open and liberalway? Commonly, people expect a highly religious person to visit achurch or mosque regularly. Others may add the expectation thathighly religious persons will dress themselves in a particular way. Al-though these are popular sometimes, even prejudicial perceptions ofthese groups yet the true characteristics remain mostly vague andimplicit.

It may even require some effort to delineate these characteristics,particularly regarding what these highly religious Christians and Mus-lims have in common. By presenting a set of criteria, we also aim todistinguish these groups from counterparts, that is, the non-believingor more liberally religious groups in society.

In current studies, various names and definitions are used to in-dicate highly religious persons. We propose to use a different term,namely “orthopraxy.” This term is meant to indicate highly religiousChristians as well as Muslims.

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AIM AND METHOD

Henceforth, our aim is to develop a framework for qualita-tively studying the religious identity development of highly religiousChristian and Muslim adolescents based on existing theories aboutidentity development. We intend to validly distinguish the character-istics of these adolescents from mainstream counterparts in modernDutch society as well as from those more liberalist believers by devel-oping a definition and name to indicate these groups. Such a definitionwill function as a “sensitizing concept,” to indicate “what to look forand where to look” (Ritzer 1992).

An appropriate definition for characterizing highly religious ado-lescents is found in literature on fundamentalism and orthodoxy inChristianity and Islam, as has been published since 1995. For buildingthe framework on religious identity development of highly religiousChristian and Muslim adolescents, we followed studies that are basedon or have elaborated on the theory by James Marcia (1966, 1980) andalso have been published in the last fifteen years. For both literaturesearches we made use of the ISI Web of Knowledge.

CRITERIA FOR HIGH RELIGIOSITY

We propose four criteria characterizing highly religious Christiansand Muslims. We base the criteria on elements found in concepts oforthodoxy and fundamentalism. Both orthodoxy and fundamentalismare common terms for indicating highly religious believers.

The criteria aim to distinguish the groups of highly religious Chris-tians and Muslims as such, as well as to take them both together anddistinguish them from more liberal or non-believers:

1. A scripture is believed to be sacred and is believed to contain theexclusive truth about humanity and deity (Altemeyer and Huns-berger 2004; Dulles 1998; Hunter 1991; Ji and Ibrahim 2007;Stoffels 1995).

2. Religion is perceived to be meaningful for the totality of life (Alte-meyer and Hunsberger 2004; Antoun 2001; Ji and Ibrahim 2007).

3. A strong sense of community with a strong internal cohesionbetween members and religious institutes is experienced (Al-mond, Appleby, and Sivan 2003; Marty and Appleby 1994; Stoffels1995).

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4. The attitude toward modern society can be characterized as critical(Farley 2005; Riesebrodt 2000).

Given the total set of criteria, we consider adolescents to be highlyreligious only if they meet with all four criteria. Each criterionseparately does not differentiate the highly religious from the moreliberal believers. For example, various believers could experience astrong sense of community, but do not consider a scripture as con-taining the exclusive truth. In this case we would not qualify them ashighly religious.

The first criterion refers to the content of belief, but is also relatedto practice. To be sure, the validity of this criterion is determined bythe intensity in the way believers relate to the doctrine. The sacralscripture is believed to contain the exclusive truth about humanity anddeity and is, thus, leading for the life project of the believer himself andis supposed to be leading in the life project of every human being. So,this criterion is in its distinguishability primarily associated with theway believers perform according to this belief in religious practice. Theother criteria refer to religious practice as well in that they are relatedto the way believers act and live. Based on the prominence of practice,we claim the essence of high religiosity has primarily to do withpractice.

HOW TO INDICATE HIGHLY RELIGIOUS PEOPLE

We propose to use the term orthopraxy rather than fundamental-ism or orthodoxy for qualifying highly religious people. Two mainreasons are behind this proposal. Fundamentalism and orthodoxyare commonly used to indicate highly religious people (Altemeyerand Hunsberger 2004; Antoun 2001; Bruce 2000; Davis and Robin-son 2006; Emerson and Hartman 2006; Haar, ter and Busuttil 2003;Pancer et al. 1995; Ruthven 2004). We claim these labels do not cor-respond adequately with the criteria of high religiosity.

First, the term orthopraxy relates to groups of highly religiousadolescents, for whom religion prescribes adherence to doctrine andpractice of life. The four criteria reveal that high religiosity has pri-marily to do with the practice of life. In most cases, fundamentalism isrelated to both practice and doctrine. The term orthodoxy is tradition-ally related to the doctrine of a religion and appears as less appropriate

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to use as the criteria for qualifying the definition that mainly focuses onpractice.

By labeling highly religious persons as orthoprax, we emphasizethat in praxis is revealed what is important and valuable. Some schol-ars already use the term orthopraxy to focus on the practice of re-ligion (Armet 2009). Sutton and Vertigans (2005, 9) use the termpraxisitioners instead of fundamentalists when dealing with resur-gent Islam. Islam has even been described as an orthoprax ratherthan an orthodox religion (Kingston 2001). In Christianity, doctrinecertainly is important to highly religious believers, but we hold thatthis is primarily manifested in the way they live out their lives inpractice.

The second reason is related to the highly religious persons whowill be labeled. The adolescents themselves have to recognize andaccept the way we call them. Apart from that, we have to adapt to thecommon terminology in the Netherlands.

With regard to the latter aspect, we observe the problem that formany people the word fundamentalism has a negative connotation.The term fundamentalism is associated with violence and terrorism(Cournet 2003). Riesebrodt (2000) related fundamentalism to intol-erance and a rigid moralism. Stoffels (2001) claimed nobody in theNetherlands would name himself a fundamentalist. Therefore, we fearthat the adolescents will not recognize themselves in our use of thatterm. Furthermore, this term might hinder adolescents to participatein research if qualified as fundamentalist believers; the term funda-mentalist thus misguides people and might color our research in anegative way.

FOUR CRITERIA FOR ORTHOPRAXY

Now that we have distinguished orthoprax adolescents from themainstream in society and from believers that are more liberal, basedon our definition and its fourfold criteria, we present a framework forinvestigating the religious identity development of orthoprax adoles-cents in a qualitative way. First, we engage the theory of Marcia and itsfurther elaborations and explain why these theories are not sufficientfor our purposes. Second, we present some accompanying theories ashelpful in constructing our framework.

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RELIGIOUS IDENTITY DEVELOPMENTOF ORTHOPRAX ADOLESCENTS

Theory by Marcia

Marcia (1966, 1980) following Erikson (1968) defined identity asan ongoing developmental process. Marcia extended Erikson’s the-ory and hypothesized that identity development involves two steps:exploration and commitment. Exploration consists of actively ques-tioning and weighing identity alternatives before making a decisionabout which particular set of goals, values, and beliefs to which onewill adhere. Commitment involves making a choice in an identity do-main and engaging in significant activities toward the implementationof that choice.

Marcia (1966, 1980) also identified four identity statuses by juxta-posing each level of exploration with each level of commitment. Theidentity statuses are ways in which a late adolescent might be found tobe dealing with the issues of identity formation, named achievement,moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion. The theory of Marcia (1966,1980) has been extensively studied and the theoretical claims of theidentity status model have been greatly moderated during the courseof forty years of research.

Framework

In our effort to define the religious identity development of or-thoprax adolescents, we cannot take our point of departure solely inthe theory by Marcia (1966, 1980) regarding the focus on processesand statuses of identity development. On several points we regard thistheory as insufficient for describing the religious identity developmentof the specific groups of orthoprax adolescents.

A main reason for inadequacy is that most studies into processesof identity development following Marcia do not focus specifically onthe content or structure of religious or spiritual identity (Kiesling et al.2006; Syed and Azmitia 2010). Whereas identity statuses reveal theextent to which an individual has explored and committed to one’sidentity, they do not provide information on the meaning and contentof that religious identity for the individual (Yip, Seaton, and Sellers2006). An important criterion holding for orthoprax adolescents is thattheir religion is perceived to be meaningful for the totality of theirlives. Because these youngsters differ in life style from mainstream

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and more liberal believing adolescents, we are not only interested inthe nature of the processes related to religious identity development,but also in the specific content of their religious identity development.

Orthoprax adolescents have as attribute that they experience astrong relationship between themselves and persons and religious in-stitutes in their group. From this observation we expect persons withintheir group to mutually influence the religious identity developmentof member orthoprax adolescents.

Another feature of these young orthoprax people is that they havea critical attitude towards modern society. For this reason we are in-terested in the way they perceive both participation in society and theinfluence of modern society on their religious identity development.We expect orthoprax adolescents to experience difficulties in devel-oping their religious identity, because of differences between a lifestyle based on their religion and a life style carried out in mainstreamsociety.

In conclusion, aside from Marcia’s paradigm we need theorieshelpful to investigate the content of their religious identity develop-ment, the role of significant others and their attitude toward society. Toconstruct a framework, we suggest adding different theories, namelythe narrative approach by McAdams (2005, 2008) and the theories ofSchachter and Ventura (2008), and Cohen-Malayev, Assor and Kaplan(2009). In the next part we explain why and how these theories areuseful.

Processes and Statuses

Because we need to know the identity statutes of orthoprax ado-lescents and how they explore and commit themselves, we can getaround the limitations of Marcia’s theory (1966, 1980) regarding pro-cesses and identity statuses by holding together with Bertram-Troost,De Roos, and Miedema (2006) that actual commitments and explo-rations are central to identity development.

Another issue is that most researchers have proceeded on Marcia’stheory in a quantitative way, thereby developing new models to de-scribe identity development and focusing on categorizing the conceptidentity development (Crocetti et al. 2008; Luyckx et al. 2006; Meeuset al. 1999). We wonder what these quantitative approaches actuallyreveal about religious identity development.

Due to the fact that these elaborations of Marcia’s paradigm arenot quite applicable to our study, we propose to use the original and

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qualitative way of distinguishing identity statuses, namely the IdentityStatus Interview (Marcia 1966; Marcia et al. 1993). This instrumentcan be used to categorize an individual’s identity development andhas since its inception been revised and expanded a number of times(Marcia et al. 1993). Very few qualitative studies have been directedtoward religious identity development in the paradigm by Marcia(Kiesling et al. 2006). The Identity Status Interview enables us todetermine the actual status of each individual adolescent and to in-vestigate how the processes of exploration and commitment have de-veloped, as well as in a qualitative way.

Beside that, we want to focus on the process of exploration. Cohen-Malayev, Assor, and Kaplan (2009) argue that exploration is especiallysignificant in identity development. They examined the nature of re-ligious exploration among Modern-Orthodox Jewish emerging adultsliving in Israel and distinguished three styles of religious exploration:exploration within boundaries, radical exploration, and revisionist ex-ploration and assumed the nature of exploration may be changingalong with changes in the cultural milieu. Since they also investigatehighly religious adolescents, we are interested in knowing by using thismodel, whether we can distinguish such different styles of explorationin our research population.

Life Story

In our perception, religious identity development relates to boththe developmental processes and to the contents of religious identity.Just as Syed and Azmitia (2010) propose to reintroduce content tothe study of ethnic identity development, we suggest this can holdalso for studies about religious identity. To focus on the contentof religious identity development, we propose to add the narrativemodel by McAdams (1997, 2005, 2008) to our framework. This modelaims to examine how people make sense of their lives through storiesand how identity is a life story people begin constructing during lateadolescence and young adulthood. Due to the fact that this modelenables researchers to listen to the life story of adolescents, our use al-lows us to investigate the religious identity development of orthopraxyoungsters.

Using a narrative model will provide insight into the content ofidentity development in general. To focus on religious identity devel-opment, we will therefore use the interview protocol Faith, Politics,

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and the Life Story. This model is appropriate to address specific expe-riences and events from the past that have played a role in the religiousidentity development of adolescents.

Context in Religious Identity Development

In particular, we expect that the contextual situation of ortho-prax adolescents will be very important for their religious identitydevelopment, mainly because they are usually characterized by theirstrong sense of community. Congruently, we adopt Erikson’s (1968)essential position that identity develops in close relation to the adoles-cents’ sociohistorical context. Some researchers investigate the role ofthe context in identity development, as Schachter and Ventura (2008),thereby compensating that Marcia’s theory ignores this. They pay at-tention to persons who take part in the identity development andcall them identity agents. Although they focus on the role of parents,we are also interested in teachers, youth leaders, and representativesof religious institutes, such as schools and churches. The study bySchachter and Ventura meets with the characteristics of orthopraxadolescents and correspondingly is applicable in the construction ofour framework.

Another distinguishing criterion for orthoprax adolescents is theircritical attitude toward modern society. Examining this notion in thelives of orthoprax adolescents can be fruitful. The narrative modelof McAdams (1997, 2005, 2008) takes this notion into account, bycontaining questions about political and social values.

CONCLUSION

In this article we drew up an analysis and we proposed a frame-work for the study of the religious identity development of orthopraxadolescents. Due to a lack of studies on the religious identity devel-opment of orthoprax adolescents, we developed an orientation usingviable notions and conceptions, and we argued for and decided on thenotion of orthoprax to characterize highly religious Dutch Christianand Muslim adolescents. Our next step will be empirical research inline with this.

Our framework for studying the religious identity development isbased on several theories of identity development and in particularharks back to Marcia’s Identity Status Interview model. The narrative

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approach by McAdams (1997, 2005, 2008) is utilized to investigatethe life story of adolescents and to gain insight into the content ofreligious identity development. The theory by Cohen-Malayev, Assor,and Kaplan (2009) allows elaboration on the process of exploration.Schachter and Ventura (2008) and McAdams (1997, 2005, 2008) createthe opportunity to investigate the context of orthoprax adolescents.Our framework enables us to form a picture of the religious identitydevelopment of orthoprax adolescents.

Elsbeth Visser-Vogel is a PhD student at Utrecht University. E-mail:e.visser-vogel@driestar-educatief.nl

Janneke Westerink is a PhD student at Protestant Theological University.E-mail: j.westerink@driestar-educatief.nl

Jos de Kock is Assistant Professor of Education & Catechetics at the Protes-tant Theological University. E-mail: adekock@pthu.nl

Marcel Barnard is Professor of Practical Theology at Protestant TheologicalUniversity. E-mail: mbarnard@pthu.nl

Cok Bakker is Professor of Religious Education at Utrecht University. E-mail: c.bakker@uu.nl

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