Chapter 7: Adolescence and the Illusion of Choice

Looking for both Self-Expression and Belonging

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In chapter 7, we looked at how the developmental stage of toddlerhood was perceived as a threat by the Religious Authoritarian Parenting  movement, most especially because of this stage's emphasis on developing autonomy. This week, we look at a stage at which developing individuality and differentiation is even more essential: the teenage years. We'll look specifically at the RAP movement's use of the illusion of choice—by giving teens pre-approved media—in order to stop natural teenage autonomy-seeking in its tracks.

Just like toddlers, teenagers are often asking that existential question: can I be a person distinct from my parents? They’re also asking: Where do I fit in the world? What group do I belong to? What ideologies do I subscribe to? What are my values?

Adolescents long for individuation from their parents: developmentally, they desire space to explore the world of ideas, identities, life paths and social interactions apart from their caregivers. Being able to identify their unique and autonomous self and dreaming of their possibilities for the future are two important steps in identity development for any adolescent. In the 1980s and 90s, Christian publishing found a way to help parents give their children a facade of that normal developmental experience, all while keeping them squarely within the fold of white evangelicalism. The solution? Christian “alternative” media. 

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The “I grew up Evangelical in the 1990s” starter pack

I (Krispin) will never forget the first rap album I bought: DC Talk’s “Free At Last.” It marked an important moment of deciding on my own musical taste, because my parents would never listen to it, but allowed me to listen. It was cool, unlike the Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Steven Curtis Chapman tape my parents played all the time. And I felt cool listening to it. My friends at school had been listening to Will Smith, and with my own rap music, I didn’t have to be an outsider anymore (at least, in my mind).¹ For the first time, I had something to put in my tape player other than Adventures in Odyssey tapes or kids praise songs. I was growing up, becoming my own person, with my own music preferences. 

Choosing their own music is just one way that teens are trying to find their place in the world, as they separate from their parents. Often, they’re exploring several aspects of identity formation: their values, what social group they identity with, what future careers they’re interested in, who they date (or whether they date), the purpose of their life, their personal fashion style, possible careers. They’re trying to figure out what kind of person they want to be in the world, as their brains gain the ability to process abstract ideas. Adolescence is an incredibly important time on a developmental level, as teenagers move beyond a surface identification with things like religion and politics to a desire to understand more deeply how the world works and to choose their own ideology.  

The developmental psychology literature speaks often of “commitments.” Teens want to commit themselves to groups, ideas, career paths and often politics. However, they want to make those decisions themselves and to practice autonomy, rather than be forced into allegiance. Erikson, who we mentioned in Chapter 7, writes about the delicate balance of being an adolescent: they want both self-expression and a place to belong.² It’s a paradoxical time of wanting both individuality and self-determined group status. They are considering where they belong, but they want to make the choice themselves. 

More recently, developmental psychologists have examined the process of individuation from parents. James Marcia explored how adolescents arrive at a new, differentiated identity and he discovered that in order to consolidate and structure that new identity, adolescents will go through a phase where they release their previously held values and identity, and try on a variety of new ones. However, he observed that some teens prematurely accepted their parents values and roles, without going through the personal process themselves, a status he termed “foreclosure.” He wrote, “Foreclosures are persons who are also committed to occupational and ideological positions. but these have been parentally chosen rather than self-chosen.”³

Those in foreclosure arrived at their commitments to vocation, sexual orientation, gender identity, core values and other aspects of personhood based on their parents choices instead of their own. They bypassed the “crisis” of identity, in which one enters into the discomfort of wrestling through the various options and determining for oneself the person they aspire to be in the world, and settled into the roles predetermined for them by their caregivers. Teenagers and young adults who were forced into foreclosure often experienced some of the tumult of adolescence, but ultimately ended up maintaining the status quo in their family culture and standards.

Forclosure is exactly what people in RAP homes were promised would happen for their children. The primary goal of religious authoritarian parenting was to raise children who would make the exact same commitments in adult life that their parents would, all with the illusion of free choice. The suppression of identity in adolscence was integral to white patriarchal evangelicalism carrying on, and Christian media sold the materials necessary to make that happen. They simply had to market it as God’s plan.

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That DC Talk album was one of my first experiences of adolescent individualization. To me—and my parents, who wouldn’t let me play it in their presence because they hated the sound of it—DC Talk felt like such a huge step in developing my own identity and becoming my own person.⁴ But looking back, I can now see how it was undergirded by the same white supremacists patriarchal values that my parents wanted instilled in me. For example, the song “Socially Acceptable” is a condemnation of LGBQT+ rights movements, “That Kinda Girl'' is an anthem for purity culture, and the titular track “Free at Last” took Dr. King’s words about racial justice in the political realm and reappropriated them to be about personal salvation. As I listened along, I thought I was becoming my own person. I could not conceive of  how my experience of practicing my own autonomy was strictly limited to a very particular way of viewing the world.

“Free At Last” is just one cultural artifact from a burgeoning industry that developed in the 80’s and 90’s from Christian publishers and record labels. It provided a sense of separation and differentiation from parents at the exact moment kids were beginning to question the worldviews they had been told their entire lives. Teens were looking for ways to consider new frameworks, making their own decisions and commitments—and Christian media was right there, ready to help them find that identity.⁵ Music, books, magazines, youth conferences—they were all geared toward helping teens feel that they were forming their own individual values, making their own choices and commitments—while, just like “Free At Last,” maintaining the same conservative values of their parents.

Want to understand world religions? Brio Magazine and Focus on the Family can help!

Focus on the Family’s “Brio Magazine” is a case study in this approach. So many of their articles were geared toward helping young women feel empowered to make their own decisions, and they were ready to give them the guidance they needed to do so. They taught girls how to be a person: how to talk to boys, how to dress modestly, how to engage their spiritual life, school and career advice—yet, all vetted by Focus on the Family staff. They talked about purpose and the meaning of life, which was to obey God and not yourself. These magazines gave teenagers the feeling of making their own decisions, while providing religious communities with the assurance that teens would never be encouraged to do anything other than commit themselves to patriarchal authoritarian values. 

Looking for a way to impact the world? Be inspired by this article about Alex and Brett Harris who worked on campaigns to elect republicans to congress. 

The Harris twins wrote a book about how they “rebelled” against cultural expectations by supporting republican politics, harnessing the natural desire for teens to rebel and using it in service of conservative values. You might recognize Alex Harris from his interview in Shiny Happy People in the segment on The Joshua Generation.

Teenagers are in a crucial period of asking, “What does it mean to be a person, outside my immediate family?” and Christian publishing provided a guide—based on the values and dreams of conservative elders—in the form of music, events, magazines, videos, books and more. 

This title and subtitle combination demonstrates the mixed messaging: your future is predetermined based on your design, but you need to choose it.

As teenagers were ready to make choices and commitments, Christian publishing was only one avenue through which evangelicalism was ready to facilitate those commitments and choices. There were also purity pledges (and purity balls), Christian camps, youth conferences, summer mission trips, and more. The primary goal of these events was to facilitate youth to commit their identity to Christianity, urging both initial conversions and kids who grew up in the church to “recommit your life to Christ.” The venues varied, whether it was a small group at a campfire, or hundreds of kids in a stadium at a youth conference, but the goal was the same: encourage kids to choose to form their identity around Christianity, including all the social and political values associated with white evangelicalism.

[TW: cutting, suicide on the following video]

Similar to an altar call, these commitments often explicitly or implicitly included several aspects of submitting to the hierarchy. It included obeying your parents and leaders in your religious community. Purity pledges were not simply about abstinence, they were about envisioning yourself in a future heterosexual marriage with the same gendered hierarchy you saw your parents or other adults in the church hold. It meant being able to “defend your faith,” which included advocating for conservative values in your school or community.⁶ In my youth group experience, part of following Jesus meant supporting anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation like Oregon’s measure 36.⁷ And rather than making teens feeling coerced or controlled, these Christian events, books, music, and teaching made the patriarchal conservative way of life feel like an appealing option—or even a way of rebelling culturally—that teens were choosing of their own violation. 

Delayed Adolescence

But what are the long-term impacts of teenagers who never get the chance to fully explore identity formation? What happens to a person when their life revolves around becoming an extension of their parents’ ideology instead of forming their own? Researchers found some particular (and unsurprising) characteristics about those adolescents who were in foreclosure. They found this group was likely to endorse authoritarian values, and scored lowest on measures of autonomy and self-directedness. Teens who experienced foreclosure were the most likely to involve their families in making life decisions.⁸ And, they also were more likely to repress their emotions.⁹

Perhaps most disturbing was research that investigated identity status and the Milgrm obedience task¹⁰, a social psychology experiment where an individual is instructed to give painful shocks to a student. In this study the “student,” a paid actor, would pretend to be in increasing amounts of pain, culminating in agony. The experimenter would command the individual to shock the student, and increase the voltage as the experiment progressed. They were observing at what point the individual would refuse to obey, in favor of the well-being of the “student.” Those with a foreclosure status showed “significant willingness”¹¹ to re-administer shocks to others when ordered to do so, and were the least likely to oppose authority in the experiment. 

It’s important to consider how teens with a foreclosed identity benefit a patriarchal authoritarian movement intent on retaining political and cultural power. Throughout history, authoritarian and fascist movements have targeted teens and youth in particular to enthusiastically carry out their aims. How does the suppression of emotions and autonomy in toddlerhood play into creating people predisposed towards authoritarianism? How does the illusion of choice and identity formation in adolescence create eager foot soldiers in not just a culture war, but in an actual war against fellow human beings?

These are pressing questions in 2024, but the reality is that the political is also personal. For people raised in RAP homes -- or who were exposed to patriarchal authoritarian evangelical youth movements during middle school, high school, or even college—this illusion of choice during our formative years has lingering impacts. Many of us, even decades later, believe we “chose” to become a Christian, when in reality it was already chosen for us. Due to pressure from family members, Christian media, church communities and more, we foreclosed our identity formation during adolescence without ever being aware this is what was happening. 

This is a screenshot from a recent CRU (campus crusade for Christ) article aimed at young people

We thought we were making our own choices. We believed we were choosing Jesus. We believed we were rebelling against the culture. But in truth it was always a false individualization. We were exposed to what seemed like a wide variety of information, but it was all based on the same set of propositions and filtered by our religious leaders. Many of us were so indoctrinated by the time we reached adolescence that we couldn’t even entertain the idea of considering sources of truth outside our religious framework. We weren’t presented with options, we were presented with a binary. We were given one choice: follow God or live a life of sin, death and pain. Rather than being given a wide array of possibilities, we were given two: we could choose the conservative, patriarchal path, or we could choose to be an outsider. Developmentally, it’s easy to see why so many teenagers made the choice to not be an outsider. After all, they are developmentally programmed to seek out community and an identity—and authoritarian religious spaces promise both.

It’s no surprise that many of us who were raised with Religious Authoritarian Parenting methods feel like we’re teenagers again, re-evaluating our sexuality, gender expression, career choices and more. Our initial individualization stage was a farce—or at least severely limited and highly controlled. Some of us differentiated as we grew older by slowly pushing against the values of our parents—perhaps by engaging in egalitarian marriages (while never being able to question whether we wanted marriage), or voting democrat, or parenting our kids differently. Maybe we went to churches that looked vastly different than the ones our parents attended. We found some ways to form our identity separate from our parents through the years, which is often the best you can do when you aren’t afforded the opportunity to openly and clearly create an identity separate from your parents. But it’s been slow going, and for many of us it has taken decades before we could ask ourselves some of the identity questions that were strictly prohibited during our adolescent years. 

If you feel like you’re a teenager again, you’re not alone in that experience. Your adolescent experience was likely hampered at best, if not completely restricted. You were given an option that wasn’t an option, and you felt like you chose it. But the strong willed child in you might be waking up, pushing against the predetermined path, opening to who you are and how you want to express yourself in the world. It’s never too late to discover who you really are. And you’re never too old to feel like a teenager again, deciding who you want to be and what path you want your life to take. It’s never too late to recover autonomy.

As a teenager, did you feel that you had a choice in the path of your life? What determined your choices? Did you feel like you differentiated from your parents? What has the process of differentiating looked like since you were a teenager?

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Join us on Thursday as we discuss in community some of the ways we are exploring our identities later in life. If you are a member of the LGBTQIA+ community and are not able to afford a subscription, please email us at strongwilledproject @ gmail and we will get you set up. If you would like to support our work and ensure that it stays accessible for all, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. 

1. Many kids who were raised in high control religions and were sent to public school struggled to feel “cool” and accepted by their peers. To prevent kids from leaving the religion, this sense of isolation was encouraged in many ways and kids were told that they were being persecuted for their faith and it made them better Christians if their peers did not understand them. So it is no wonder that Christian music became so popular for many teenagers in RAP homes. It was a way kids could dabble in expressing themselves while still never being exposed to messages that would contradict the religious and authoritarian messages of Christian media. 

2.  Erik H.Erikson,  Identity: Youth and Crisis (Austen Riggs Monograph), 130).

3. James E. Marcia, Handbook of adolescent psychology, 161.

4.  It even had references to non-Christian music, like the Doobie Brothers.

5. We’ve covered many aspects of this on our podcast, The Prophetic Imagination Station, Krispin’s series Shamecore Records is perhaps the most poignant example of giving Christian kids “self-expression” while upholding the same politics and harmful theology. We also did a whole season on DC Talk’s album “Jesus Freak”.

6. For example, Focus on the Family’s “Day of Dialogue” that evangelical youth were encouraged to engage in at their school, founded by the Conservative Christian Alliance Defense Fund in 2005 in opposition to the Day of Silence.

7. When I was in high school, our youth pastor showed us a video about this measure on a Sunday morning in 2004, with the goal of “informing” us group about the measure.

8. James E. Marcia, Handbook of adolescent psychology, 163-164.

9. James E. Marcia, Handbook of adolescent psychology, 162.

10. For explanation, discussion and critique of this experiment, check out this article at Very Well Mind.

11. James E.P. Marcia, Handbook of adolescent psychology, 163.