Faith, Authenticity, and Pro-Social Values in the Lives of Young People in Germany

Abstract

Increasing secularization, pluralization, and individualization have done much to weaken denominational identities and traditional religiosity in most Western countries since the 1960s, with the effect that—to echo Niklas Luhmann—being religious requires purely religious reasons. This also applies to young people, for whom religion is still an option, but precisely one option among others, and according to Charles Taylor quite a challenging one. In our article, we want to focus on young people who actively engage with faith and religion, and who take up a different position with regard to religion than their peers during their adolescence. The data are in-depth interviews with families with three generations present. We will explore the ways in which teenagers (aged 12–19) and young adults (aged 22–25) are confronted with religious issues, as well as how they decide upon these issues and justify their decisions. We will argue that both the societal context and the life phase of adolescence or young adulthood make it likely that a person will base decisions regarding religion upon the criterion of authenticity. Our findings demonstrate that especially positioning towards the question of belief can be a lengthy and conflictual process. We identified two main forms of religiosity that are socially accepted in contemporary society: deriving a sense of social responsibility from faith and transforming and translating belief and religious experience into secular contexts.

1. Introduction

Empirical findings show that institutional religiosity and religious practice have been steadily declining in most European countries since the 1960s (Pollack and Rosta 2017; Voas and Chaves 2016). There is some agreement among scholars that the decline in church-based religious practice and faith is due to a generational effect: each successive generation is less religious than the previous one, with the number of non-religious people therefore increasing. The consequence is that those who no longer belong to any religion neither have to justify this nor have to reckon with social disadvantages (Gärtner 2022, p. 1). Against this background, there are “no longer any non-religious reasons for being religious” (Luhmann 2002, p. 136; own translation). Echoing Jürgen Habermas (2003), we can speak of a progressively secularizing society in which, though still playing a role, religion and faith are becoming an option that requires justification (Taylor 2007).

In general, a person’s experience of socialization in the family is considered crucial for her acquisition of religious and secular values, beliefs and practices (see Bengtson et al. 2009, 2013; Gärtner 2013; Manning 2015; Pollack and Müller 2013; Smith and Snell 2009; Smith et al. 2014). Western societies in particular have seen a sharp decline in recent decades in religious socialization, which is becoming increasingly based on parental choice (Min et al. 2012; Smith and Adamczyk 2021; Stolz et al. 2016; Voas and Doebler 2011). As religious socialization can no longer simply expect to be greeted with consensus, it is not surprising that non-religious parents are particularly effective in passing on their beliefs, while passing on religion requires specific conditions and effort (Bengtson and Zuckerman 2018, p. 271; Smith et al. 2020, p. 267).

The shift in values is a key to understanding the decline in religious socialization in families. It is above all values such as self-realization, self-development, and individualization that have shaped parenting since the 1960s, this being in a certain relationship of tension with the transmission of religion (Pickel 2022, p. 141). Parenting millenials takes place within the context of the belief that religion should be freely chosen and not imposed (ibid., p. 144; see also Wilkins-Laflamme 2022, pp. 15–25). The old authoritarian style of parenting has been replaced by a greater recognition of children as people (Nunner-Winkler 2001), with parents following a “narrative of choice” (Manning 2015) that involves encouraging children to make their own choices in terms of worldview, religious affiliation, rites of passage, and religious practices. The cultural narrative1 results from the ideal of an individualistic society, one that allows everyone the freedom to develop themselves and to express their inner beings (ibid., pp. 144–45). Both religious and non-religious parents, who have often experienced coercion in matters of religion themselves, try to respect the children’s freedom of choice by providing them with options (e.g., attending religious services together, offering religious rituals, supporting each child’s interests), but not giving them strict guidelines.2

In the following, we will conceptualize authenticity in a twofold manner. First, as a structural feature of adolescence, which means that identity formation and thus also positioning towards religion involve a certain kind of reflexivity and search for one’s authentic self. Second, drawing on Charles Taylor, Hartmut Rosa and Somogy Varga, we will conceptualize authenticity as an ethical ideal that includes a commitment to a cause that transcends the self.

Despite the growing importance of the narrative of choice among parenting millenials, children acquire in the practice of socialization the familial as well as the collective self-images and worldviews of a society (on this, see Gärtner 2013, pp. 213–14), which also include religious and secular values. In the modern period, with its “expectation of autonomy” and its “desire for authenticity” (Rosa 2010),3 the phase of adolescence is the decisive phase of (pure) self-thematization and self-discovery, when the individual can question the interpretations passed down from his or her family and establish his or her own position. The structures acquired in the milieu of origin weaken during this phase, enabling young people to generate their own answers for a successful life regarding values, norms, and patterns of interpretation, while at the same time reintegrating the interpretations and values with which they were socialized and positioning themselves autonomously in relation to the world (see Gärtner 2013; King 2002; Rosa 2010). As young people grapple with existential (including religious) questions and develop their own interpretations and positions (see Schweitzer et al. 2018, pp. 245–46), they create and consolidate their identity and gain autonomy.

The simultaneous rise of secularization, pluralization, and individualization in Western countries since the 1960s has significantly weakened denominational identities and traditional religiosity (see McLeod 2007). This development provides the contextual structure for young people to articulate religious ideas and belief (Gärtner 2013, p. 215), a structure in which religion is still an option, but precisely one option among others, and one that, as Taylor (2007, p. 3) states, is “frequently not the easiest to embrace”. An international study on millenials emphasizes that “reflexive subjectivity” is an essential feature in the development of identity, and includes the conviction that “each individual is responsible for ‘constructing themselves’, for carving out a personal and in that sense unique life path that may or may not feature religion as a salient factor; and if it does, it is the individual that has to deliberately and reflexively take up that religion in the form that they conclude is correct” (Beyer 2019, p. 280). Other studies show that young people’s religious identities and interpretations of the world are individuated, diverse, and exceed the dichotomous distinction between religious and non-religious (Gareau et al. 2019; Gärtner 2021; Nynäs et al. 2022; Wilkins-Laflamme 2022).

The religious evaluations and decisions of young people suggest that they are oriented towards the criterion of authenticity, in the sense of a structural feature of adolescence. However, we can also observe in the group of young adults an orientation towards the norm of authenticity as an ethical ideal: “being true to oneself” (Taylor 1992, p. 15) and “in touch with our moral feelings” (ibid., p. 26) and “principles” (Varga 2012, p. 2). Taylor (1992, p. 22) distinguishes a self-realization that is accompanied by commitment to a cause that transcends the self from deviant forms of authenticity, i.e., narcissistic and self-centred forms in which personal relationships are instrumentalized (see also Gärtner 2014, pp. 482–86). In addition to commitment to a cause, the norm of authenticity also points to an “inner depth” of the person, as well as the effort to bring to fruition the “inner dispositions, inclinations and abilities” against a certain resistance, even “where the background conditions make this unlikely at first” (Rosa 2010, p. 211, own translation). Varga (2012, p. 121) formulates a similar concept: “authenticity is connected to the (wholehearted) manner in which we engage in our lives, integrating our lives through projects that we wholeheartedly endorse”, whereby he understands “wholeheartedly” as “engagement in a ‘project’ that is central to one’s self-understanding”, and this in a way that “betraying it would also mean betraying oneself” (ibid., p. 85).4

The meaning of authenticity as an ethical ideal is mirrored in empirical findings that show that there is an intergenerational continuity of “moral and ethical value orientations” independent of the ubiquitous loosening of religious ties (Bengtson and Zuckerman 2018, p. 270). We can observe a strong orientation towards values and the common good among young people regardless of their religious orientation (Gärtner 2021, pp. 28–29; Shipley 2019). This ability to stand up for pro-social values and to commit oneself “wholeheartedly” to a cause that transcends the self can be traced back to experiences of socialization (Gärtner 2013, 2014; see Varga 2012, p. 94). The strong orientation towards the common good that we can see among young people corresponds to the fact that the generative quality of socializational interaction in families has risen sharply since the 1970s (see Gärtner 2014, pp. 284–86).

In Section 2 of the paper, we describe our data and the methodological approach, as well as the societal context in which our interviewees position themselves towards religion. Section 3 explores in more detail how adolescents and young adults of two different age groups orient themselves in their (autonomous) decisions and religious positioning towards the ideal of authenticity. First, we discuss how teenagers (aged 12–19) position themselves on religious issues, especially when confronted with questions and decisions of confirmation or communion (Section 3.1). Second, we discuss the ways in which young adults (aged 22–25) develop their religious identity and why the norm of authenticity plays a major role in negotiating and justifying their positions (Section 3.2). In the light of two cases, we show that the justification of faith in an increasingly secular context can be a long and critical process (Section 3.2.1). Others, however, have succeeded in making their faith plausible in a secular environment: on the one hand, through the committed adoption of social responsibilities and the orientation towards pro-social values; on the other, by transferring faith and religious experience into secular contexts (Section 3.2.2). At the end of this section, we will discuss our findings regarding the relevance of authenticity in religious positioning (Section 3.3) and draw a conclusion (Section 4).

2. Methodological Remarks and Historical Context

Our data are drawn from the qualitative part of the research project “The Transmission of Religion Across Generations: A Comparative International Study of Continuities and Discontinuities in Family Socialization”,5 in which we conducted 15 in-depth interviews with families (see

Table A1. Family interviews.

Family	Age 1	Relevance of Authenticity in Religious Positioning
#1 Protestant	12, 15	The son decides against confirmation, because of his lack of faith and interest in religion; distancing from instrumental motives
#2 Catholic	9, 11, 12	Wholehearted altar service; distancing from instrumental motives
#3 Non-religious/ Protestant	15, 19	Decision against confirmation because of non-belief and lack of community experience; distancing from conformity
#4 Evangelical	23, 24	Subjective reference to religion is accompanied by an orientation towards social responsibility
#5 Protestant	22	Struggling to justify his own faith outside supportive environments (family, communities)
#6 Protestant	-	-
#7 Protestant/ Muslim	26	Dealing with discrimination; struggling to find religious identity
#8 Non-religious/ Protestant	25	Translating belief and religious experience into secular contexts
#9 Non-religious	-	-
#10 Catholic	38, 40	-
#11 Catholic	24	Strong community ties; struggling with the inability to believe
#12 Muslim	18, 23, 32, 32	analysis in process
#13 Protestant	22, 24	analysis in process
#14 Protestant	25, 31	analysis in process
#15 Non-religious	19	analysis in process

¹ Only members of the third generation participating in the interview; bold are included in article.

in Appendix A). The families were selected according to contrasting criteria based on different religious affiliation and the religious-cultural field in Germany, with the aim being to make our sample as diverse as possible. All family interviews were conducted between October 2019 and September 2021, involved members from three different generations (grandparents, parents, and children), and opened with the same input: “We are interested in how you have passed on from one generation to the next values, beliefs, and what is important to you in general, and in what has changed in the process over time. Can you tell us what it is like in your family?” After the interview, we collected demographic data over five generations (such as births, educational trajectories, career decisions, marriage, divorce, migration, deaths, religious orientation and change, special life events) to create a genogram (family tree) for each family (Bengtson et al. 2013, p. 14; Hildenbrand 1999, 2007). We transcribed and anonymized the interviews, before analyzing them in our research group via the method of Objective Hermeneutics (Oevermann 2000; see also Gärtner 2022). This article is based on young people from seven families and from two different age groups.6 First, teenagers (aged 12–19; families 1, 2 and 3), who are confronted with the issue of religion at school and discuss the issue with their peers. Second, a group of young adults (aged 22–25; families 4, 5, 8 and 11), some of whom are still strongly engaged at this stage of adolescence in finding their own religious identity.

The young people and young adults were born around the turn of the millennium and spent their childhood in the 2000s, a time when there was a sharp decline in religious socialization in families. This process had already begun in East Germany in the 1950s, when the socialist regime suppressed churches, ensured that socialist worldviews and anti-religious attitudes were taught in schools, and marginalized religious rites of passage: by 1960, 80% of a cohort were already taking part in the Jugendweihe (secular coming-of-age ceremony), a figure that would subsequently rise even higher (Wohlrab-Sahr et al. 2009, pp. 134–37). If a family decides to bring up its children religiously in both East and West Germany today, then it can no longer count on a supportive social environment as a matter of course. While we can see a decline in lived religious practice and the transmission of religious knowledge in families, school is becoming the place where religion is imparted for most young people. This generation, and they differ here from their parents’ generation, is growing up in a secular environment in which religious faith is no longer shared naturally. At the same time, most Western societies are becoming increasingly diverse and pluralistic with regard to religion, mainly due to migration, and not least due also to the increased proportion of the non-religious, to processes of pluralization within churches, and to social debates about religion (for example, after 9/11). It is against this background, marked by a range of possible lives, that the young people enter the phase of adolescence (from around 2007).

In line with the general decline in the importance of religion, religious self-description is also declining among young people in Germany, as it is on a global scale (Pew Research Center 2018). In the 2018 ALLBUS population survey, 40.7% of 18- to 29-year-olds (significantly more than in the older age groups) categorized themselves as “neither religious nor spiritual” (Gennerich and Streib 2022, p. 1120). Schweitzer et al. (2018) identify three groups of young people in West Germany based on how these young people describe themselves: 37% non-religious, for whom transcendence plays no role; 41% non-religious, who see themselves as believers, but who do not have close ties to a religious community; and 22% believers, who have close ties to a religious community.

Contrary to the low degree with which people describe themselves as religious in standardized surveys, which often equate religion with traditional church institutions, the religious affiliation of young people is still comparatively high. According to the 2019 Shell Youth Study on formal affiliation, only 22% of 15- to 25-year-olds do not belong to any religion, while 31% belong to the Catholic Church, 29% to the Protestant Church, 5% to other Christian communities, 9% to Islam, and 2% to other religions (e.g., Judaism) (Wolfert and Quenzel 2019, p. 151). There are also major differences between East and West Germany. While over 80% of young people and young adults aged 15 to 25 in the West still belong to a Christian denomination (31% Protestant, 36% Catholic), there is also a large Muslim minority (10%), and only 14% do not belong to any religion. In contrast, it is the norm in East Germany not to belong to any religion (67%), while only 16% are Protestant, 6% are Catholic and 5% are Muslim (ibid., p. 152). This difference illustrates that young people in Germany have to position themselves in very different religious-cultural contexts (see Gärtner 2013).

Attitudes towards the church range from distant, to indifferent, to ambivalent, to active approval (Feige 2010). 43% of 12- to 21-year-olds participating in a survey conducted by the Protestant Church in Germany (a third of whom had no religious affiliation) said that the church is no longer appropriate at all to our time, which is significantly higher than the other age groups (Pickel 2015, p. 148). However, ties to the church have not been completely severed, even among many “indifferents” (Schröder et al. 2017, p. 122): while 59% of young people of both Christian denominations stated in the Shell Youth Study that the church does not offer answers to the questions that preoccupied them, 69% nevertheless valued the church as a social institution, regardless of their creed (Wolfert and Quenzel 2019, pp. 156–57). Despite their loss of authority, religious institutions and traditions continue to provide a socially available reservoir of semantics and symbols, and can therefore offer a framework in which young people form their identity and deal with questions of meaning (Gärtner 2013, p. 229).

3. How Young People Position Themselves with Regard to Religion at Different Stages of Adolescence

3.1. Young People between 12 and 19 (Families 1, 2 and 3)

It is at school that teenagers are faced with the issue of religion,7 which they discuss with their peers. Their discussions about whether to be confirmed show the importance of authenticity in this decision-making process, for baptized and non-baptized young people alike.

The son from family 1 (*2004) was baptized Protestant.8 His parents have ties to the church, while at the same time individualizing their practices. They chose a special place to have their son, and then his younger sister, baptized. The father comes from a Protestant family with strong church ties; he believes in Christian values and makes use of what the church offers such as a men’s circle and father-son weekends. However, he does not find the language of church sermons or pronouncements convincing, and sees himself rather as a Christian humanist. The mother also grew up in a Protestant family; she sees herself as religiously spiritual and likes forms of worship that are special and beyond the everyday. Their son participated in his childhood in religious activities such as church festivals, St. Martin’s parade, Kirchentage (congresses organized by the Protestant Church in Germany) and advent rituals at home as a matter of course. In retrospect, he is aware of how matter-of-course this was: “I didn’t even realize that I had the possibility to decide because I didn’t really think about it at that time simply because you set us an example” (#1_G3_S: pp. 376–79).9 This statement shows that children participate in the lived practice of the family and acquire an unquestioned interpretation of the world through it; questions of faith do not play a (reflexive) role in childhood.

This also applies to the religious lessons that the son attended at primary school, and to the first part of his confirmation classes, both of which he describes as undemanding and unstimulating (“always just some handicraft Bible and other stuff”, #1_G3_S: p. 696). This is the reason that he then chose in the fifth class lessons in philosophy rather than in religion. In philosophy, “it was really more about human values and, even though I ... was not that good in terms of ... school grades, I found it very interesting” (#1_G3_S: pp. 698–700). His acceptance of poorer grades underlines his desire to deal with essential issues (e.g., human values) that appeal to him personally in a stimulating way.

The son sums up by saying that his parents encouraged him to think critically and make his own decisions: “I actually only learned to form my own opinion, but nothing really got passed on directly from you” (#1_G3_S: pp. 778–79). Pointing out that his parents had not imposed their religion upon him, he justifies his decision against being confirmed by saying that he had neither had a religious experience nor gained any insights into the questions that interest him.10 Since he “believes in science” and needs proof before he accepts what he is told, talk of something divine, preordained or supernatural were for him only ideas that he could not believe in (#1_G3_S: pp. 1050–51).

Despite his negative attitude towards religious ideas, he deals intensively with the question of faith and its foundations. His desire to be authentic is reflected in the fact that he examines whether the specifics of his self can be expressed through confirmation (see Varga 2012, p. 96). For him, confirmation should be based on an interest in religion or on faith, a perspective from which he also criticizes his environment: many people go through confirmation because they are mere “followers and are not really interested in religion” (#1_G3_S: pp. 277–78), and have material motives (“confirmation money”, #1_G3_S: p. 284). Thus, besides criticizing his peers, he also formulates an ideal that states that being confirmed should be determined by a strong interest or devotion. This reveals an ability to distinguish between authentic and instrumental motives and principles, in the sense of “orientation, in terms of distinguishing between peripheral and core personal commitments, principles, wishes, or feelings that are truly worth following” (Varga 2012, p. 2).

The daughters from family 3 (*2000, *2004) are not baptized. Their mother is Protestant; their father comes from a non-religious family that left the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the early 1960s, and he was neither baptized nor brought up religious. As a teenager, he decided to be baptized and confirmed because everyone in his class was being confirmed; his parents supported his wish. However, this did not develop into a religious bond, and as an adult he left the church. This family transmits a scientific view of the world, mutual respect, as well as tolerance and appreciation regarding other people’s religiosity, and it would have been perfectly open to the idea of the daughters being confirmed (on this case, see Gärtner 2022).

The older daughter (D1) had lessons in Protestant religion in primary and secondary school; the younger daughter (D2) also attended religious lessons to begin with, before switching to ethics classes because she found being “with philosophers” more exciting (#3_G3_D2: p. 193). Although neither liked religious lessons at school, the sisters thought about being confirmed because other young people in their class and among their friends were discussing confirmation. The older daughter mentions two main motives that she observed: namely, material incentives (“because of the money”, #3_G3_D1: p. 115), and experiences of fellowship that result from the two-year confirmation course. For her, the confirmation group of the neighbouring parish, which friends of hers belong to, is “cool”, and the “room used for confirmation” is somewhere that “people like to come, experience things together, make things, bake biscuits, and so on” (#3_G3_D1: pp. 117–20). She admits that this is why she considered being baptized and confirmed, “simply because it was such a nice sense of fellowship” (#3_G3_D1: pp. 122–23). A legitimate reason for being confirmed is for her not the material motive, but fellowship with her peers. However, since she belonged to a different parish than her friends, she decided against being confirmed. Moreover, even though she admits that the motive of fellowship has a certain justification, she also expects people to decide in favour of confirmation from an attitude of faith: “I think that very few people did it because they really believe in God” (#3_G3_D1: pp. 142–43).

The younger sister argues in a similar way and justifies her decision by saying that she does not believe in God: “Well, I thought about it for a while ... especially as most of my class had been confirmed, ... I don’t believe in it now and ... I don’t see why I should do it” (#3_G3_D2: pp. 1451–53). Both sisters reject instrumental motives such as presents or being able to have a church wedding later. Their decision not to be confirmed shows their desire for authenticity: they refuse to conform to what is still the social norm in their environment.

Their decision also shows a weighing-up of alternatives, with the sisters considering half-hearted or peripheral reasons to be less valuable than religious belief or the experience of fellowship. Like the son from family 1, the fact that they “grew up with science” gave them answers to existential questions (#3_G3_D1: p. 420). That they do not decide for something that does not suit them shows their orientation towards the criterion of authenticity.

We can also see initial struggles in the case of the son (*2007) from family 2, these struggles pointing to his desire for authentic religiosity. Since he is still in a very early phase of adolescence, we see in his narrative the reproduction of the family narrative, but also the beginnings of an independent judgment. He comes from a Catholic family that has strong ties to the church. Like him, his two younger siblings became servers at mass after their first communion. His mother grew up in a Catholic milieu, which (according to our interpretation) she both continues and transforms through her job as a theologian and pastoral minister. Both parents see the importance of regular religious family practice, such as attending Sunday church service. However, they do not exert any pressure on their children, seeking instead to lay a religious foundation that they can fall back on, and expecting their children to go through a phase in adolescence when they see the church as being “uncool” (#2_G2_F: p. 1228). This expectation is based on their own experiences during this phase, when they distanced themselves from the church. While the father gave up going to church services altogether until his marriage, the mother continued going but no longer participated in other church activities. The family also differs from most members of the Catholic Church, since, besides attending Sunday church service and the fact that the children are involved in altar service, all family members also confess regularly, this being presented as promoting tolerance and forgiveness in the family’s life together.

The son’s strong religious ties are shown by the fact that, when talking in the interview (aged 12) about his first communion, he emphasizes the religious aspects of the ritual, such as his solemn entry into the church with a baptismal candle in his hand (#2_G3_S1: p. 131), and the ritual of devotion in the afternoon, when the communion children could have their presents blessed (#2_G3_S1: pp. 132–34). He chooses as presents the cross and a prayer chain, both of which have a religious and idealistic value, and are not what one would expect an 8-year-old to choose. Besides his orientation towards the family narrative, the son’s choice, and his reference to the religious significance of communion (to renew baptism), a significance that many children are not aware of at his age (see McGrail 2007, pp. 102–3), also show that the religious meaning of this ritual is communicated and transmitted in the family.

However, the son does not simply adopt his parents’ religiosity, but appropriates it by distinguishing himself from others who seem to be less inwardly involved with their hearts: unlike most “altar boys”, who are mainly concerned with the “trips” that they go on together and not with “serving” (#2_G3_S1: pp. 197–200), he performs his role in a responsible and serious way, and has acquired a certain expertise. He regularly serves at mass in the church where his family attends service on Sundays. As an altar boy, he learns respect by adapting spontaneously to the procedures of different priests, and by supporting elderly and infirm priests while they are walking. This assumption of responsibility shows the demand that he makes on himself: to take serving at mass seriously, in contrast to others, who show a certain half-heartedness or behave in an instrumentalist way when they are oriented primarily towards the joint trips, i.e., the communal leisure activities. The verb “serve”, which the son and his two siblings use frequently during the interviews, contains the meaning of voluntary subordination to a cause, thus pointing to a sense of duty, devotion and loyalty that is transmitted through the family. On the other hand, it also shows an orientation towards the ideal of authenticity (see Varga 2012, p. 7).

3.2. Young Adults Aged 22–25 (Families 4, 5, 8 and 11)

While the young people are guided by the criterion of authenticity in the early phase of adolescence, in terms both of their own decision as to whether to participate in church rites of passage and of judging the motives of their peers, the young adults (born between 1995 and 1997) face a different problem: they have to justify their faith to their peers. In doing so, they are also guided by the criterion (or norm) of authenticity—but in a different way.

3.2.1. Doubts about Faith and the Search for an Individual Faith

To look more closely at the difficulty that people have to justify their own faith and find evidence to support it, we will now use narratives provided by young people who have acquired a Christian identity but are in a crisis of faith or have not found definitive answers for themselves.

The daughter (*1997) from family 11 was baptized Catholic. It is the second marriage for each of her parents, who also belong to different denominations. While the father (*1951) was socialized as a Protestant and clearly saw himself as religious in his adolescence (he even considered the idea of studying theology), the mother (*1964) grew up in a Catholic family and went through all the stages of church socialization without having the pressure of needing to adhere strictly to a church practice such as attending Sunday service. Her divorce also proves that, as was common in her generation, she no longer orientated herself to church norms and dogmas (see Gärtner 2019). Nevertheless, the parents see themselves as religious and consciously decided to give their daughter a Christian affiliation and upbringing. They turned to both churches, which we take as evidence that denominational identity is not decisive. They chose the Catholic Church because it welcomed them in a positive way, and it promised and guaranteed an institutional framework such as a family circle for parents, as well as an integration of the children into the parish. This church framework enables positive experiences of community, which in the daughter’s case has also succeeded on a personal level in that these experiences have laid the foundation for her religious identity and provided her with a religious home. She reports with great enthusiasm about the “youth work in the parish, especially at the beginning of communion, you got to know a lot of people then ... also a few leaders ... and I don’t know ... but I think if I hadn’t had enough other commitments or hobbies I might even have become an altar server” (#11_G3_D: pp. 162–68).

Although the family does not follow any religious practice at home, the positive experience of community associated with church socialization has shaped her religious identity, which is why she is still a member of the Catholic Church today. However, she also seems to find it difficult to acquire faith confidently. While she had not thought about it in her childhood, the question of faith became an issue in the phase of adolescence, when young people deal with existential questions. Her first crisis of faith was triggered by a teacher of religion at school, who she felt did not appreciate her and treated her unfairly, which is why she switched to ethics and philosophy.

Even though she says in the interview: “currently I don’t believe in God” (#11_G3_D: pp. 315–16), this statement is not as clear-cut as it seems, because she expresses a “dichotomy because I ... would actually like to believe in God, but that is just somehow illogical” (#11_G3_D: pp. 341–43). Her wording shows that she is not yet able to take a definitive position: on the one hand, she does not want to call herself an agnostic, which is “nothing half and ... nothing whole” (#11_G3_D: pp. 318–19); on the other, it is “somehow illogical to believe in something like that” (#11_G3_D: p. 321). In her early youth, it helped her “sometimes to pray or ... to have this help or this feeling that someone is listening to me I would really like to have that, but somehow it doesn’t work” (#11_G3_D: pp. 323–25). She was unable to solve her crisis of faith either through conversations in the Catholic community or with priests—the Catholic Church apparently offers no space for people to reflect on their own faith.

Our thesis is that her interest in (for her, unresolved) existential questions motivated her to begin studying philosophy. At the same time, she joined a Catholic student fraternity, this showing her closeness to the Catholic Church, which represents her religious home. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, the question of her faith, or the doubts about her faith that had already plagued her in the past, once again became an (oppressive) issue for her. The fact that a conflict arises between her affiliation to the Catholic Church, which she does not doubt, and her faith, to which she cannot find a satisfactory answer, can be explained by the fact that she orients herself to the norm of authenticity, which in her generation also concerns faith. Unlike previous generations (her grandfather or her mother), who refer to a diffuse faith, preserve it, and do not question it even when contact with the church diminishes, she experiences a conflict of having to justify her faith, which is no longer based on evidence shared as a matter of course—also and especially because she is a member of a Catholic fraternity and actively participates in its community activities. While her study of philosophy does provide her with categories with which she can deal with existential and ethical questions intellectually, it does not give her positive answers to questions of faith. To make matters worse, she, like many Catholics, has to face increased criticism of the Catholic Church.

We see a comparable problem with the son (*1995) of family 5, who is bound to the German Protestant Church, with his maternal grandparents also valuing Evangelical ideals. In the family interview, mother and son distinguish his socialization from hers: was “a bit freer maybe more unstructured” (#5_G3_S: pp. 61–62). His freer religious socialization corresponds to the individual scope for decision-making usual for his generation. He specifies his own experiences of socialization: “a lot was also conveyed through stories the children’s Bible or … partly when I was older also through activities in the church like children’s Bible days which I participated in quite regularly” (#5_G3_S: pp. 62–65).

A double transformation takes place in the socialization of the third generation: unlike his mother, the son acquired his faith not through a practice of formal family prayer and participation in Sunday school and church services, but through Bible stories and children’s Bible days. The latter differ from Sunday school in that they do not take place every Sunday, are framed as a leisure activity, and have more of an event character. With less structure, though, this also means fewer guidelines and less security—the flipside to the gain in freedom.

While the Christian faith was still an unproblematic and unquestioned part of his childhood (comparable to the daughter of #11), this changed during adolescence, when he had to place his faith on a different, more reflected footing.11 There is a definite connection here between the discontinuation of what the church offers (the children’s Bible days are not continued) and the time of conflict and reflection, which also includes doubts about faith, the latter perhaps being triggered, or at least intensified, by the former.

Due to his enthusiasm (as a child) and positive peer relationships, he had himself trained as a group leader through the regional church during his transition from childhood to adolescence, so that he could become involved in the children’s Bible days and pass on to younger children what he himself had experienced as positive: namely, conveying faith in a playful way and thus taking responsibility. However, a new pastor abolished this institution at exactly the time when he was in this transitional phase, and his crisis is therefore also connected to a disappointment with pastor and church. Our hypothesis is that this experience contributed significantly to his “doubts about faith”, especially since this also called his affiliation into question and his supportive peer community fell away. This vacuum set in motion a process in which he had to replace his childhood faith with his own faith and ideas. The wording “my own faith” also indicates that young people can no longer follow church beliefs and dogmas unquestioningly, but must be able to justify them themselves. This involves examining the authenticity of the faith conveyed by the church, and developing an individualized faith, one that loses its shared basis at the same time, however.

While he does present himself in the narrative as an “adult” (#5_G3_S: p. 80) and as someone who has found his own faith, that this process is still ongoing is also shown by the fact that he discusses the difficulty of outing himself as a believer: not only do his peers lack understanding when it comes to faith; he also risks being seen as belonging to an extreme evangelical milieu. It is no longer “normal” in his generation, he states, “to go to church and perhaps also to stand openly by your faith”, and a religious person is “also confronted … from the outside with many more doubts” (#5_G3_S: pp. 510–12). Being open about his faith is difficult not only because his peers do not support his faith, but also because his environment reinforces the doubts that he has.

He tells of his classmates’ lack of interest in religious lessons at school and in confirmation classes, and he also criticizes their motive for being confirmed: the expectation of monetary presents (#5_G3_S: pp. 528–35). Contrasting this with his experiences in the US, he says that this motive is particularly widespread in Germany. Although he criticizes his peers, he wishes that he had a peer community that shares and strengthens his faith, and that gives him security, especially now that the framework of the church has fallen away.

Besides his family, which offers a space for talking about religion, he mentions two contexts or forms of community that provide his faith with a certain underpinning. On the one hand, music, and specifically Christian rock or pop, gives him access to religion and faith. He mentions songs whose lyrics articulate his feelings, these lyrics being about loneliness, darkness, and being lost in life, but also about realizing that we are not destined to struggle alone. While addressing adolescent experiences to do with the loneliness, search for meaning, and overwhelming demands that young people are caught in, these lyrics also articulate the hope that God will show a way out of this despair, and that faith can overcome and solve these problems. What is perhaps more important is that, besides addressing feelings that reflect his experiences, he meets like-minded people at the Christian festivals with whom he can discuss ideas and who share and thus strengthen his faith (#5_G3_S: pp. 487–88).

The other context is a religious service offered by an evangelical free church, which he feels inspired by. Nevertheless, his relationship to the free church is ambivalent, since he sees himself in a conflict of loyalty with “his” regional Protestant church, while also feeling that the free church is constricting.12 Although he feels that the free church addresses and strengthens his faith, he also feels pressurized and wishes that he had more freedom, something with which he is familiar from his own socialization. This expresses both the incompleteness of his religious position, and his orientation towards the norm of authenticity, the latter being shown in the fact that, despite his insecurity, he is not willing to subordinate himself to a free church. The price of security would be too high: namely, the loss of individual freedom. However, the fact that he wants to maintain his freedom means also that he has a greater responsibility for justifying his own faith outside the supportive environment of the free church.

3.2.2. Faith as a Social Responsibility

The young people from families 4 and 8, on the other hand, succeed in solving their doubts about faith and the question of evidence: the one by looking for an environment in which they can address their faith, the other by transforming and translating their faith into secular contexts. These young adults have thus each found a form for themselves to express and live their faith.

The siblings from family 4 (the brother was born in 1996, the sister in 1997) were socialized in the free church both in the family and institutionally (Bible classes, discussion groups for young people), although, unlike their parents, they were given their own space in which to develop. Due to these close ties to the free church, the two siblings did not become religiously indifferent, but took up a strongly religious position in the phase of adolescence. However, the family culture of communication enabled them to make interpretations and initiate changes that can be understood in terms of a context of interaction and negotiation between the generations (Ecarius 2017, pp. 69–70). They succeeded in taking up the religious option chiefly because they were able to reflect upon their experiences of difference and to conceive a religiosity for themselves that was compatible with their social engagement. While setting themselves apart from what they considered to be the strict and sometimes uncritical (rituals of) faith practised by their grandmother and parents, the siblings also each looked in their own way for a supportive environment outside the free church and the family.

The son first completed a social year in South Africa, which brought him into contact with other volunteers and with a Catholic community, with the latter introducing him to a different type of religious community and a different form of religious practice. He then conducted a studium generale, where his friends and peers constituted for him “an important point of reference and space for discussion” (#4_G3_S: p. 1029), this enabling him to address central questions of life and faith. His sister, on the other hand, met “significant people” (see Ebertz 1995) outside the family: namely, a teacher of religion and a pastor, both of whom she valued as being authentic and who were such an inspiration that she defined her decision to continue her religion as an autonomous act outside her socialization. Study at university also gave her categories with which she could reflect on her own and her family’s religiosity. Unlike her grandmother, who draws strength to make life decisions from the Bible, she draws “trust and confidence” from her faith (#4_G3_D: pp. 1997–2000), this faith also giving her a sense of social responsibility. Her brother finds in faith itself a strength with which he can “step into the world” (#4_G3_S: p. 2027); he gains agency by facing his own “limitations” (#4_G3_S: p. 2031). He describes his faith as a source of spiritual and meditative strength; he draws on this source by participating in religious events and through inner “contemplation” (#4_G3_S: p. 2025).

While the brother has postponed his baptism in the hope of finding a community to which he can commit himself in the long term, his sister was baptized in the regional Protestant church in 2019. She places her baptism in the context of “finding her identity, but it was not particularly dependent on the world of my religious upbringing” (#4_G3_D: pp. 1247–1250). Her own understanding that she made this decision autonomously also underpins her desire for an authentically lived faith. The fact that they wait for a suitable community, or take great care to choose such a community, shows that both siblings are willing to orient themselves to something that lies outside of themselves. Echoing Varga (2012, p. 121), we can interpret this decision as being something that enables them to find an authentic answer in their long-term commitment to a project that is important to them to the question of their own selves. The sister professes her faith and positions herself in her predominantly non-believing circle of friends as “exotic”, as “the intellectual” (#4_G3_D: pp. 1684–85) who brings questions of social responsibility into play. Religiosity certainly plays a role here as a mark of distinction (Bourdieu) from her peers; at the same time, her confession of faith establishes a concept of uniqueness that is oriented towards the criterion of authenticity (see Gärtner 2014, p. 487).

The subjective reference to religion is accompanied in both cases by an orientation towards the goal of social responsibility that transcends the self. The sister states that her faith, like her grandmother’s, is “a source of strength, but is much more a responsibility” (#4_G3_D: 1990). In practical terms, her faith makes her “think about things and … become active” (#4_G3_D: pp. 1991–92). This attitude of responsibility is derived from faith, and manifests itself in the fact that both siblings behave in a way that is oriented towards the common good and that is socially responsible. We can describe such an attitude as an authentic life practice, since both take a position in relation to religion that overcomes secular obstacles; moreover, they want to be involved in a social cause to which they can (permanently) commit themselves.

A different path has been chosen by the son of family 8 (*1995), a Protestant family. He was baptized a Protestant as a child after his parents had taken the Christian faith under special conditions. Neither of his parents were socialized religiously in the GDR, either in their family or institutionally. His father was baptized under pressure from his strictly religious forefathers, but was brought up by his mother (who had experienced religion as restrictive) entirely in the spirit of the GDR’s culture of non-religion. He left the church after reunification. His mother brought up her daughter (born in 1986) on her own, and found fellowship and support in a Protestant student community in the late 1980s. She and her later husband, whom she met in this community, were also interested in socio-political issues and questions of meaning, and they valued the spaces for articulating and discussing ideas that the church provided; surveillance by the state that was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and repression had made such spaces impossible in the former GDR. After reunification, the couple developed ties to a Christian congregation and family circle, and then gradually opened up to the faith, which a pastor convincingly communicated to them as part of “getting to know the faith” (#8_G2_M: p. 422). The mother was baptized in 2001 together with her 15-year-old daughter, the father rejoined the church and both of their children are also baptized. They introduce their children to religious ideas and practices in a non-coercive and non-dogmatic way.

As a child, the son was not particularly interested in Sunday school or Christian teaching, one exception that he has positive memories of being a community-building event when the whole family went with the congregation to an island on Ascension Day every year to spend a few days of recreation with the church and with outdoor festive services. These activities would continue, and he came to participate enthusiastically in community and recreational events such as tent camps, bicycle tours, and confirmation classes. These he now associates with intense experiences of community with peers, and with recognition by teamers who became role models for the young people. While attributing his own positive experiences to “relatively cool pastors” (#8_G3_S: p. 699), he is fundamentally critical of the institution of the church and of those in the church. He knows from other people’s stories that his positive experiences of what the church offers do not necessarily constitute the rule.

He traces his religious identity and his strong interest in spirituality to his experiences on a pilgrimage that he decided to do spontaneously in order to accompany a friend on the Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela. During the pilgrimage, he dealt with questions of meaning and his own being (“you are only for yourself then, you have … time to think about life and … God and the world”, #8_G3_S: pp. 788–89), and gained certainty about the reason for his existence (“that somehow this cannot be a coincidence [laughs] there must be something bigger behind it so I know that God exists”, #8_G3_S: pp. 790–92). This answer to fundamental questions of meaning gave him a foundation for shaping his life. He describes pilgrimage as a practice in which finding-oneself and finding-God are interwoven: “that was somehow also a way ... to myself ... and also ... to God” (#8_G3_S: pp. 786–87). He brings his personality, which is oriented towards his fellow human beings, in line with his spiritual experiences in Taizé:13 “Singing mantras, it creates such a ... wonderful atmosphere and somehow has something magical and I have learned to value this connection ... with lots of people” (#8_G3_S: pp. 753–55). Here, we can speak of a resonance of personality and faith in line with an authentic self (see Rosa 2017).

Since he fundamentally shares the critical attitude of his peers towards church and religion, and attributes his spiritual interests to particular experiences, his faith is not tied to the institution of the church or to Christian dogmas. Rather, he detaches the pro-social values (helping others) and experiences (community, connectedness) that are essential to him from their ties to an explicitly Christian and religious context, and identifies religious dimensions of community, orientation to the common good, and spirituality in non-religious activities and among non-religious people. He observes in the techno and party scene that “people open up and find refuge ... from the stresses and strains of everyday life ... from suffering” (#8_G3_S: pp. 857–59). He is involved in this scene, which is extremely attractive for his generation, by organizing parties and DJing for others, which gives him the feeling that he can “help and give a lot ... to his fellow human beings” (#8_G3_S: p. 863). He sees being driven by the beat of the music as a modern way of practising spirituality. We interpret his positioning as a translational performance that enables him to be of service to his fellow human beings. Without talking directly to others about God or faith, he can realize and make permanent the spiritual elements of his personality.

3.3. Discussion: The Relevance of Authenticity in Religious Positioning

The central concern of our analysis has been to understand the importance of the norm of authenticity in decisions related to religion and belief. We have tried to show that both decisions regarding participation in religious rituals and positioning towards religion in general follow the criterion of authenticity. In the group of younger adolescents, we see that religious resonance occurs when religion is also accompanied by the credible transmission of religious knowledge. In contrast, the young adults feel resonance because of their own experiences, but they struggle when they cannot base their faith on a level of reflected and reasonable knowledge, and are unable to find a community that shares and reinforces their faith.

In the narration especially of the young people who criticize the motives of their peers for being non-authentic, e.g., when their peers have themselves confirmed or go to first communion for financial reasons, because of the presents, or to keep the possibility open of having a church marriage in later life, we also learn something about the motives of other young people. One distinction that has been made shows that there can be a range of different motives that are acknowledged as authentic: besides religious motives, these are motives that foster a sense of community with peers, which in turn can foster personal development and deepen friendships.

The distinction between authentic and non-authentic motives that we observed in the young people’s narratives about their peers indirectly reveals two further aspects. First, the distinction can be used to identify other motives that people have to perform religious rituals or practices. Material motives (money, presents, or certain benefits such as trips for altar servers) point to a certain pragmatism, although we would argue that in these cases it is not a matter of religious positioning in the narrower sense, since the individual does not confront his or her faith. Rather, the connection to certain practices still has a stronger plausibility without these having to be motivated primarily by religion. Second, there is the aspect of family tradition, which still has a binding force. This also seems to be present when, for example, participation in religious services among young people is motivated by loyalty to a family tradition (Ricucci 2019, p. 46). Participation in religious rituals or practices is thus not necessarily accompanied by a religious positioning that is aligned with authenticity. We would argue, however, that it is extremely difficult to make decisions with regard to faith without taking into account the norm of authenticity, since faith requires more justification than participation in rituals.

It is worth mentioning that several young people from our sample switched from religious classes to philosophy at school. While the daughter from family 11 switched to ethics and philosophy classes due to a personal disappointment, the children from families 1 and 3 attended philosophy classes because religious classes had not provided them with answers and explanations to their questions. We conclude that it was not the competition between different systems of worldviews that motivated the switch, but rather the adolescents’ great interest in existential and ethical questions. Apparently, teachers in religious classes are not able to take up and deal with these questions in a satisfactory and intellectually sophisticated way.

However, our analysis has some limitations and points to open questions that would merit further research. While showing how authenticity becomes a criterion of religious positioning, our analyses do not allow us to make a quantitative statement on whether a majority or a minority of young people base their own decisions on authenticity. Furthermore, we do not know whether the young people that we interviewed refer to authenticity when they position themselves towards non-religious convictions and beliefs. The search for one’s authentic self can play a role in every decision-making process and thus also relate to non-religious aspects of life. However, our findings clearly support Taylor’s description of a contemporary society in which religion is a challenging option that requires a personal justification. Therefore, we would argue that the question of authenticity mostly applies to religious beliefs, whereas widely shared non-religious convictions and beliefs do not require a personal justification, for example the conviction that it is good to help other people.

Another limitation lies in a certain bias of our sample: namely, we did not interview families with conflictual family relationships. Therefore, we can only confirm the present state of the art (see introduction) that positive family relationships foster the development of authentic forms of self-realization marked by commitment to a common cause beyond the self.

4. Conclusions

Our article has taken a closer look at how young people in two age groups (12–19 and 22–25) position themselves with regard to religion. Younger people orient themselves towards religion and faith especially when they decide against a family tradition or against the majority in their environment, for example when it comes to church rites of passage. Using the examples of young adults, we have shown that they are expected in a secular society to justify their religious ties. It can be seen in both age groups how decisions to do with religion are oriented towards the criterion of authenticity.

Using their decisions for or against confirmation enabled us to discern that, regardless of whether a person is baptized, religious rites of passage that occur in the period of adolescence become genuine decisions to be made according to the yardstick of authenticity under two conditions. First, there is no family pressure; rather, young people are brought up to position themselves independently in religious matters. Second, there are no social disadvantages, as there were in West Germany in the 1980s: the father (*1971) from family 3 had himself confirmed and baptized so as not to be an outsider. Their orientation towards the norm of authenticity became clear in the young people’s arguments from the fact that they tried out whether religion fitted their own convictions and experiences. In doing so, they consider faith to be a legitimate reason for the religious ritual, alongside the opportunity to experience a sense of community, whereas they tend to dismiss conformity (because everyone does it) and material incentives as instrumental. Other research has found similar reflections and the claim for authenticity, such as among couples in Poland who decide to have a humanist marriage ceremony despite social pressure from the family and financial disadvantages (Rejowska 2022).14 Authenticity in the sense of wholehearted commitment was also evident in the example of the young Catholic boy who performs his altar service in a conscientious and sincere way, and who distances himself from instrumental motives.

A diffuse and unquestioned faith is no longer an option for young adults today, which is what distinguishes them from previous generations. While a diffuse faith can still be plausible in childhood, this is no longer true for the phase of adolescence, when doubts about faith point to a need in the individuated and secularizing society to place the child’s faith on a more reflective basis. Additionally, young people can no longer follow the church’s beliefs and Christian dogmas unquestioningly, but have to justify them for themselves. This involves examining the faith acquired in socialization in terms of its authenticity, and appropriating it individually. The question arises with each decision that has to be made along the way (e.g., baptism, ties to a community) whether the option chosen is in line with the person’s subjective understanding of herself, and enables her to commit “wholeheartedly” to the cause, and whether the reasons for the decision are profound (and not merely superficial). Dealing with the question of whether and in what way one believes can be a lengthy and conflictual process.

Following one’s own faith can be in conflict with affiliation to a religious community that can limit the leeway that an individual has. The absence of a religious community, on the other hand, brings with it the problem that an individual’s faith can no longer be validated reciprocally. Danièle Hervieu-Léger (2004, p. 125) also problematizes the flipside of religious individualism: namely, the decline of every form of religious community. One possibility of building community here and there are event-like happenings such as Christian festivals, church congresses organized by the Protestant Church in Germany (Kirchentage), and pilgrimages. A person’s permanent integration into a religious community with which she can identify can strengthen her faith if it helps her address her faith productively in secular contexts, too, and even achieve a greater mark of distinction from her surroundings. Deriving a sense of social responsibility from faith is one way of living this faith in a socially acceptable way. This expresses authentic self-realization in the sense of having ties to a cause for the common good that transcends the self.

Another way for young adults to live their faith in secular society is by transforming and translating it into secular contexts. We have shown by way of a case study how it is possible in secular contexts (clubs, events) to connect to strongly formative and inspiring experiences of religious community, and thereby to continue affirming the inner attitude of faith. This obviates the need to justify faith in a secular environment, while this environment also supports the continuity of the faith that has strongly shifted to within the individual.