(Invisible) Foundations: How Religion and Spirituality Influence Adolescents and Families Within Cultural Contexts

Throughout human history, religious and spiritual influences provide foundations for the contexts of development whether or how adolescents and their families affiliate and practice. This chapter explores how religious and spiritual beliefs and practices inform the development of youth from an intersectional perspective and within family contexts, which themselves are nested within cultural and sociopolitical ecologies. Although focused on the experiences and meaning-making of diverse adolescents across contexts, this chapter takes a lifespan, ecologically grounded developmental perspective starting in early childhood, and focuses on young adults and those who support them. This chapter maps out key encounter experiences and contexts that may lead to a range of religious and related processes and outcomes, including conversion, religious doubt, atheism, and how everyday and transcendent experiences may fuel religiosity. Drawing from global representations of religions and spiritual influences on the foundations and experiences of adolescents and families, this chapter concludes with implications to support holistic identity development within family functioning.