Catalysts of connectedness: A case for greater complexity in religious identity formation research

Background: Religious identity research has predominantly investigated effects of discrete factors, despite many factors exercising interconnected effects on religious connectedness, resulting in a limited understanding of the mechanism influencing religious identity development. Purpose: This study examined the mechanism underlying the religious identity development in Jewish young adults, also showcasing the benefits of bringing together a range of known catalysts for examination in a single analytic model. Methods: Informed by Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model, data from a sample of 1712 young adults from the Gen17: Australian Jewish Community Study (2018) was used to estimate bivariate and OLS regression models including moderated mediation to examine the relationships between Jewish schooling, critical Jewish experiences, parental religious connectedness and young adult religious connectedness. Results: Jewish schooling significantly affected young adults’ religious connectedness; without mediating effects of other critical Jewish experiences, however, Jewish schooling effects were negligible. Upbringing by parents with high religious connectedness had an intensifying effect, while parents with low religious connectedness had a diminishing effect on the association between Jewish schooling and young adult religious connectedness. Those raised by parents with high religious connectedness had higher religious connectedness than those raised by parents with low-to-moderate religious connectedness, regardless of Jewish schooling. In addition, having a high proportion of Jewish peers in one’s friendship network was the most powerful of the critical Jewish experiences in mediating the effect of Jewish schooling on religious connectedness. Conclusions and implications: Parents and Jewish friendship networks play important roles in the development of young adults’ religious connectedness, which is only apparent with research approaches that acknowledge the complexity of the formation of religious connectedness. The enduring nature of these influences even into young adulthood has implications for scholars of religion as well as religious communities, as there may be greater gain from investment in agency-building in families and coreligionist friendship networks rather than outsourcing to program development by communal institutions.