Growing up With Two Selves Connected By God: An Autoethnography of Youth Diaries From the Perspective of Religious Deidentification

What internal process in adolescence may contribute to later deidentification from a charismatic and conservative religious tradition like Pentecostalism? Why might faith still be maintained? In this collaborative analysis of a single-author autoethnography, we explore these questions based on the first author’s youth diaries. The data consists of her personal diaries during 5 years between 1993 and 1998, which she wrote from the ages of 11 to 16. The authors independently examined two separate datasets from the diaries using narrative categorical-content analysis. The results indicate that two intertwined processes contributed to later deidentification. First, the mutual exclusiveness of the ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ worlds led to the diarist living with two exclusive selves. Second, the Pentecostal community, including the world of the diarist’s parents, represented the diarist’s self as a child, with the result that the division between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ worlds intertwined with the process of growing up. Being able to reconstruct personal religiosity in a way where faith was separate from the community seemed to contribute to later religious deidentification. In the end, lack of social belonging and not finding a romantic partner may have led to the final decision to disaffiliate. The role of romantic love in deidentification from religious community is worthy of future study.