National identities are always free of notions of race, religion, and other aspects of identity.

Religion can be a central part of one’s identity. The word religion comes from a Latin word that means “to tie or bind together.” Modern dictionaries define religion as “an organized system of beliefs and rituals centering on a supernatural being or beings.” To belong to a religion often means more than sharing its beliefs and participating in its rituals; it also means being part of a community and, sometimes, a culture.

The world’s religions are similar in many ways; scholar Stephen Prothero refers to these similarities as “family resemblances.” All religions include rituals, scriptures, and sacred days and gathering places. Each religion gives its followers instructions for how human beings should act toward one another. 1  In addition, three of the world’s religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—share a common origin: all three trace their beginnings to the biblical figure of Abraham.

There is incredible diversity within each religion in terms of how members define their connections to it. For some, a religion’s theological beliefs and rituals of worship are central to their lives. Others are more drawn to a religion’s community and culture than to its beliefs and rituals. Many even feel part of a religion’s culture but choose not to participate in its rituals at all. Some people feel free to choose a religion for themselves, or to reject religion entirely as a part of their identity. Others feel that they have been born and raised in a particular religion and are unwilling or unable to change it. Some governments grant privileges to one religion and not to others, while other governments protect citizens’ freedom to follow any religion without privilege or penalty.

Ramadan picnic in Istanbul, Turkey, in front of the Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya), a building that has been both a Greek Orthodox Christian church and a mosque.

Different people have different experiences with their religion. In the following reflections, teenagers share parts of their religious experiences. While each belongs to a particular religion, each one’s experience does not fully represent that religion as a whole.

Rebecca, then age 17, explains the influence that her religion, Judaism, has on her life:

In the Bible, in the Torah, there are 613 commandments. They involve everything from how you treat other people, to Jewish holidays and how we observe them, and the Sabbath, which is every week, and how we observe that. It’s like a guide how to live.

There are also a lot of dietary laws. The dietary laws say we can only eat certain kinds of meat that are killed and prepared in a certain way. We can’t eat meat at nonkosher restaurants. My parents like to remind me of this funny story. One time when I was two, we were driving past a Burger King. I saw the sign, and I yelled out, “That sign says Burger King. No burgers for Jewish people.” I picked up on those observances. It was always something that was part of me. I recognized that it was important.

We set the Sabbath aside as a day of rest because God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. Because of this, there are lots of rules for things you can and can’t do . . . It’s supposed to be a day of rest—you’re not supposed to do any type of work, or watch television, use the computer, use electricity, any of that stuff . . . For me it’s very spiritual. It really separates the day out from the rest of the week.

I spend a lot of time with my family—from Friday night at sundown until Saturday night. I go to prayers at my synagogue in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. It’s just a really spiritual experience. It makes it more of an important day . . .

I haven’t gone to see a movie on a Saturday or Friday night ever.

It’s weird being in a public high school because you’re faced with being in a school where there’s lots of activities on Friday nights and things to miss out on. Like all the school plays are on Friday nights. I have to give up trying out for school plays. And sports—I used to play softball. But there are games every Saturday, so I couldn’t play those.

A lot of people look at it like, “How can you give up all of this stuff because of your religion?” It’s just a matter of how you look at it. You can look at it as being a burden—that you have these religious obligations, so you’re not able to do your school activities. But I look at it as a more positive experience. It’s something that I choose to do. 2

Often, the way individuals relate to and practice a religion changes over the course of their lives. Maham, age 19, explains how her Muslim faith and practice has changed as she has grown older:

When I was fifteen, I was really super-religious actually. Then I fell into this not-so-religious stage—that was between the end of junior year of high school and freshman year of college. I started praying less and hanging out with my friends more. I believe that spirituality is a roller coaster and that you’re going to have your ups and downs, because when you’re up, there’s nowhere to go but down. That’s how life is.

I went down, and now I think I’m heading right back up. I still am not back praying five times a day because of my schedule (I try to pray as much as I can), but I believe that true spirituality transcends ritual worship, so I try to live my life with the philosophy that Islam teaches—of compassion, peace, submission, tolerance, and things like that. I try every day to fight the jihad of personal struggle to become a better person.

That’s what Islam is to me now, more than just praying five times a day. When you’re fourteen, that’s enough. But as you mature, life becomes complicated and harder to categorize as just good and bad. The rules are not laid out in black and white anymore—you find a lot of gray area since you gain more independence as you get older. After all, you start to make your own decisions—some good, some bad—but life has to teach you its lessons somehow.

I do believe in rituals. Like Ramadan is coming up next week. Do I plan on fasting all thirty days? Yes, I do. Those things help me become a better Muslim. There are a lot of things that are taught in Islam, like wearing the headscarf and praying. Just as people eat food four or five times a day to nourish their bodies, prayers nourish the soul four or five times a day. It’s a way for me to meditate. It’s a way for me to tune myself out from the things around me that are bad influences. It’s a way to remind myself of who I am so I have less chances of doing something I’ll regret. 3

Sara, age 18, feels differently about the rituals and worship practices of her religion than Rebecca and Maham do:

I feel really connected with my Jewish community, but a little less connected to the observance factor of my religion. I don’t keep kosher. I don’t really feel that that’s necessary. When I was little, my whole family would sit down every Friday night and light the Shabbat candles and say the blessings. We don’t do that anymore. Now it’s like, “It’s Friday night. I’m going to go out with my friends.”

I don’t like organized prayer. Every once in a while I go to services, but I appreciate it a lot more when I do my own thing and say my own prayers . . .

When I was younger, I never really thought I was different ’cause I was Jewish. It didn’t occur to me until high school when I started getting really involved with stuff. It’s kind of weird when I really think about it. It’s like I’m just like everyone else, except there’s that little part of me that’s going to be Jewish forever, and that makes me different. 4

Hesed, age 14, a member of the United Methodist Church, explains how he knows the Christian religion in which he was raised is right for him:

After confirmation [as an adolescent] I was getting stronger in the faith, but I still thought about it and said, “Well, what about other religions? Are they fake? And if they are, why are there millions of Muslims around the world who pray to Allah five times a day? And why are there Buddhists who make Buddhism their faith? Why do I think this one faith is real?”

And basically, to me, I just get a feeling. It’s really hard to explain. Christianity just feels right to me. I go to church, and I see the cross, and we’re at prayer—it feels right. And I can honestly say that I feel the presence of God in that place. And for me, Christianity is the religion where I feel that. To me that’s basically what faith is—to just believe in what you think is right. And this is right for me.

Now I’m really secure in what I believe. And I don’t know if it’s wrong to say it—since I’m a Christian and we’re supposed to go out and save the world and convert people to Christianity—but I truly do believe that there are a lot of people who feel that their religion, whether it be Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, is right for them. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’m not saying those are the right faiths, but you just get a feeling when something is right for you. 5

1. How do the young people in this reading experience religious belief and belonging? What can we learn from the similarities and differences in their stories?
2. Based on your experiences and observations, what are some other kinds of experiences with religion that are not represented in these four short reflections?
3. How would you describe the role, if any, that religion plays in your identity?

Page 2

Sometimes, feelings of embarrassment and humiliation about parts of our identities can influence the way we think about and act toward others. In a reflection titled “Fear,” writer Gary Soto writes about how such feelings affected the way a boy he knew growing up treated others.

A cold day after school. Frankie T., who would drown his brother by accident that coming spring and would use a length of pipe to beat a woman in a burglary years later, had me pinned on the ground behind a backstop, his breath sour as meat left out in the sun. . . . I stared at his face, shaped like the sole of a shoe, and just went along with the insults, although now and then I tried to raise a shoulder in a halfhearted struggle because that was part of the game.

He let his drool yo-yo from his lips, missing my feet by only inches, after which he giggled and called me names. Finally he let me up. I slapped grass from my jacket and pants, and pulled my shirt tail from my pants to shake out the fistful of dirt he had stuffed in my collar. I stood by him, nervous and red-faced from struggling, and when he suggested that we climb the monkey bars together, I followed him quietly to the kid’s section of Jefferson Elementary. He climbed first, with small grunts, and for a second I thought of running but knew he would probably catch me—if not then, the next day. There was no way out of being a fifth grader—the daily event of running to teachers to show them your bloody nose. It was just a fact, like having lunch.

So I climbed the bars and tried to make conversation, first about the girls in our classroom and then about kickball. He looked at me smiling as if I had a camera in my hand, his teeth green like the underside of a rock, before he relaxed his grin into a simple gray line across his face. He told me to shut up. He gave me a hard stare and I looked away to a woman teacher walking to her car and wanted very badly to yell for help. She unlocked her door, got in, played with her face in the visor mirror while the engine warmed, and then drove off with the blue smoke trailing. Frankie was watching me all along and when I turned to him, he laughed, “Chale! She can’t help you, ese.” He moved closer to me on the bars and I thought he was going to hit me; instead he put his arm around my shoulder, squeezing firmly in friendship. “C’mon, chicken, let’s be cool.”

I opened my mouth and tried to feel happy as he told me what he was going to have for Thanksgiving. “My Mamma’s got a turkey and ham, lots of potatoes, yams, and stuff like that. I saw it in the refrigerator. And she says we gonna get some pies. Really, ese.”

Poor liar, I thought, smiling as we clunked our heads softly like good friends. He had seen the same afternoon program on TV as I had, one in which a woman in an apron demonstrated how to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. I knew he would have tortillas and beans, a round steak, maybe, and oranges from his backyard. He went on describing his Thanksgiving, then changed over to Christmas—the new bicycle, the clothes, the G.I. Joes. I told him that it sounded swell, even though I knew he was making it all up. His mother would in fact stand in line at the Salvation Army to come away hugging armfuls of toys that had been tapped back into shape by reformed alcoholics with veined noses. I pretended to be excited and asked if I could come over to his place to play after Christmas. “Oh, yeah, anytime,” he said, squeezing my shoulder and clunking his head against mine.

When he asked what I was having for Thanksgiving, I told him that we would probably have a ham with pineapple on the top. My family was slightly better off than Frankie’s, though I sometimes walked around with cardboard in my shoes and socks with holes big enough to be ski masks, so holidays were extravagant happenings. I told him about the candied yams, the frozen green beans, and the pumpkin pie.

His eyes moved across my face as if he were deciding where to hit me—nose, temple, chin, talking mouth—and then he lifted his arm from my shoulder and jumped from the monkey bars, grunting as he landed. He wiped sand from his knees while looking up and warned me not to mess around with him any more. He stared with such a great meanness that I had to look away. He warned me again and then walked away. Incredibly relieved, I jumped from the bars and ran, looking over my shoulder until I turned onto my street.

Frankie scared most of the school out of its wits and even had girls scampering out of view when he showed himself on the playground. If he caught us without notice, we grew quiet and stared down at our shoes until he passed after a threat or two. If he pushed us down, we stayed on the ground with our eyes closed and pretended we were badly hurt. If he riffled through our lunch bags, we didn’t say anything. He took what he wanted, after which we sighed and watched him walk away after peeling an orange or chewing big chunks of an apple.

Still, that afternoon when he called Mr. Koligian, our teacher, a foul name—we grew scared for him. Mr. Koligian pulled and tugged at his body until it was in his arms and then out of his arms as he hurled Frankie against the building. Some of us looked away because it was unfair. We knew the house he lived in: The empty refrigerator, the father gone, the mother in a sad bathrobe, the beatings, the yearnings for something to love. When a teacher manhandled him, we all wanted to run away, but instead we stared and felt shamed. Robert, Adele, Yolanda shamed; Danny, Alfonso, Brenda shamed; Nash, Margie, Rocha shamed. We all watched him flop about as Mr. Koligian shook and grew red from anger. We knew his house and, for some, it was the same one to walk home to: The broken mother, the indifferent walls, the refrigerator’s glare which fed the people no one wanted. 1

Page 3

Our desire to belong and feel connected to other people can shape the way we think about and act toward others and ourselves. Here, Eve Shalen, a high-school student, reflects on how her desire to belong once affected the way she treated one of her classmates.

My eighth grade consisted of 28 students, most of whom knew each other from the age of five or six. The class was close-knit and we knew each other so well that most of us could distinguish each other’s handwriting at a glance. Although we grew up together, we still had class outcasts. From second grade on, a small elite group spent a large portion of their time harassing two or three of the others. I was one of those two or three, though I don’t know why. In most cases when children get picked on, they aren’t good at sports or they read too much or they wear the wrong clothes or they are of a different race. But in my class, we all read too much and didn’t know how to play sports. We had also been brought up to carefully respect each other’s races. This is what was so strange about my situation. Usually, people are made outcasts because they are in some way different from the larger group. But in my class, large differences did not exist. It was as if the outcasts were invented by the group out of a need for them. Differences between us did not cause hatred; hatred caused differences between us.

The harassment was subtle. It came in the form of muffled giggles when I talked, and rolled eyes when I turned around. If I was out in the playground and approached a group of people, they often fell silent. Sometimes someone would not see me coming and I would catch the tail end of a joke at my expense.

I also have a memory of a different kind. There was another girl in our class who was perhaps even more rejected than I. She also tried harder than I did for acceptance, providing the group with ample material for jokes. One day during lunch I was sitting outside watching a basketball game. One of the popular girls in the class came up to me to show me something she said I wouldn’t want to miss. We walked to a corner of the playground where a group of three or four sat. One of them read aloud from a small book, which I was told was the girl’s diary.

I sat down and, laughing till my sides hurt, heard my voice finally blend with the others. Looking back, I wonder how I could have participated in mocking this girl when I knew perfectly well what it felt like to be mocked myself. I would like to say that if I were in that situation today I would react differently, but I can’t honestly be sure. Often being accepted by others is more satisfying than being accepted by oneself, even though the satisfaction does not last. Too often our actions are determined by the moment. 1

1. How did Eve Shalen’s strong desire to belong shape her choice in the story?
2. Why does her choice still trouble her?
3. How important is peer pressure to the way we see ourselves and others?
4. How do you understand Shalen’s statement, “Differences between us did not cause hatred; hatred caused differences between us”? Does it connect to anything in your own experience?

Page 4

En el siguiente fragmento, Cameron Tuttle explica de qué manera su necesidad de aceptación moldeó su experiencia cuando cursaba la secundaria y terminó por comprender que era homosexual.

No me acosaron en la secundaria porque nadie en absoluto sabía que yo era homosexual. Ni siquiera yo lo sabía. Tardé años en descubrirlo. Yo era una de esas personas súper impecables y extremadamente populares y sobresalientes. Obtenía buenas calificaciones, participaba en el gobierno estudiantil, cantaba en los musicales, jugaba deportes de equipo y me vinculaba a muchos clubes, con el fin de que mis solicitudes de admisión a la universidad fueran llamativas. Sin embargo, aunque era popular y amiga de muchas personas diferentes, me sentía sola, muy sola, como si nadie conociera a la persona que yo era en realidad.

¿Cómo era esto posible? Me esforzaba tanto por ser perfecta.

Por fuera, era una adolescente exitosa, activa y un orgullo para mi familia. Pero, por dentro, estaba emocionalmente bloqueada, letárgica y estancada. Mi mamá había muerto de cáncer de mama dos semanas antes del inicio del noveno grado. Ella era una mamá increíble, amorosa y comprensiva, y me dio suficiente libertad para explorar lo que yo era a fin de poder triunfar o fracasar a mi propio estilo. Su muerte me dejó destrozada, pero estaba decidida a demostrarle al mundo y a mí misma que yo estaba bien.

Terminé esforzándome mucho para ser la mejor porque tenía miedo. Miedo de ser diferente. Miedo de ser imperfecta. Miedo de vivir mis sentimientos. Así que, durante años, no me permití sentir.

Hice muchas cosas en la secundaria, pero no me divertí mucho. Y, aunque nunca fui acosada por los demás, sí me dejaba acosar despiadadamente por mis propios pensamientos y miedos sobre quién era yo, cómo debía comportarme y qué pasaría si no lo hacía.

De hecho, tenía la patética idea de que defraudaría de algún modo a mi comunidad, —personas que a duras penas conocía en el vecindario conservador y prepotente en el que había crecido— si terminaba siendo lesbiana. ¿Qué tan ridículo puede ser eso?

El acoso no es solo lo que la gente te dice o trata de hacerte directamente. El acoso está en todas partes; está en las palabras de los padres temerosos y prejuiciosos que tratan de controlarte. (Por cierto, también en las palabras de los padres bien intencionados, pero que se equivocan al tratar “de evitar que salgas lastimado”). El acoso está en los medios de comunicación y en las políticas gubernamentales. Está en el imaginario de la cultura popular. Está en la religión. Y, por ese motivo, se mete en tu cabeza.

¿Cómo logré superarlo? Lo superé lentamente; fue de gran ayuda el hecho de haber ingresado a una universidad al otro lado del país, tan lejos de mi ciudad como me fuera posible, pero en la que no necesitaba usar un pasaporte.

Con el tiempo encontré la fuerza para enfrentar mi acoso interior, la voz temerosa, prejuiciosa y autoritaria en mi cabeza que me decía constantemente: ¡No puedes… No debes… Ni te atrevas! Y finalmente, recuperé la confianza para escuchar mi cuerpo y mi corazón y ser honesta conmigo misma.

Y entonces me mudé a Nueva York.

Cuando vivía allá, conocí a muchísimas personas que eran como yo, súper impecables y extremadamente populares y sobresalientes que, por casualidad, eran homosexuales: antiguas porristas de secundaria, anfitriones de los bailes de bienvenida, representantes de curso, líderes estudiantiles, atletas reconocidos. Y me di cuenta de que… sí podía hacerlo. Y de que sí podía serlo. Y ahora, me encanta ser diferente, a mi manera, súper impecable, extremadamente popular y sobresaliente.1

Page 5

Amin Maalouf, a writer who was born in Lebanon and immigrated to France, resists other people’s attempts to oversimplify his identity. He explains:

Since I left Lebanon in 1976 to establish myself in France, I have been asked many times, with the best intentions in the world, if I felt more French or more Lebanese. I always give the same answer: “Both.” Not in an attempt to be fair or balanced but because if I gave another answer I would be lying. This is why I am myself and not another, at the edge of two coun­tries, two or three languages and several cultural traditions. This is precisely what determines my identity. Would I be more authentic if I cut off a part of myself?

To those who ask, I explain with patience that I was born in Lebanon, lived there until the age of 27, that Arabic is my first language and I discovered Dickens, Dumas and “Gulliver’s Travels” in the Arabic translation, and I felt happy for the first time as a child in my village in the mountains, the village of my ancestors where I heard some of the stories that would help me later write my novels. How could I forget all of this? How could I untie myself from it? But on another side, I have lived on the French soil for 22 years, I drink its water and wine, my hands caress its old stones everyday, I write my books in French and France could never again be a foreign country.

Half French and half Lebanese, then? Not at all! The identity cannot be compartmentalized; it cannot be split in halves or thirds, nor have any clearly defined set of boundaries. I do not have several identities, I only have one, made of all the ele­ments that have shaped its unique proportions.

Sometimes, when I have finished explaining in detail why I fully claim all of my elements, someone comes up to me and whispers in a friendly way: “You were right to say all this, but deep inside of yourself, what do you really feel you are?”

This question made me smile for a long time. Today, it no lon­ger does. It reveals to me a dangerous and common attitude men have. When I am asked who I am “deep inside of myself,” it means there is, deep inside each one of us, one “belonging” that matters, our profound truth, in a way, our “essence” that is determined once and for all at our birth and never changes. As for the rest, all of the rest—the path of a free man, the beliefs he acquires, his preferences, his own sensitivity, his affinities, his life—all these things do not count. And when we push our contemporaries to state their identity, which we do very often these days, we are asking them to search deep inside of them­selves for this so-called fundamental belonging, that is often religious, nationalistic, racial or ethnic and to boast it, even to a point of provocation.

Whoever claims a more complex identity becomes marginal­ized. A young man born in France of Algerian parents is obvi­ously part of two cultures and should be able to assume both. I said both to be clear, but the components of his personality are numerous. The language, the beliefs, the lifestyle, the rela­tion with the family, the artistic and culinary taste, the influ­ences—French, European, Occidental—blend in him with other influences—Arabic, Berber, African, Muslim. This could be an enriching and fertile experience if the young man feels free to live it fully, if he is encouraged to take upon himself his diversity; on the other side, his route can be traumatic if each time he claims he is French, some look at him as a traitor or a renegade, and also if each time he emphasizes his links with Algeria, its history, its culture, he feels a lack of understanding, mistrust or hostility.

The situation is even more delicate on the other side of the Rhine. Thinking about a Turk born almost 30 years ago near Frankfurt, and who has always lived in Germany, and who speaks and writes the German language better than the lan­guage of his Fathers. To his adopted society, he is not German, to his society of birth, he is no longer really Turkish. Common sense dictates that he could claim to belong to both cultures. But nothing in the law or in the mentality of either allows him to assume in harmony his combined identity.

I mentioned the two first examples that come to my mind. I could have mentioned many others. The case of a person born in Belgrade from a Serb mother and a Croatian father. Or a Hutu woman married to a Tutsi. Or an American that has a black father and a Jewish mother.

Some people could think these examples unique. To be hon­est, I don’t think so. These few cases are not the only ones to have a complex identity. Multiple opposed “belongings” meet in each man and push him to deal with heartbreaking choices. For some, this is simply obvious at first sight; for others, one must look more closely.

If . . . people cannot live their multiple belongings, if they con­stantly have to choose between one side or the other, if they are ordered to get back to their tribe, we have the right to be worried about the basic way the world functions.

“Have to choose,” “ordered to get back,” I was saying. By whom? Not only by fanatics and xenophobes of all sides, but by you and me, each one of us. Precisely because these habits of thinking are deeply rooted in all of us, because of this narrow, exclusive, bigoted, simplified conception that reduces the whole identity to a single belonging declared with rage.

I feel like screaming aloud: This is how you “manufacture” slaughterers! 1