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College students and the lockbox

College is a time during which young people choose to reinvent themselves. Many of them tuck away their personal and religious histories in a so-called “lockbox” to be opened later, if at all, according to a recent study by the Fuller Youth Institute.

This compartmentalization explains why so many youth group kids join the cultural mainstream of campus life and seemingly walk away from their faith. The report explains that “emerging adults seem to care more about fitting into society than about exploring who they might be.”

Defining the “Identity Lockbox”: What Is It and Why Do Students Use It?
If collegians are neither abandoning their faith because of a hostile college environment, nor deeply interested in spirituality, what are they experiencing?  College students seem to be following a third path of storing their religious beliefs, practices, and convictions in a sort of “identity lockbox” as they develop other parts of their identity (e.g., vocational identity, relational identity).  Clydesdale explains that the lockbox “protects religious identities, along with political, racial, gender, and civic identities, from tampering that might affect their holders’ future entry into the American cultural mainstream.”

In other words, while there are parts of students’ identity that are indeed free to develop, most of their identity is locked away.  Those aspects that are developing are limited to the ones that fit into the American cultural mainstream.  In general, their religious identity doesn’t fit in that mainstream and is therefore stowed away.  Similarly, any other portion of the student’s identity that is threatened by the American cultural mainstream is also stored away. Read more>