Strictly religious adolescents grow up in highly religious contexts with orthodox beliefs and practices that usually contrast with those of pluralist and secularized societies that can be perceived as promoting unhealthy religious identity development. For these adolescents, religious identity development may be a challenge; however, there seems to be a lack of theoretical and empirical understanding of how these adolescents develop their religious identities. To address this, a literature review was conducted, and 15 studies were selected after the application of selection criteria. This review focuses on the characteristics of these studies to understand the religious identity development of strictly religious adolescents. Implications for theory development and further empirical research are discussed.

This qualitative study examines the religious identity commitments of 18 emerging adults who grew up in strictly Reformed contexts in the Netherlands. During in-depth narrative interviews with photo elicitation, the participants reflected on who they are and the meaning of religion to their identity. Our thematic data analysis reveals that the participants' religious identity commitments are diverse and diffuse, although they all were religiously socialised in more or less the same way. It, therefore, is inadequate to label the participants as Christian or not and as strictly Reformed or not. Second, the analysis reveals four commitments to trusting God, self, rational belief and not knowing yet.

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