Stages of faith and identity: birth to teens

Abstract

In closing, some of the strengths, limitations, and criticisms of faith development theory need to be acknowledged. Fortunately, there was gender balance in the formative sample of 359 interviews from which the theory of faith development derived (50% each of male and female respondents). In the original sample, Protestants made up 45% of the interviewees, Catholics represented 36.5%, 11.2% were Jews, and 3.6% were Orthodox Christians. A remaining 3.6% were "other." Given the growth in the numbers of adherents to other major traditions in the United States, interview research needs to be conducted to widen the sample to include Muslim, Buddhist, and secular respondents. Interviewees have not been studied longitudinally. Furthermore, most of the foundational research was conducted in the 1 980s and early 1990s. A new major round of faith development interviews could shed light on the impacts on peoples' faith of "globalization" and the features of experience that have come to be called the "postmodern condition." These phenomena reflect patterns of radical secularization and the erosion of religious and moral authority on the one hand and, paradoxically, the worldwide growth of fundamentalist and conservative faith practices on the other. Add to these phenomena the interest of many "nonchurched" persons in "spirituality" and we begin to grasp the richness and diversity that faith development research encounters today. Professor Heinz Streib of the University of Bielefeld is conducting the most significant research in the faith development tradition. The research he and his colleagues are conducting in Europe and in the United States promises to yield some tangible data and insights into these issues. To date, faith development theory has not been incorporated into child, adolescent, and family psychiatric interviewing and case formulation to any appreciable or measurable degree. These perspectives and inroads into the interior lives and thought processes of young people, however, may be helpful in the understanding of normal and pathologic development and of healthy and psychiatrically ill children and adolescents. Further collaborative work in this area is needed among psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychologists of religion, religious educators, and theologians.