Abstract
This chapter looks at case studies of individuals in the research project who show characteristics of being both “religious” and “spiritual” in traditional religious contexts. Self-identification in both categories can occur at different phases of the life span, including young adults who are “coming of age” as well as participants who are further along in the life span. By comparing and contrasting the different case studies, assumptions may be developed regarding the developmental and differential aspects of “religious” spiritualities. For each participant, Faith Development Interview scoring and participant totals on other measures dealing with constructs such as mysticism , generativity , attitudes toward God, and attachment will be examined. Three American case studies are explored in detail to better understand the trajectories of “spiritual” individuals in the more pluralistic religious arena in US culture.
From interact 32 of Ella H.’s Faith Development Interview (FDI). The interview transcripts in full length for all the cases in this chapter are available in Appendix B (B.2–B.4).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In the USA, parents may teach their children at home, rather than sending them to a public or private school, if they meet certain instructional criteria. This is often done for religious reasons.
- 2.
Polygamy is illegal in the USA, but a few Mormon families still find a way of practicing it. The patriarch on this show is legally married to one wife but considers the others to be spiritual unions. Thus, since in the USA only one marriage is legally registered, having multiple “wives” is not illegal.
- 3.
This group is part of the “Restoration Movement”, a revivalist endeavor beginning in the 19th century in the USA that opposed creeds, which were viewed as divisive. The Church of Christ emphasizes utilizing only the Bible as a rule of practice and does not use musical instruments in worship because that is viewed as being unscriptural (Piepkorn, 1977).
- 4.
Denominationalism is a “system in which congregations that share theological beliefs, religious experiences, and religious practices identify themselves by name and organization as a separate part of Christianity” (Foster, Blowers, Dunnavant, & Williams, 2004, pp. 267–268).
- 5.
This group does not like to be called a denomination, because it views having human creeds and organizations as being sinful. As Piepkorn (1977) remarks, these churches have the view that ‘denominationalism’ “fails to honor Christ as the sole head of the church; it subordinates divine authority to human authority; it contradicts what to them are plain biblical teachings on the nature of Christian unity” (p. 638). In practice, this prejudice against denominationalism may result in an ironic exclusivism.
References
Bluck, S., & Habermas, T. (2000). The life story schema. Motivation and Emotion, 24(2), 121–147.
Erikson, E. H. (1982). The life cycle completed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Fonagy, P., Target, M., Steele, H., & Steele, M. (1998). Reflective-functioning manual version 5 for application to adult attachment interviews. London: University College London.
Foster, D. A., Blowers, P. M., Dunnavant, A. L., & Williams, D. N. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell movement. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Fowler, J. W., Streib, H., & Keller, B. (2004). Manual for faith development research. Bielefeld: Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion.
Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140–150.
Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029–1046.
Granqvist, P. (2010). Religion as attachment: The Godin award lecture. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 32, 5–24.
Habermas, T. (2011). Autobiographical reasoning: Arguing and narrating from a biographical perspective. In T. Habermas (Ed.), The development of autobiographical reasoning in adolescence and beyond. New directions for child and adolescent development 131, pp. 1–17).
Hood, R. W., Ghorbani, N., Watson, P. J., Ghramaleki, A. F., Bing, M. N., Davison, H. K., ... Williamson, W. P. (2001). Dimensions of the Mysticism Scale: Confirming the three-factor structure in the United States and Iran. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(4), 691–705.
Keller, B., & Streib, H. (2013). Faith development, religious styles and biographical narratives: Methodological perspectives. Journal of Empirical Theology, 26, 1–21.
Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1992). An attachment-theory approach to the psychology of religion. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 3–28.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In I. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts. Proceedings of the 1966 annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12–44). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
McAdams, D., Reynolds, J., Lewis, M., Patten, A., & Bowman, P. (2001). When bad things turn good and good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and in students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 474–485.
McAdams, D. P., & de St. Aubin, E. (1992). A theory of generativity and its assessment through self-report, behavioral acts, and narrative themes in autobiography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(6), 1003–1015.
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81–90.
Parks, S. D. (1986). The critical years: Young adults and the search for meaning, faith, and commitment. New York: HarperCollins.
Parks, S. D. (2000). Big questions, worthy dreams: Mentoring young adults in their search for meaning, purpose, and faith. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Piepkorn, A. C. (1977). Profiles in belief: The religious bodies the United States and Canada (Vol. 2, Protestant Denominations). New York: Harper & Row.
Ryff, C., & Keyes, C. (1995). The structure of psychological well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 719–727.
Saroglou, V. (2010). Religiousness as a cultural adaptation of basic traits: A five-factor model perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 108–125.
Staudinger, U. M., Smith, J., & Baltes, P. B. (1994). Manual for the assessment of wisdom-related knowledge. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education.
Streib, H. (2005). Faith development research revisited: Accounting for diversity in structure, content, and narrativity of faith. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15(2), 99–121.
Streib, H., Hood, R., & Klein, C. (2010). The religious schema scale: Construction and initial validation of a quantitative measure for religious styles. International Journal for Psychology of Religion, 20(3), 151–172.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wollert, M., Keller, B. (2016). “…I Really Did Depend on My Faith in God During that Time … to See the Meaning in My Life.”—Religious Spiritualities. In: Streib, H., Hood, Jr., R. (eds) Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21244-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21245-6
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)