Faith Development,Moral Development,& Nontheistic Judaism:A Construct Validity StudyB Y DR . J O HN SNA R E YPR E SE NT ED B Y J .R . AT K INS, MB ADE CE MB ER 1 , 20 1 6

Overview• James Fowler’s construct is evaluated from a nontheistic perspective

• 3 groups of Jewish nonthesis who founded an Israeli Kibbutz

• 60 participants

• 4 broad theoretical assumptions were tested

1. Stages of faith development are not reducible to or solely determined by stages of moral development

2. Stages of faith development are structural wholes

3. Variations in level of faith development significantly predict relevant outcomes

4. Stages of faith development are cross-culturally universal

Israeli Kibbutzim• Kibbutz means group in Hebrew. It is a modest name for something unique: a

voluntary democratic community where people live and work together on a non-competitive basis. Its aim is to generate an economically and socially independent society founded on principles of communal ownership of property, social justice, and equality.

• The first kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) were organized by idealistic young Zionists who came to Palestine in the beginning of the 20th Century. Their dream was not just to settle the land it, but to build a whole new kind of society. Despite many hardships, they succeeded in creating a social system and a way of life which has played a crucial role in the development of the State of Israel both culturally and politically.

• Today some 270 kibbutzim, varying in size from 80 to over 2,000 people, are scattered throughout Israel. With a total populace of around 120,000 they represent about 2.8 percent of Israel’s population.1

1. http://kibbutzprogramcenter.org/about-kibbutz/

Israeli Kibbutzim continued

h t t p : / / www. k ib b u t z . o r g . i l / c g i - w e b a x y / i t e m ? 1 3 1 3 1 2

• Most Kibbutz mark Jewish Holidays

• Some as non-religious, nontheistic, seasonal themed, Jewish historical events

• The Kibbutz in the study was more consistently atheistic and socialistic (284)

• The Kibbutz residence although atheist were still Jewish atheist

• Kibbutz Ramat Yedidim was the study Kibbutz

• A homogeneous secular experience of Judaism (287)

Israeli Kibbutzim continued

Procedure

• Subjects were interviewed individually in their homes in Israel, US & Canada

• Each interview was tape recorded and transcribed latter

• The research instrument assessed

• Faith Development

• Moral Judgement

• Ego Development

• Demographic Background

• The use of Ethnic-Religious Symbols

Interview Record Transcribe Score

• Faith Development – Subjects were interviewed regarding centers of meaning and values that guide their life using Fowlers standard semiclinical nondirective procedure (287)

• Moral Judgement – Subjects took Kohlberg’s moral judgement interview (Form A) with 3 dilemmas (288)

• Ego Development – Subjects completed Loevinger’s sentence competition test with 36 incomplete sentences (288)

• Background Info – Subjects completed a basic questionnaire (288)

• Jewish Artifact Observations – Observed by interviewer while in the subjects home and 1 of 3 classifications applied: absent, primary conspicuous literal, or unobtrusive-metaphorical (289)

Procedure, continued

Results• 5% of the Kubutz founders considered themselves religious

• 18% - Stage 3 of Faith Development

• 8% - Between Stages 3 & 4

• 43% - Stage 4 of Faith Development

• 5% - Between Stages 4 & 5

• 15% - Sage 5 of Faith Development

(289)

Criterion Validity• Developmental Criteria

• The correlation of Faith Development with Moral Development was .597

• The correlation of Ego Development with Moral Development was .467

Both represent positive correlations that are statistically significant

• Social Status Criteria

• Significant correlations were found between faith stage and

• Levels of Education

• Occupation

• Social Class

• Work complexity

• Correlation between faith development and sex was weak and nonsignificant

(292)

• Ethnic-religious Criteria – can variations in level of faith development be differentiated by

• Orthodoxy of the subjects family of origin Faith development among Orthodox Jewish families was significantly different from

that of non-Orthodox Jews

• Current communities of residence Israeli cities provided less support for faith development then kibbutz communities

• Current use of ethnic-religious symbols at home 2 of 3 categories were observedPrimarily conspicuous-literal symbols at 75.5%

Primarily unobtrusive-metaphorical symbols 24.5% (294)

• Universality – the assumption the model is applicable to all people

• Comparing the stage distribution of the kubutz founders with stage development for a similar groupThe kibbutz founders compare very favorably to others such as Protestant, Catholic and

Jewish subjects (295)

Criterion Validity, continued

Faith Development in Relation to Moral Development

• From Kohlberg’s work there is an expectation that moral development scores will always be higher than or equal to faith development scores (295-297)

41.6% of the subjects received the same moral development and faith development stage scores

26.6% of the subjects scored higher in moral development than faith development

31.6% of the subjects scored lower in moral development and in faith development

41.6

26.6

31.6

Same

Higher Moral Dev

Higher Faith Dev

• Discussion - Although only 5% of the founders considered themselves religious, all of them spontaneously discussed topics of implicit religious relevance. (298)

• Structural Wholeness

• The correlations between all 7 aspects were positive

• Reliability coefficient was quite high

• No subject made use of adjacent stages

• Developmental Criteria

• The correlations between faith development and both ego and moral development were positive and statistically significant.

• Faith development was NOT significantly correlated with age possibly due to the limited age range of the sample, ages 51 to 57. (299)

Findings

• It appears that Fowlers model and measure is able to capture the thinking of the person whose religious orientation and background is quite different from those of his original sample. In this study, the faith of non-Christians was not undervalued by Fowler’s model (301).

• 2 Caveats:

1. Drawing conclusions based on comparisons between small, non-random, globally defined samples is fraught with difficulties.

2. Faith development research has not been conducted in a sufficiently wide range of socio-religious populations to jeopardize this assumption

• The highest stage in Fowler’s model seems to have the same status as the highest stage in Kohlberg’s model (301).

• According to Fowler, faith development is a more comprehensive construct that includes moral development. This is consistent with the finds of this study as well (302).

Findings, continued

Conclusion

• According to Fowler, without Kohlberg’s work there would be no theory of faith development (303).

• This study set out to test the basic assumptions underlying Fowlers construct. The results lead to tentative support to the power and generality of the model.

• There is ample opportunity for further examination of the validity of Fowlers construct (303).

J.R. Atkins, MBA

December 1, 2016

Candler School of Theology