Longitudinal Investigation of Developmental Change in Religiosity in Germany with the Faith Development Interview and Psychological Scales: Matching Funds for our Project in the U.S. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation

詹姆斯·福勒的信仰发展理论影响了美国和德国的实践神学，特别是宗教教育和牧灵关怀，以实现宗教信仰在生命周期中的变化和发展。福勒的理论也启发了几十个研究项目，其中大多数是使用信仰发展访谈（FDI）作为工具的研究。然而，在相对悠久和受人尊敬的信仰发展研究传统中，没有纵向设计的主要研究。因此，严格地说，信仰的发展变化从来没有经验证明。相反，所有的实证结果都依赖于特定信仰阶段的特定年龄偏好的文件，然后在结构发展传统中提出的毫无疑问的概念假设的框架中进行解释。拥有500多个FDI（主要来自DFG资助的关于精神性的解构和语义学的研究项目），约有90名FDIs与伊斯兰受访者，以及500多名表示愿意接受采访的人，但迄今尚未联系，比勒费尔德研究中心的当代宗教传记研究具有相当大的数据库和坚实的起点的独特优势这是一项纵向研究的重点，研究了成年人在各种宗教信仰和世界观中的信仰发展情况，这是多元化、宗教多样性社会的特征。与美国的一个由John Templeton基金会资助的项目平行，德国新项目的第一阶段30个月实施了纵向设计。它从计划于2015年进行的第一轮外国直接投资重新访谈开始，并利用所有可用数据构建了一个外国直接投资德国样本。2020年将重新面试500人。研究与外国直接投资收益主要是解释性的，但结果至少可以部分量化和导入SPSS数据库。在我们的定性外国直接投资评估中，这是创新的，我们不仅关注结构性发展的宗教运作，而且关注叙事连贯性，依恋，心智化和智慧。基于具有详细的人口统计学和一些量表的问卷，例如个性（NEO五因素量表）、依恋、心理健康和成长（Ryff）、生成性（LGS）、不容忍模糊、宗教中心、宗教原教旨主义、对上帝的信仰和宗教图式（RSS），可以评估和分析随时间推移的发展变化的心理预测因子和相关因子。因此，该项目结合了定量和定性的方法，也可以利用在比勒费尔德已经积累的经验。因此，这是本项目的目的，以回应迫切需要提供有关宗教发展及其条件的明确的经验证据。

James Fowlers theory of faith development has influenced practical theology in the U.S.A. and in Germany, and here especially religious education and pastoral care, to implement a perspective of change and development of religiosity over the lifespan. Fowlers theory also has inspired dozens of research projects, which mostly were studies using the faith development interview (FDI) as instrument. However, in the relatively long and respectable tradition of research in faith development, there is no major study with a longitudinal design. Thus, strictly speaking, developmental change in faith has never been evidenced empirically. Instead, all empirical results rest on the documentation of age specific preferences for specific faith stages, which then are interpreted in a framework of unquestioned conceptual assumptions which are suggested in the structural-developmental tradition. With more than 500 FDIs (mainly from the DFG-funded research projects on deconversion and the semantics of spirituality), with ca.90 FDIs with Islamic respondents, and with more than 500 persons who indicated readiness for an interview, but have not been contacted so far, the Bielefeld Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion has the unique privilege of a considerable data base and a solid starting point for a longitudinal study in faith development across the adult years in the wide range of religious persuasions and world views which characterizes pluralistic, religiously diverse societies. Parallel to a Project in the U.S. that is funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, this first phase of 30 months of the new project in Germany implements a longitudinal design. It starts with a first round of FDI reinterviewing, planned for 2015, and constructs, with all data available, a FDI German sample of ca. 500 persons who will be reinterviewed in 2020. Research with the FDI proceeds primarily interpretatively, but results can at least partially quantified and imported in SPSS data bases. In our qualitative FDI evaluation, and this is innovative, we focus not only on structural developmental religious operations, but also on narrative coherence, attachment, mentalization, and wisdom. On the basis of a questionnaire with detailed demographics and a number of scales, such as personality (NEO Five Factor Inventory), attachment, psychological wellbeing and growth (Ryff), generativity (LGS), intolerance of ambiguity, centrality of religion, religious fundamentalism, belief in God and religious schemata (RSS), psychological predictors and correlates for developmental change over time can be assessed and analyzed. The project thus combines quantitative and qualitative approaches, and can also capitalize on the experience already accumulated in Bielefeld. Thus, it is the aim of this project to respond to the desideratum of providing clear empirical evidence about religious development and its conditions.