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，尤其是宗教教育和教牧关怀，以实现宗教信仰在一生中变化和发展的观点。fowler的理论也启发了许多研究项目，这些项目大多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，信仰的发展变化从未得到实证证明。相反，所有的实证结果都依赖于对特定信仰阶段的年龄特定偏好的记录，然后在结构发展传统中提出的不容置疑的概念假设框架中进行解释。有500多个外国直接投资（主要来自德国发展政府资助的关于反解构和灵性语义的研究项目），有大约90个外国直接投资与伊斯兰答复者，有500多人表示愿意接受采访，但迄今尚未联系，比勒菲尔德当代宗教传记研究中心拥有相当大的数据库和坚实的起点，可以在广泛的宗教信仰和世界观中对成人时期的信仰发展进行纵向研究，这些宗教信仰和世界观是多元化、宗教多样化社会的特征。与美国的一个由John Templeton基金会资助的项目类似，德国新项目的第一阶段实施了纵向设计，为期30个月。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，并根据所有可用数据构建了一个由约500人组成的德国外国直接投资样本，这些人将在2020年进行重新访谈。对FDI的研究主要是解释性的，但结果至少可以部分量化并导入SPSS数据库。在我们的FDI定性评估中，这是一种创新，我们不仅关注结构性发展的宗教运作，还关注叙事的连贯性、依恋、心智化和智慧。在详细的人口统计调查问卷和一些量表的基础上，如人格（NEO五因素量表）、依恋、心理健康和成长（Ryff）、生成（LGS）、对歧义的不容忍、宗教中心性、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发展变化的心理预测因素和相关因素。因此，该项目结合了定量和定性方法，也可以利用比勒费尔德已经积累的经验。因此，该项目的目的是回应提供有关宗教发展及其条件的明确经验证据的愿望。

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.