Creating the Future of Faith: Foresighted Pastors and Organic Theologians

Abstract :  The renewal of eschatological reflection over the past few decades may be a precursor to an organic theology that enlarges faith to cultivate its own forward view through foresight methodologies.     

Faith and the practising analyst

Abstract: In this brief essay, I reflect on three questions: What is ‘faith’ in a modern and post‐modern cultural context? Do I, a Jungian analyst, have ‘faith’ or do I not? Does having ‘faith’ or not make a difference in the practice of analysis? I make reference to Jung's understanding of ‘faith’ and his frequent disclaimers about making metaphysical claims. I conclude that a post‐credal ‘faith’ is possible for contemporary Jungian analysts, that I do have such a faith personally, and that in my experience this makes a significant difference in analytic practice at least with some patients. Traditional faith statements must be translated into depth psychological terms, however, in order for them to be applicable in post‐modern, multicultural contexts.     

The Heart of the Reformation Faith

Abstract: This historical and theological study of Reformation theologians, principally Martin Luther and John Calvin, examines three dimensions of faith: (1) faith as belief; (2) faith as trust; and (3) faith as the indwelling presence of Christ. To the question, “how does faith justify?,” the answer is found in the third, the indwelling of Christ, wherein the justness of Christ is present in the sinful person.     

Faith and the developmental cycle

According to Paul Tillich, faith as a human response is an act of the total personality in which all the elements of man's personal life participate. This paper explores one aspect of this assertion that has been neglected by both psychologists and theologians-the heuristic idea that faith is a developmental phenomenon. Specifically, the paper contends that the dominant form of an individual's faith at any one time is determined in part by the particular developmental stage in which that individual is immersed. This contention is developed using the epigenetic approach of Erik Erikson. Eight developmental forms of faith are explored: among them, faith as trust, faith as obedience, and faith as self-surrender.     

The Christian Faith in an Inter‐Faith Context

Abstract :  In developing a Christian Theology of the World Religions, this article makes the following claims: (1) the central issue is Christology including the all‐sufficiency of Christ's work to accomplish salvation for all; (2) by distinguishing between general and special revelation, Christians can confirm that God has witnesses among all the world's religions; (3) Christianity ought to continue to live out of its missionary impulse, to proclaim the gospel of salvation, and to provide an apologetic defense of its truth claims; (4) Christian clergy should approach inter‐faith settings with extensive knowledge of the world's religions; (5) and seminaries should revamp their curricula to teach a truly Christian theology of World Religions.     

Intentional Faith: An Alternative View of Faith Development

Faith was defined as the search for an integrating center of value and meaning that is cognitional in nature, developmental in process, and transcendental in its dimensions. An original psychometric measure was constructed and tested in two samples in a midwestern metropolitan area. The life span sample of Catholics (N = 509) ranged in ages 18–84, median age 49. Respondents were 40% male, 60% female. The sample of college students (N = 303) had a mode age of 19, but was ethnically and religiously diverse. The results indicated that the covariance structure of the scale was equivalent for the two samples. The scale clearly measures 4 independent aspects of faith: Self and Moral development, God and Death, Ritual, and Authority. Reliability was established for four developmental Ways of Faith, based on Bernard Lonergan's intentionality analysis: Common Sense Faith, Thoughtful Faith, Responsible Faith, and Transcendent Faith. The data suggested that faith development may be best conceived as a continuous reworking of one's faith, rather than a sequence of acquisition and abandonment of beliefs. A mixed pattern of modest gender, age, and attachment effects was found for the Ways of Faith. A measure of self-church identification was found to be a consistent correlate of faith development.     

Voting in Bad Faith

What is wrong with participating in a democratic decision-making process, and then doing something other than the outcome of the decision? It is often thought that collective decision-making entails being prima facie bound to the outcome of that decision, although little analysis has been done on why that is the case. Conventional perspectives are inadequate to explain its wrongness. I offer a new and more robust analysis on the nature of voting: voting when you will accept the outcome only if the decision goes your way is an act of bad faith: you are not taking part in a ‘process that decides what we will do’. This analysis sheds light on understanding the intrinsic nature of voting and what we are doing when we make decisions collectively.     

Tradition and Faith

Abstract: This article explores the relation between tradition and faith, arguing, first, that the issue about reason is an issue about faith and, second, that faith rediscovers itself in the debate with tradition. This debate with tradition ought to be less an appeal to, or an authoritative repetition of tradition, but rather a reworking of tradition in the context of contemporary questions and problems. So the appeal to tradition is not a naive appeal to a source of truth that is not in need of interpretation. Rather, it is the acknowledgement that there is a set of limiting conditions on contemporary theological argument. This position about the role of tradition in theology is illustrated by a discussion of our contemporary problems about language, God and ‘difference’, particularly as dealt with by postmodern philosophers, and the medieval tradition of negative theology.     

Faith,reason and knowledge

Valueware: Technology, Humanity and Organization Christopher Barnatt Praeger Publishers, Praeger Studies on the 21st Century, Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT. 1998, 228 pp, references, chapter notes and index. Paperback, ISBN: 0–275–967 15–8, $22.95 USD

Looking Down the Road: A Systems Approach to Futures Studies Douglas Raybeck Waveland Press, Inc., Prospect Heights, IL. 2000, 131 pp., appendix, bibliography and index. Paperback, ISBN: 1–57766–116–8, $10.95 USD     

Risking the Church: The Challenges of Catholic Faith

Books reviewed:
Richard Lennan, Risking the Church: The Challenges of Catholic Faith. Reviewed by Nicholas M. Healy St John's University, New York     

The Re-creation of the World: Filming Faith

This essay is about the connection of two worlds: the world "out there," and the re-created world seen on screen and experienced through religious myth and ritual. It is about the similarity between the way films are constructed and the way religious practices are constructed. Film and religion each begin with space and time, but re-create both: Film does this through cinematography, mise-en-scene, and editing, while religions achieve this by setting apart particular objects and periods of time, through the telling of stories, and the gathering together of people focused on a common object, text, or image. The hypothesis here is that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed light on the ways religious myths and rituals are constructed, and vice versa.     

Faith Development in the Adult Life Cycle

SUMMARY

The FaiTh Development in the Adult Life Cycle Project, completed in 1987, studied the relationship between the aging process and faith development. It is not limited to older adults, but addresses issues of faith development throughout the entire aging cycle.

A telephone sample of 1000+ persons was surveyed by the Gallup Organization, supplemented by in-depth interviews with 41 persons. The data were analyzed in the context of seven hypotheses related to the topic.

Among the findings were: faith development is not significantly related to age; it does not differ qualitatively by sex, although men's and women's approaches to faith development are subtly different; and there is a positive correlation between psycho-social health and faith development.     

Science And Faith: New Books with the Same Scepticism

Books reviewed in this article:
Richard A. Lee Jr., Science, the Singular, and the Question of Theology
Andrew P. Porter, By the Waters of Naturalism: Theology Perplexed Among the Sciences
W. Mark Richardson, Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, and Kirk Wegter–McNelly (eds), Science and the Spiritual Quest: New Essays by Leading Scientists
W. Mark Richardson and Gordy Slack (eds), Faith in Science: Scientists Search for Truth     

Assessing Religious Faith in Medical Patients: Cross-Validation of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire

Growing attention has focused on the relationship between religiosity and health outcomes. However, research has been constrained by the limited availability of measures suitable for use with medical patients. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF) in two well-defined samples of medical patients, representing a range of illness severity: 1) 175 women seen at a gynecology clinic; and 2) 104 cancer patients treated at a bone marrow transplantation program. Evidence for convergent validity was demonstrated by moderately high correlations with other measures of religious involvement. Divergent validity was demonstrated by small associations with social desirability. The measure was not strongly associated with demographic background or medical variables. Modest correlations with conceptually-related measures commonly used in health research (e.g., social support, optimism, existential meaning, purpose in life) further supported the divergent validity of the instrument. Results suggest that this may be a useful, concise measure for assessing religious involvement in medical patients.     

The Logic of Faith

Faith, though considered by many as desirable, is notoriously difficult to define. 'Faith' may mean that a person has appropriate self-esteem, or confidence based upon a rational assessment of capabilities, potential, etc. But we also think it desirable that a person should have a kind of confidence about the value of living that is not at all based on any kind of propositional truth. In this article I will consider the meaning of faith, particularly of the latter kind, with reference to: (1) meanings of faith; (2) forms of language, since the language of religious belief expresses some kind of evaluation or attitude; and (3) criteria of appropriateness. There is nothing particularly virtuous in believing what evidence assures us on other grounds to be the case. If faith were taken as a disposition to believe things to be true without any evidence, it would be a vice. Faith is a virtue in the sense of being able and willing to make loving and trustful investments in the world, to formulate appropriate pictures of it, adopt certain attitudes towards it, and evaluate it in certain ways.     

Faith Development in the Lives of HIV-Positive Adults

Studies of religious faith consistently document the important role of religion in the lives of adults. Investigations of adult religious faith also suggest that a life crisis can stimulate faith development. However, these earlier studies do not explain how a life-threatening crisis changes adult religious faith. This study examines the impact of an HIV-positive diagnosis on adult religious faith development. Interviews were conducted with 18 HIV-positive men and women under 45 years of age. The researchers found that an HIV-positive diagnosis affects faith development in these ways: the perspective of faith shifts from a religious to a spiritual orientation for which the participants feel a stronger sense of ownership; the concept of God changes from an authoritarian to an empowering figure, and views of the self are transformed to include others.     

Faith,Belief and Fictionalism

Is propositional religious faith constituted by belief? Recent debate has focussed on whether faith may be constituted by a positive non‐doxastic cognitive state, which can stand in place of belief. This article sets out and defends the doxastic theory. We consider and reject three arguments commonly used in favour of non‐doxastic theories of faith: (1) the argument from religious doubt; (2) the use of ‘faith’ in linguistic utterances; and (3) the possibility of pragmatic faith. We argue that belief is required to maintain a distinction between genuine faith, pretend faith, and fictionalist faith.     

Prototypes of Faith: Findings with the Faith Q‐Sort

Defining religion and finding ways to assess it in individual lives has long challenged psychologists of religion. At first, open‐ended questionnaires were used, but with the advent of modern statistical methods, a succession of religiosity scales was developed. But these usually brief scales were typically based on the preconceptions of their authors, who were overwhelmingly Protestant Christian and often conservative, much as were those who completed them. To provide a more adequate way of assessing “faith,” a term here encompassing both religious and nonreligious attitudes, a new assessment device was developed that incorporates the singular advantages of Q methodology. The Faith Q‐Sort consists of 101 statements that respondents sort on a nine‐category continuum, indicating the degree to which each statement describes himself or herself. Factor analysis based on correlations of the sorts rather than individual items yielded, for the initial group of participants, three major prototypes and five minor ones, accounting for 67 percent of the variance. Of the 42 participants, 31 proved to be exemplars of one or another of the eight prototypes. Subsequent explorations illustrate the wealth of possibilities the FQS offers, both as a research instrument and a counseling tool.