Keep the Faith,for Christ's Sake!

The central Lutheran doctrine of justification through faith served to critique the theology of the medieval Roman church but remains an important, though underutilized, theological resource today. The Lutheran emphasis on faith as trust in God's promise of mercy for Christ's sake is an important corrective to the contemporary culture of privatized faith, offering both a personal and a corporate relationship with a gracious God.     

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.     

Performances of Faith: A Relation Between Conscious and Unconscious Organizations of Faith

Performances of faith are found in ordinary and extraordinary stories, behavior, and rituals, and they are inextricably yoked to unconscious and conscious processes and organizations of faith experience. This article explores the relation between unconscious and conscious processes and organizations of faith. The claim is that the unconscious system represents unformulated experiences of faith that are affectively and relationally organized. In human development these unconscious organizations of faith experience are partially transformed by a person's conscious and self-reflective use of symbols and language. At the same time, conscious and self-reflective organizations of faith, manifested in narratives, rituals, and use of other symbolic media, continue to be shaped by unconscious processes and unconscious configurations of faith. An appreciation of the dynamic interaction between unconscious and conscious processes and organizations of faith focuses one's attention to the complexity of human performances of faith in ministry.     

“Faith Alone”—Primus Inter Pares: Welcome to the Banquet

Faith alone represents the primus inter pares of the sixteenth‐century Reformation's four solas. Gary Simpson introduces five authors who critically explore and creatively extend the doctrine of justification by faith alone as Dialog with its Fall issues (2013–2017) leans into the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation (2017).     

Fowler's Stages of Faith Development in an Honors Science-and-Religion Seminar

According to Paul Tillich's understanding of religion as "ultimate concern," a religious dimension is implicit in all university curricula. A science-and-religion course, such as one taught at Southeast Missouri State University, can offer students the opportunity to integrate their worldview, taking seriously both religious ideas and scientific information. Assignments based on A. E. Lawson's model of a learning cycle provide a vehicle for evaluating significant student learning leading toward fuller integration. The stages of faith developed by James W. Fowler serve as a fruitfull framework for interpreting changes in student viewpoints. Fowler's six stages of faith are characterized. Examples from student writing assignments demonstrate shifts in the cognitive understanding of faith that coincide with Fowler's stages.     

Locke and Leibniz on Religious Faith

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke maintains that ‘Reason must be our last Judge and Guide in every Thing,’ including matters of religious faith, and this commitment to the primacy of reason is not abandoned in his later religious writings. This essay argues that with regard to the relation between reason and religious faith, Locke is primarily concerned not with evidence, but with consistency, meaning, and how human beings ought to respond to their inclinations, including their inclinations to believe. Leibniz, on the other hand, stakes out an alternative conception of the relationship between faith and reason that assigns to faith the role of a primary truth. For Leibniz, some religious propositions can be believed immediately and without an additional examination and evaluation by reason. The essay maintains that the differences between the two regarding faith and reason are tied to a broader disagreement about how much of the human understanding is due, in Locke's words, to ‘Labour, Attention and Industry’.     

Modern Maladies of the Self: Borrowed Selves and Collective Faith

Cultures give rise to and support different kinds of self-constructions and types of faith. In this article I argue that particular Western beliefs and values can give rise to modern maladies of self and faith—borrowed selves and collective faith. Borrowed selves reveal a fundamental insecurity or anxiety that comes from a felt lack of possessing or owning the attributions of one's identity, which in turn shapes the very relationships and faith upon which identity is linked. More specifically, I identify two distinct, though related, manifestations of borrowed selves—normotic selves and nomadic selves—and their concomitant types of collective faith—merged faith and eclectic-autonomous faith. Both self-constructions and types of faith manifest persons' specific stance with regard to community and its traditions, and both are fueled by an unconscious anxiety and a belief in what I call relativistic individualism.     

Religiosity and Spirituality: A Psychometric Evaluation of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire

The Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF) was administered to 124 undergraduate college students attending a private Catholic university and the result was compared to measures of spirituality, religious behavior, religious coping, and affect. The present study found that the SCSORF was strongly related to spirituality, in particular, seeking support from one's spirituality. However, the SCSORF was not correlated with an openness to new spiritual experiences. The SCSORF was also related to religious behavior and religious coping. The SCSORF was not related to affect, indicating that scores on the SCSORF were not affect-dependent. Results from this study provide additional evidence that the SCSORF is a reliable and valid measure of religious faith.     

Faith development theory: a case for paradigm change

Despite its influence, James Fowler's theory of faith development is in need of fundamental reappraisal. Doubts over Fowler's use of a structural model of human development and the adequacy of his research techniques have been added to in recent years by his inadequate response to the challenge of post‐modern thought. It is suggested that, despite Fowler's position, key elements of the theory are very much in tune with post‐modern thought and if the abandonment of the theory's underlying structuralism were to be allowed, these might be taken to point a constructive way forward.     

Imaginative Faith: Apocalyptic,Science Fiction Theory,and Theology

Abstract : Both pastors and academic theologians have struggled with the place of apocalyptic language and imagery within the modern worldview. Many have dismissed apocalyptic as escapist and have alleged that it is divorced from the political and social concerns at the heart of contemporary theology and practice. Yet, contemporary critical theorists have overcome similar suspicions about science‐fiction and now embrace it as a unique vehicle for thinking about the ills and the promise of contemporary culture. This essay suggests that within contemporary critical theory one finds useful tools for reading and using apocalyptic language and imagery as a means for engaging a world threatened by sin and violence.     

Through a Glass Darkly: A Dialogue Between Dementia and Faith

SUMMARY

Our understanding and experience of dementia is changing and developing, as is our understanding and experience of faith. Both areas offer signs of hope but both also contain evidence of discrimination and disenchantment. This paper seeks to explore these parallel worlds from the perspective of the person with dementia, the family carer, the institutional carer and the community of faith. It closes with a challenge to theology to demonstrate just what is the Good News of the Gospel for the person with dementia.     

PERSONAL PARTICIPATION: Michael Polanyi, Eric Voegelin, and the Indispensability of Faith

In this paper I focus on the central role faith plays in the thought of Polanyi and Voegelin. I begin by indicating how both find the modern conception of scientific knowing seriously wanting. What Polanyi terms “objectivism” and Voegelin calls “scientism” is the modern tendency to reduce knowledge to only that which can be scientifically demonstrated. This errant view of knowledge does not occur in a vacuum, though, and both men draw a connection between this and the political pathologies of the twentieth century. I then show the complementary ways in which these two thinkers believe recovery is possible: an epistemological solution encompassed in Polanyi's personal knowledge and an ontological reorientation that is the core of Voegelin's insistence that we must recover an awareness of human participation in transcendent reality.     

A New Culture of Learning: Digital Storytelling and Faith Formation

How has the “new culture of learning” begun to transform us, and in what ways might the faith formation practices of religious communities be impacted by the shift? Recent research funded by the MacArthur Foundation lays an empirical basis for recognizing shifts in learning brought about by widespread access to digital technologies. The implications of that research, in turn, pose widespread challenges to the work of faith formation in contemporary communities of faith. Communicative theologies may be best poised to engage these challenges through the practices of digital storytelling.     

Faith schooling: implications for teacher educators. A perspective from Northern Ireland

The separate and parallel systems of schooling in Northern Ireland that largely reflect Protestant/Catholic divisions have been much criticised on the grounds that they have failed to promote social cohesion. These divisions are also evident in teacher education provision and attempts to offset the negative effects of this separation have made only a limited impact. By means of a brief survey of the relationship between two de facto religiously separated teacher education institutions, from the early twentieth century to the present day, this article considers the issues for teacher educators and argues that separateness at this level has been disadvantageous in relation to the challenges of preparing student teachers to work in a diverse, plural society.     

Religious Faith and Substance Problems in Undergraduate College Students: A Replication

The present study examined the relations between religious faith and alcohol and drug problems in undergraduate college students at a large public university in the Southeastern United States. The Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire—Short Form and the Alcohol Problems and Drug Problems scales of the Personality Assessment Inventory were given to 303 undergraduate students. Findings indicated that religious faith was inversely associated with drug and alcohol problems in both males and females. Implications of these findings are discussed.