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Biographical contexts of "spiritual" self-identifications have been explored with the faith development interview (FDI). This semi-structured interview with 25 questions covers in four sections: 1) Life review, 2) Relationships, 3) Present values and commitments, and 4) Religion and worldview. It invites interviewees to describe their present religious, spiritual or worldview orientation, while looking back on their own lives. Besides reflective statements, the FDIs include many autobiographical, narrative passages. Corresponding to its origin in a broad concept of faith "In the most formal and comprehensive terms I can state it, faith is: People's evolved and evolving ways of experiencing self, others and world (as they construct them) as related to and affected by the ultimate conditions of existence (as they construct them) and shaping their lives' purpose and meanings, trusts and loyalties, in the light of the character of being, value and power determining the ultimate conditions of existence (as grasped in their operative images - conscious and unconscious - of them)." (Fowler, J. W. 1981. Stages of Faith, San Francisco: Harper&Row. p. 92f). (Fowler 1981), the FDI is open to and elicits responses of all versions of religiosity, including implicit and experience oriented "patch work" versions, subjectively defined forms of spirituality, but also secular orientations or world views.
Two examples from our interviews may illustrate this:
Brian (age30, USA) and Karin (Germany) self-identified as "more spiritual than religious" and as "non-theist" in the questionnaire. Both Karin and Brian have rated their environment at age 12 as "more religious", thus we may infer that both made a "religious to spiritual" turn.
Brian says in his FDI:
"So, so I do think I'm a religious person, but I don?t think that means the same thing. Um, as maybe when some other people say that. I mean a different thing like that. I mean that there's a, a system of practice that sort of a guiding principle for me in life. And you know, that guiding-in-in-in Buddhism we have, you know, some very religious kind of looking at things that we do. We, um, get together at certain times. And we, um, have certain rituals that we follow. And, you know, there are people who might wear funny clothes as part of this, and um, you know, whatever. It looks very religious and it's got that kind of religious aspect of, of ritual, tradition and so forth. Um. You know, I-I, but on the other hand, you know, I, I don't believe in-[...] Buddhism doesn't concern itself with- [...] Buddhism says, there's no such thing as God, okay?"
Karin says in her FDI:
"... I believe that there is something more than we can see. That there is something more than what we can see directly. I believe that there is something which connects us all. And I believe that we as human beings do have mental powers which we have not yet learned to use appropriately. That may be something to happen in the future."
These are quotes from two interviewees who belong to the small, but very interesting focusgroup of "more spiritual than religious atheists & non-theists" in our sample. Their FDIs were rated, according to the Manual for Faith Development Research (Fower, Streib & Keller 2004). For Karin, we assigned a faith of stage 3 (synthetic conventional faith), which is characterized by orientation toward one´s own group and implicit reasoning . In Brian?s interview we have identified stage 4 (individuative reflective faith), which is characterized by explicit and systemic reasoning.
To learn more about their faith development as they see it, we take a closer look at what they told us, starting with Karin´s FDI:
Karin tells a story when she looks back on her faith development, displaying a narrative according to the criteria of Labov & Waletzky (1967) We use these criteria to identify narratives in the FDI and to distinguish narrative from chronologies or from passages where interviewees are explaining or reasoning. Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In I. Helm (Ed. ), Essays on the verbal and visual arts. Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12-44). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
And in religious education we had discussed miracles
and I sat at my desk and could look into the adjoining room and somehow the rays of light and dust crossed each other in the air and for a moment I saw a beaming figure, I thought. I was excited, I was convinced, I had experienced a miracle and I firmly believed that I now had seen Jesus and I this is what I told the religious education teacher and I got pasted one. I told it the major at Salvation Army and she threatened to exclude me. Then there was this handicraft afternoon meeting in church, it was the pastor´s wife who was in charge of this, and she threw me out.
And then I was convinced: They do not believe what they are telling.
Then I asked myself what is going on here? What are they doing, if they do not believe this?
I believe this was the first moment where I started to doubt, if, what they are want to drill into me really has something to do with reality at all?
"First doubts" might be a title for this narrative of a first move away from religiosity. In Karin´s case the results from qualitative and quantitative analysis converge to a picture of a "religious to spiritual" turn, perhaps pointing to a cultural trend or model, at least not unusual in ("Eurosecular") Germany.
Brian from the U.S.A., reports where he is now in his life, then gives a chronology, which leads up to his getting in touch with his current religious affiliation:
When asked if there were changes of his image of God or the divine he responds:
"Well, as a Buddhist I don't believe in God or-or anything like that so I don't really know how to answer that. I guess when I grew up I was told that there was such a thing and I wanted very much to believe in it, but I don't think I ever really did on a core level. That really hasn't changed."
While the quantitative data suggest a religious to spiritual turn, the interview with Brian indicates a continuous trajectory of his being a religious person, according to his understanding. Thus, in his case the interview data tell a story different from what we might expect from the quantitative data. What Brian tells, may have the function of establishing continuity between his faith biography and (mainstream) cultural discourse in the U.S.A.
These tentative interpretations are hypotheses and have to await further analyses of FDIs, further triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data, and comparisons of case studies.
The Interviews demonstrate that the present-day "spiritualities" of our respondents are the result of developmental biographies - in any case: they demonstrate how the respondents reconstruct , explain and narratively construct their preference for their current "spiritual" identity.
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