ABSTRACT
Kohlberg advocated expanding the scope of the study of moral judgment and behavior to include religious reasoning, and he also inspired James Fowler’s subsequent model of faith development. In this chapter, the validity of Fowler’s construct is evaluated from the nontheistic perspective of three groups of Jewish nontheists who were the original founders of an Israeli kibbutz. Four broad theoretical assumptions underlying faith development theory were operationalized as tenable psychometric hypotheses and then tested: Stages of faith development are not reducible to or solely determined by stages of moral development; stages of faith development are structural wholes; variations in level of faith development significantly predict relevant outcomes (e.g., consequences or characteristics defined by psychological, sociological, and religious criterion); and stages of faith development are cross-culturally universal. The composite findings provide tentative support for the legitimacy of Fowler’s model and indicate that the degree of construct validity is adequate for research purposes.
