Heinz Streib

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at Bielefeld University

This book presents case studies and empirical data of a phenomenon which increasingly gains popularity in Western societies: deconversion. There is, the authors argue, no better word than deconversion to describe processes of disengagement from religious orientations, because these have much in common with conversion; Termination of membership may...

Mapping the religious field of present-day Western cultures such as America and Europe requires a synopsis of perspectives. There are, on the one hand, classical ways of defining religion in theology, sociology and psychology, and also established sociological models of the religious field; and there are, on the other hand, recent changes in how pe...

Based on a sample of 340 German adolescents age 12 to 25, this article presents an analysis of the effects of religion on two instances of inter-religious prejudice: anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic prejudice. Reflecting the emergent interest in implementing a perspective of religious maturity and religious development into research on religion and pr...

Focussing on James Fowler's Faith Development Theory, the article presents a modification of structural-developmental theory of religion. The primacy of cognitive development as motor and guideline of religious development is called into question, the new model, the typology of religious styles, is aimed at accounting more fully for the life-histor...

Objective: Based on Fowler’s wide definition of faith as finding meaning in life, and progressing with his perspective on faith as a typology of hierarchically ordered styles that can optimally be assessed with the faith development interview (FDI), this study breaks new ground by investigating predictors and outcomes of faith development. Methods:...

What are the differences in attitudes toward incoming people who seek refuge from war and toward those who supposedly are coming because of the better living conditions? How could this attitudinal difference be explained? This article presents spotlights on the attitudes toward refugees in Germany based on national representative surveys in two per...

This concluding chapter presents a synopsis of the case studies that were described in the previous chapters of this volume in greatest possible detail. Thus, with this synopsis we move forward from the idiographic to explore idiothetic perspectives and consider typological patterns of the cases. Then, drawing on our mixed-methods design, the chapt...

In this chapter, we will present the research design of the Bielefeld-Chattanooga longitu- dinal study of faith development focusing on the methodological discussion about mixed-methods research and the knowledge produced by the qualitative and quantitative strands we employ. First, we will present our research in the light of the pragmatic paradig...

This article presents responses to the 13 commentaries of colleagues to my text “Wisdom and the Other” that is published as target article in this special issue. My response deals with three questions that have been addressed throughout several commentaries: 1. What is the contribution of xenocentric responsiveness to wisdom research, does xenocent...

Handbuch der Religionen - Das Nachschlagewerk für Wissenschaft und Praxis Das Handbuch der Religionen ist ein in Anspruch und Umfang einzigartiges, wissenschaftlich fundiertes Nachschlagewerk über das gesamte Spektrum der Religionen in Deutschland und im deutschsprachigen Raum. Das Handbuch der Religionen bietet: - wissenschaftlich fundiertes Orien...

Handbuch der Religionen - Das Nachschlagewerk für Wissenschaft und Praxis Das Handbuch der Religionen ist ein in Anspruch und Umfang einzigartiges, wissenschaftlich fundiertes Nachschlagewerk über das gesamte Spektrum der Religionen in Deutschland und im deutschsprachigen Raum. Das Handbuch der Religionen bietet: - wissenschaftlich fundiertes Orien...

Handbuch der Religionen - Das Nachschlagewerk für Wissenschaft und Praxis Das Handbuch der Religionen ist ein in Anspruch und Umfang einzigartiges, wissenschaftlich fundiertes Nachschlagewerk über das gesamte Spektrum der Religionen in Deutschland und im deutschsprachigen Raum. Das Handbuch der Religionen bietet: - wissenschaftlich fundiertes Orien...

To what extent do people differ in their attitudes toward incoming people who seek refuge from war and toward those who they assume are coming because of the better living conditions? How could this attitudinal difference be explained? This article presents spotlights on the attitudes toward refugees in Germany based on national representative surv...

Migration of refugees into Germany is a huge challenge for politics and society. We present results about the attitudes toward refugees in the German population. Data were three national representative samples in times, when the German borders were crossed by high numbers of war refugees (a) mainly from Syria in August 2015 (n = 637) and (b) in Mar...

This text networks contributions from three disciplines: phenomenological-philosophical perspectives on the Other, current discussions in wisdom research, and developmental models of social perspective-taking. The common theme is the concept of the “other,” which is ambivalent, because, on the one hand, it may produce othering that can be the entry...

Abstract: Deconversion is being studied at Bielefeld University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since two decades which allows for longitudinal analysis. This presentation will focus on new quantitative results based on three times of measurement. Results: Deconverts, compared to their peers who stay in their religious organizations,...

This chapter addresses emotional, cognitive, and biographical changes related to processes of deconversion, or leaving a religious organization – with special attention to exiting high-tension groups. We review predictors of deconversion as well as short-term and long-term changes in psychological well-being and growth. Drawing on our own longitudi...

People who self-identify as predominantly spiritual constitute a considerable and well-established part of the religious landscape in North America and Europe. Thus, further research is needed to document predictors, correlates, and outcomes associated with self-identifying primarily as a spiritual person. In the following set of studies, we contri...

Handbuch der Religionen - Das Nachschlagewerk für Wissenschaft und Praxis Das Handbuch der Religionen ist ein in Anspruch und Umfang einzigartiges, wissenschaftlich fundiertes Nachschlagewerk über das gesamte Spektrum der Religionen in Deutschland und im deutschsprachigen Raum. Das Handbuch der Religionen bietet: - wissenschaftlich fundiertes Orien...

Three waves of Petra’s interviews (her case study appears in Chapter 11) have been coded with the recently developed content coding scheme that applies over 150 prominent codes to describe each interview. These content codes are subject to quantitative analysis and visualization using the mathematical tools provided by network analysis. For each in...

This chapter examines the meaning and development of the six aspects of faith development, perspective taking, social horizon, morality, locus of authority, world coherence, and symbolic function. In the existing literature on faith development, the aspects have been used to account for the variety of dimensions that are important for faith, and to...

This text networks contributions from three disciplines: phenomenological-philosophical perspectives on the other, current discussions in wisdom research, and structural-developmental models. The common thread is the concept of the other, which may involve, on the one hand, othering that is an entry point into vicious circles of xenophobia, hate, a...

Abstract: Since ‘spirituality’ has escaped the walls of the monasteries and the niches of “spiritual discipline” to become the popular self-identification “I am spiritual,” the scientific study of religion is presented with new developments in the religious field such as the pronounced self-identification of “spiritual but not religious” or the ris...

Progress in psychology of religion and spirituality benefits from advancement and enrichment of definitions. Dozens of definitions of religion and spirituality have been offered in the history of the field, however, most of them were generated from a top-down, theory-driven process. This study utilized a bottom-up approach to examine folk definitio...

Faith, as a way of how people understand God and the world and make or discover meaning in their life, is characterized by individual differences and changes over the lifetime. Our research investigates these changes over the life span in terms of hierarchically ordered types that are the elements in our developmental model, which is a critical adv...

How are mystical experiences related to self-rated spirituality? Is the recently developed short 8-item version of Hood’s (1975) Mysticism Scale an efficient measurement? The current study expands evidence for both questions using N = 1,582 American and N = 1,492 German samples measured in three waves, average 4 to 5 years apart. Results show that...

This chapter explains why and how the Faith Development Interview (FDI) allows the reconstruction of biographical paths to xenosophia and how this was realized in the Bielefeld Study of Xenosophia and Religion in Germany. Thus, we first describe the conceptual framework in Fowler's theory and research and the model of religious styles, to locate xe...

This chapter explicates the concept of xenosophia, detailing its philosophical roots and its psychological profile as opposite to xenophobia and prejudice. The Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany is based conceptually and empirically on a model which opens the perspective beyond the focus on the "pathogenic" outcomes such as xenop...

This chapter presents results about one of the questions that our research has focused from the beginning: religious change and deconversion. While in the Deconversion Study (2001-2005) we could use only cross-sectional data to estimate characteristics of deconverts in the U.S.A. and Germany, the analyses reported in this chapter are based on repea...

How are mystical experiences related to self-rated spirituality? Is the recently developed short 8-item version of Hood’s Mysticism Scale an efficient measurement? The current study expands evidence for both questions using N = 1,582 American and N = 1,492 German samples measured in three waves, average 4 to 5 years apart. Results show that the 8-i...

Religious change was an important theme in the psychology of religion from its beginning with a focus on conversion, but with the emergence of new religious movements and the recent growth of religious unaffiliation, religious exiting and deconversion received growing attention. This review evaluates recent progress in deconversion research by the...

Religious change was an important theme in the psychology of religion from its beginning with a focus on conversion, but with the emergence of new religious movements and the recent growth of religious unaffiliation, religious exiting and deconversion received growing attention. This review evaluates recent progress in deconversion research by the...

Religion, as a way of how people understand God and the world and make or discover meaning in their life, changes over the lifetime. Based on a wide conceptualization of religion, our research investigates change over the lifespan in terms of hierarchically ordered religious types that are the elements in our model of religious development, which i...

This article presents a typology that categorizes people according to their profile of religious styles, which concerns, among other things, the sources where they derive validity and stability, when confronted with religious and existential questions or inter-religious challenges. The modeling of this typology is an empirical complement to Streib’...

In this chapter, we suggest the use of Hood’s Mysticism Scale (M-scale) for a differential assessment of subjective spirituality. We base this view on the conceptualization of mysticism and its relation to spirituality, and on the definition of spirituality as individualized experience-orientated religiosity. This perspective was empirically tested...

The main part of this book consists of case studies that are based on repeated faith development interviews (FDI) and their evaluation using methods such as content analysis and narrative analysis. But the case studies also take into account perspectives on religious development resulting from the structural evaluation of the FDIs and consider also...

Nach einer Einführung in einen für die Jugendforschung adäquaten Religionsbegriff werden konzeptionelle Zugänge zur Erforschung der Religiosität Jugendlicher vorstellt. Aktuelle empirische Befunde zur Religiosität und Spiritualität Jugendlicher, zu Fundamentalismus und interreligiösen Vorurteilen sowie zum Zusammenhang von Religiosität und Gesundhe...

This chapter aims at quantitatively profiling the sample of re-interviewees in order to enrich the case studies that are presented in later chapters of this book. Research Questions and Assumptions: The distinction between deconverts and traditionalists (previously called "in-tradition members") has been central from the beginning of our deconversi...

https://uni-bielefeld.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=6f95dee8-6bb8-445e-8be5-abbc008c848d

In this chapter, we suggest the use of Hood's (1975) Mysticism Scale for a differential assessment of spirituality. This view is based on the conceptual perspective that is based on Streib and Hood's (2011; 2016b) definition of spirituality as individualized experience-orientated religiosity. This perspective is echoed in the results from the Biele...

This article presents a typology that categorizes people according to their profile of religious styles, which concerns, among other things, the sources where they derive validity and stability, when confronted with religious and existential questions or inter-religious challenges. The modeling of this typology is an empirical complement to Streib’...

This chapter presents the case of Nina F., a young woman who has expe-rienced feelings of alienness, as she and her family moved intercontinentally three times. These feelings of being the alien and, as Nina says, “the odd one out” oc-curred primarily when she was an adolescent and had to deal with, among other things, the challenge of not speaking...

In this chapter, design, research methods, and sample of the Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany are introduced. After a brief over-view of the guiding research questions, the research instruments are described: the standardized scales and items, which were included in our questionnaire that was used to survey 1,534 participants;...

As previous research on Group-Focused Enmity in Europe has shown, different types of prejudice share a common factor: a general ideology of inequali-ty. But how do different types of prejudice differ? Which factor has the strongest effects on a certain prejudice? Which types of prejudice are effectively predicted by religiosity? Does it make a diff...

In this chapter, we give an overview over extant empirical research on the relation between religiosity and prejudice. We start with a brief description of the definitions and types of prejudice, the formation, functions, and consequences of prejudice and continue with an overview over findings on associations between religiosity and distinct types...

This chapter presents results about xenophobia and the culture of wel-come in Germany. This report is primarily based on two subsamples in the data of the Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany. These subsamples are largely representative of the German population, because they were surveyed by an opinion research institute. The first...

This chapter explains why and how the Faith Development Interview (FDI) allows the reconstruction of biographical paths to xenosophia and how this was realized in the Bielefeld Study of Xenosophia and Religion in Germany. Thus, we first describe the conceptual framework in Fowler’s theory and research and the model of religious styles, to locate xe...

This concluding chapter of our book on the results of the Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany presents our attempt to triangulate qualitative and quantitative analyses—or in the terms of the book title: to draw lines between the statistical and biographical paths toward xenosophia. This in-cludes a synoptic perspective on the four...

This chapter presents the case of Robert T. who, in the context of the ty-pology of biographical trajectories toward xenosophia in our Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany, represents the type of trajectory toward xenosophia which is based primarily on the individual and on intellectual curiosi-ty. While raised in the Catholic Chur...

This chapter explicates the concept of xenosophia, detailing its philosophical roots and its psychological profile as opposite to xenophobia and prejudice. The Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany is based conceptually and empirically on a model which opens the perspective beyond the focus on the “pathogenic” outcomes such as xenop...

This book documents the current polarization in Germany regarding the issue of refugee immigration. It presents quantitative estimates for both xenophobia and xenophilia in the German population, including short-time changes. The book suggests a conceptual change of perspectives. It focuses not only on the pathogenic model that accounts for outcome...

The Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany included a special focus on the differential assessment of religion, spirituality and religious styles, in order to analyze their effects on the attitudes toward the alien, such as the culture of welcome, xenophobia and xenophilia. The research design thus in-cluded, besides attention to the...

In the Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion in Germany with a total of 1,534 participants who answered the questionnaire, faith development in-terviews have been conducted with 27 participants, who were systematically se-lected from a pool of 108 participants who, in the questionnaire, indicated their readiness for an interview. This chapter...

In this chapter, we consider the problem that many measures of religiosity and prejudice are at risk to be affected by socially desirable responding. Indirect measurement procedures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) provide an opportunity to assess also pre-reflective, impulsive parts of attitudes avoiding the risk of socially desirable r...

This article is an introduction to the special issue “Atheism, Agnosticism, and Nonreligious Worldviews.” The articles in the special issue highlight starting points and paths for continued growth in developing methodologies and theories that will allow atheists and the nonreligious to be understood apart from, yet compared with, their religious co...

Research in psychology of religion and spirituality has roots stretching back into the19th century, however only recently has it begun researching atheists and other nonreligious individuals. While informative, these investigations have yet to build or identify psychologically meaningful constructs from nonreligion that are not contaminated by, or...

This is the fourth edition of the Manual for Faith Development Research. It continues the aim of the first edition (Moseley, Jarvis, & Fowler, 1986) that was published in 1986 after years of testing and extensive interview evaluation at Emory University, Atlanta. In the third edition of the Manual (Fowler, Streib, & Keller, 2004), decisive revisio...

The Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality” has been inspired by the previous Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on Deconversion . In this chapter we review this previous study and highlight the open questions and desiderata for the present study. Linking the two research perspectives implies the interesting question: Does “spiritu...

This chapter summarizes the trajectories laid out in the chapters focusing on narrative constructions of faith development in biographical context (Chaps. 16, 18–22 and 26). Differences and similarities which are aligned to and which cut across focus group s (defined by self-identification as “religious” vs. “spiritual” and the distinction of theis...

While people might distinguish strictly between “spirituality” and “religion” on the explicit level of cognition, it is possible that such differences disappear on the implicit level. Implicit Association Tests (IAT s) provide a reliable and valid indirect procedure to measure implicit cognition. However, IAT s comparing “spirituality” and “religio...

The Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of “Spirituality” aims at an in-depth understanding of what people call “spirituality.” For this aim, a multi-method design has been applied. Self-report instruments such as psychometric scales were used with a large sample in Germany and the USA. Our sampling procedure, aiming at capturing the varieties of...

This chapter explores the “spiritual/religious” self-identifications in cross-cultural perspective. In addition to current self-identifications we asked how respondents remembered their environment at age 12 and combined this information with the current self-identification. Therefore, we can look at trajectories in both subsamples. Further, we exp...

This chapter has a special focus on the question how “spiritual” self-attribution is related to religious development . Do the “spiritual”/“religious” self-identifications and self-ratings as “spiritual” change together with the religious style /faith stage? Do subjective understandings (semantic versions) of “spirituality” change from one stage to...

The entire volume aims at discovering new perspectives on whether, how and why “spirituality” makes a difference. In this context, this chapter unites central psychological perspectives and presents a new way for mapping “spirituality” and explains the selection of coordinates for such mapping. Thus, this last chapter in the Part on “measuring char...

As part of the semantic analyses in the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of “Spirituality,” this chapter presents the analysis of 1039 English and 740 German subjective free-text-entry definitions of “spirituality” in response to the question: “How would you define the term ‘spirituality’?” The entire corpus of 1779 cases was rated using 44 cat...

This concluding chapter places our study in context by linking it not only to our first book on deconversion (Streib, Hood, Keller, Csöff, & Silver, 2009), but by suggesting how this text is a second in a trilogy that compliments this cross-sectional etic and emic study of the semantics of spirituality with a longitudinal study of faith development...

This chapter presents an introduction to the Faith Development Interview (FDI) and describes its background in Fowler ’s theory and research, explains the FDI questions and the evaluation procedure according to the Manual for Faith Development Research. Then this chapter introduces our more recent methodological modifications of the FDI evaluation...

This book examines what people mean when they say they are "spiritual". It looks at the semantics of "spirituality", the visibility of reasons for "spiritual" preference in biographies, in psychological dispositions, in cultural differences between Germany and the US, and in gender differences. It also examines the kind of biographical consequences...

This chapter explores the relationship between the self-rating as “spiritual” and mysticism as measured by Hood’s Mysticism Scale. The introduction provides an overview of recent attempts to measure “spirituality” psychometrically, of the theoretical and empirical approaches to mysticism and already empirically observed relations between mysticism...

Our study of the semantics of spirituality (Chaps. 5–9) employs a variety of methods in an effort to explore the binary spiritual/religious. While some have argued for a distinction between spirituality and religion, largely for a priori theoretical perspectives, our research explores the semantics of spirituality using self-report, semantic differ...

In the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality,” the qualitative data consists of 102 rated faith development interview s with 54 persons from the USA and 48 from Germany who have been selected according to their focus group membership, i.e. according to their self-identification as “spiritual,” “religious,” both or neither, and as “t...

This chapter presents new perspectives for understanding “spirituality” that emerge from its relation with religious styles and schemata in the data of the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality.” ANOVA results with our focus groups indicate that respondents who self-identify as “more spiritual than religious” in both the USA and Ger...

This chapter deals with the association between “spirituality” and indicators of positive adult development. While possible links of “spirituality” to mental health, well-being , and psychological growth have been the subject of extensive research, this broad interest in salutary effects of “spirituality” has gone along with an inflationary usage o...

The Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality” had a special focus on the semantics of “spirituality” and “religion,” and for this purpose has included a semantic differential approach. Two semantic differentials were part of the questionnaire and have been completed by 1,082 US-American and 703 German respondents: one of Osgood ’s “cla...

Spirituality" has become a rather popular way of self-describing one's world view and practice in relation to the ultimate. While for many "spirituality" is more or less identical with "religion," surveys document that a growing number of people contrast "spirituality" and "religion," self-identifying as "spiritual, but not religious" or as "more s...

Since the enormous shift in the everyday semantic from “religion” to “spirituality” has also affected the terminology of the scientific study of religion, it appears necessary to explain the position taken in the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality” to the question: Should ‘spirituality’ be used as scientific concept? Attempts to...