Books 1980-1989

Blazer, Doris (1989). Faith Development in Early Childhood (Sheed and Ward).
This book is a compilation of plenary sessions from The 1987 Kanuga National Symposium on Faith Development in Early Childhood, held at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina. A wide variety of researchers and practitioners from across the United States attended this conference. The theories of Fowler, Erickson, and Skinner are predominant in these chapters.
Chapters
1. Strength for the journey: Early childhood development in selfhood and faith--James Fowler
2. The roots of faith: The crucial role of infant/toddler caregivers--Alice Honig
3. A faltering trust--Bettye Caldwell
4. Attitude education in early childhood faith development--Lucie Barber
5. Strengthening families for the task--Kevin Swick
6. Inviting children into the faith community--Patricia and Robert Boone
7. The public church: Ecology for faith education and advocate for children--James Fowler


Brusselmans, Christine (1980). Toward Moral and Religious Maturity (Silver Burdett).
This compilation was the outcome of a conference at the Abbey of Senanque located in the southern area of France during the summer of 1979. Twenty scholars from the United States, Canada, and Europe discussed their research and considered the implications for education, the results of which are reflected in this book. Many of the contributors were or later became leading scholars in education and religious education.
Chapters
1. Interdisciplinary approaches to moral and religious development--William Rogers
2. Faith and the structuring of meaning--James Fowler
3. The dynamics of the family and its social significance for moral and religious education--Antione Vergote
4. The psychological foundations of belief in God--Ana-Maria Rizzuto
5. The relation to God and the moral development of the young child--Jean-Marie Jaspard
6. Negation and transformation: A study in theology and human development--James Loder
7. Reference figures in moral development--Dirk Hutsebaut
8. Justice and responsibility: Thinking about real dilemmas of moral conflict and choice--Carol Gilligan
9. Reciprocal relationships between moral commitment and faith profession in worship--Herman Lombaerts
10. Stages of religious judgment--Fritz Oser
11. Moral theology and moral development--Enda McDonagh
12. Religion, morality, and ego development--F. Clark Power and Lawrence Kohlberg
13. Moral and faith development theory--James O'Donohoe
14. There the dance is: Religious dimensions of a developmental framework--Robert Kegan
15. Character, narrative, and growth in the Christian life--Stanley Hauerwas
16. Democracy, cooperation, and moral education--Thomas Lickona
17. Moral education in private schools: A Christian perspective--Jef Bulckens
18. The scandalized child: Children, media, and commodity culture--Edmund Sullivan

Fowler, James W. (1981). Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (Harper & Row). (Harper & Row).
This book arises from the comprehensive and scientific study of the lifelong development and stages of faith by James Fowler and his colleagues. It incorporates the theories of Erikson, Piaget, and Kohlberg for psychosocial, cognitive, and moral development from infancy through adulthood. Informative and thought-provoking, this book shows faith development as an upward-traveling spiral of one pre-stage and six stages with transitions between each of the stages. Although he focuses mostly on Judeo-Christian values and Western perspectives, Fowler does acknowledge his bias and seek to adjust his theories to make them more universally applicable. This work provides the foundation for much later work on children’s spirituality.
Chapters
Part I: Human Faith
1) Human Faith
2) Faith, Religion and Belief
3) Faith and Relationship
4) Faith as Imagination
5) On Seeing Faith Whole
Part II: Windows on Human Development: A Fictional Conversation
6) The Fictional Conversation
7) Infancy
8) Early Childhood
9) Childhood
10) Adolescence
11) Adulthood
Part III: Dynamics of Faith and Human Development
12) The Dynamic Triad of Faith
13) Structural-Developmental Theories and Faith
14) Psychosocial Development and Faith
Part IV: Stages of Faith
15) Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith
16) Stage 1. Intuitive-Projective Faith
17) Stage 2. Mythic-Literal Faith
18) Stage 3. Synthetic-Conventional Faith
19) Stage 4. Individuative-Reflective Faith
20) Stage 5. Conjunctive Faith
21) Stage 6. Universalizing Faith
Part V: Formation and Transformation in Faith
22) Mary’s Pilgrimage: The Theory at Work
23) Form and Content: Stages of Faith and Conversion
24) Faith on Earth

Heller, David (1986). The Children's God (University of Chicago Press).
The author of this book analyzed children's drawings, letters to God, interviews, and play to form conclusions about their understandings of God. He included an equal number of Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, and Baptist children, 40 total, all Americans from the Ann Arbor, Michigan area. Psychology Today made Heller's research their cover story and he went on to author several additional books on children's religion that were less research oriented. However, some have noted that Heller focused on the family's contribution to children's religious concepts, minimizing the influence of the church and synagogue, as well as the importance of ritual, language, and tradition.
Chapters
1. Introduction: Children's conceptions
2. The method: In search of the children's God
3. Religious themes
4. Age themes
5. Gender themes
6. Personality themes
7. The family: A socialization scenario
8. Common themes
9. Conclusion: Implications for childhood religion
10. Epilogue: For children only?

Ratcliff, Donald (Ed.)(1988). Handbook of Preschool Religious Education (Religious Education Press).
[From the back cover] Handbook of Preschool Religious Education is an exhaustive and comprehensive treatment of the entire field of early childhood religious education.
Chapters
1. The cognitive development of preschoolers--Donald Ratcliff
2. Physical, language, and social-emotional development--Charlotte Wallinga and Patsy Skeen
3. The Religious Concepts of Preschoolers--Kalevi Tamminen, Renzo Vianello, Jean-Marie Jaspard, and Donald Ratcliff
4. Preschooler Moral Development--Claity P. Massey
5. Faith Development in the Preschool Years--Romney M. Moseley and Ken Brockenbrough
6. Religion and Socialization--Mary Anne Fowlkes
7. How to Teach: Foundations, Processes, Procedures--James Michael Lee
8. Creativity and Teaching Concepts of God--E. Paul Torrance and J. Pansy Torrance Lee
9. Stories, Enactment, and Play--Donald Ratcliff
10. Planning, Evaluation, and Research--David Starks and Donald Ratcliff

Books from the 1970s

Rizzuto, Ana-Maria (1979). The Birth of the Living God (University of Chicago Press).
This is a classic study cited by many researchers, involving psychoanalytic perspectives of how the concept of God develops in childhood. Heavily influenced by Freudian theory and object relations theory, the research involved a pilot study at Boston State Hospital and clinical research with twenty psychiatric residents at a private hospital.
Chapters
1. Introduction
2. Freud
3. Beyond Freud
4. The representation of objects and human psychic functioning
5. Introduction to the clinical research
6. A God without whiskers
7. A God in the mirror
8. God, the enigma
9. God, my enemy
10. Conclusions



Robinson, Edward (1977/1983). The Original Vision: A Study of the Religious Experience of Childhood (Harper San Francisco).
In the 1960's and 1970's Sir Alister Hardy, the director of the Religious Experience Research Unit at (Manchester College, Oxford) began collecting accounts of religious experience, and he eventually published The Spiritual Nature of Man which summarized major themes he found in those accounts. His successor was Edward Robinson, who concentrated his attention on the religious experiences of childhood as recalled by adults. The methodology employed is related to cultural anthropology, and suggests a significant alternative to cognitively oriented developmental approaches to religion and faith.
Chapters
1. What is childhood?
2. Vision and reality
3. "Nature mysticism"
4. The child that I used to be
5. The web of home
6. "Let 'x' equal the unknown"
7. Church God
8. "My own special reality"
9. Death
10. Morality and significance
11. Something more

Strommen, Merton (Ed.)(1971). Research on Religious Development: A Comprehensive Handbook (Hawthorn).
This classic, now more than thirty years old, includes notable contributions from many scholars who have become well-known in education, religion, sociology and other disciplines. More than 900 pages in length, it remains without question the most complete summary of the literature prior to 1970, the only serious rival in more recent years being the summary of the literature by Kenneth Hyde (see above).
Chapters
1. Psychological interpretations of religious experience--Peter Bertocci</font>
2. Religious development in historical, social, and cultural context--Martin Marty
3. Two issues in measuring religion--James Dittes
4. Some developmental tasks in Christian education--Andre Godin
5. Delayed gratification: A psychological and religious analysis
6. Development of internal moral standards in children--Martin Hoffman
7. The religious effects of parochial education--Andrew Greeley and Galen Gockel
8. The role of religion in public education--Lawrence Little
9. Religion, prejudice, and personality--James Dittes
10. Religion and psychological health--Russell Becker
11. Psychological characteristics of religious professionals--James Dittes
12. Religion and mental disorder: A research perspective--Bernard Spilka and Paul Werme
13. Research on religious beliefs: A critical review--Bernard Spilka
14. Intense religious experience--Walter Clark
15. Religious practices--David Moberg
16. Motivation and religious behavior--Annette Walters and Ritamary Bradley
17. The development of religious understanding in children and adolescents--David Elkind
18. The religion of youth--Robert Havighurst and Barry Keating
19. Changes in religious beliefs of college students--Clyde Parker
20. Religious development in adulthood--Paul Maves
21. Research in program development--Leonard Sibley
22. Selected problems in the study of religious development--Allen Barton

Weber, Hans-Ruedi (1979/1994). Jesus and the Children (Treehaus).
A key study of children and the ministry of Jesus.
Chapters
1. We piped to you, and you did not dance
2. Let the children come to me
3. Unless you become like a child
4. A child in the midst of them
[4 appendices]

Books 1960s and Earlier

The following powerpoint presentation summarizes much of the research from the 1890s to the end of the century.

www.childfaith.net/historyofchildfaith.pdf

The details of dozens of additional sources from this presentation can be found in a chapter titled "The spirit of children past": A century of children's spirituality research (2008), in Holly Allen (Ed.), Nurturing children's spirituality: Christian perspectives and best practices. (Cascade)

If you know of other books that summarize or report research related to children's faith, religion, and spirituality, we would appreciate suggestions for additions to the database. You may contact us here . Thank you.