Heinz Streib is Professor for Religious Education at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. There he has established the Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion. He received his Ph.D. from Emory University, Atlanta in 1989, with a thesis on Hermeneutics of Metaphor, Symbol and Narrative in Faith Development Theory (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991) and in 1995 he completed his Habilitation at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universtät, Frankfurt/Main with a thesis on Entzauberung der Okkultfaszination (Kampen: Kok, 1996). He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Archive for the Psychology of Religion/Archiv für Religionspsychologie.
Streib’s more recent books include Deconversion: Qualitative and Quantitative Results from Cross-cultural Research in Germany and the United States of America (Research in Contemporary Religion)
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht 2009) and Jugend und Religion (Weinheim: Juventa Verlag, 2011). He also has edited Religion Inside and Outside Traditional Institutions (Empirical Studies in Theology)
(Leiden: Brill, 2007) and Lived Religion. Conceptual, Empirical and Practical-Theological Approaches Leiden:Brill, 2008).
Streib’s research interests focus on biographical-reconstructive and psychometric assessment of deconversion, fundamentalism, xenophobia and the semantics of “spirituality.” His engagement in the psychology of religion includes in a revision of faith development theory in terms of religious styles and schemata, which has lead to the development of the Religious Schema Scale (The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 20(3), 151-172).
The RSP Psychology of Religion Participatory Panel Special took place during the International Association for the Psychology of Religion 2013 world congress this August in Switzerland, hosted at the at the University of Lausanne. We asked for the RSP listeners to steer the conversation and YOU responded with tough questions...
Over ten years ago, Streib saw applicability to Fowler’s stages, but not in their typical empirical application. Heinz realized that Fowler’s descriptions had descriptive utility in how individuals structure and formalize their belief, but he also recognized that the graduated method of “stages” was empirically and culturally problematic. For Streib, these systems of meaning were not passé or scant in any way, only different.
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