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Journal of College Student Development, Volume 53, Number 6, November/December
2012, pp. 827-839 (Article)
P bl h d b Th J hn H p n
DOI: 10.1353/csd.2012.0073
n v r t Pr
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/csd/summary/v053/53.6.rine.html
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Committed to Faith Yet Open to Difference:
Validating a Model for Fallibilist Christian
Spirituality Among College Students
P. Jesse Rine
Using a national dataset containing responses
from 14,527 college students at 136 institutions,
this study empirically tested a theoretical model
for fallibilist Christian spirituality. Results of
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated an
acceptable fit between the specified model and
the actual structure of the data, suggesting that a
fallibilist epistemology emphasizing provisionality
of belief can empower college students to remain
committed to their personal faith traditions while
at the same time exhibiting openness toward
pluralism. Implications for student development
theory and student affairs practice are considered.
Over the past decade, many scholars of higher
education have concluded that spirituality
is an important aspect of college student
development (Astin, 2004; Chickering, Dalton,
& Stamm, 2006; Love, 2001, 2002; Love &
Talbot, 1999; Manning, 2001; Parks, 2000).
Reflecting this sentiment, a number of recent
studies have sought to understand how an
array of factors affect the spiritual development
of collegians, including institutional factors
such as year in school (Bryant, 2006a;
Bryant, Choi, & Yasuno, 2003), course
major (Scheitle, 2009), and institutional
type (Dudley, 1999; Gonzalez, 2008; Gray
& Cidade, 2009), as well as personal factors
such as race (Gehrke, 2009), gender (Bryant
2006b, 2007), sexual orientation (Love, Bock,
Jannarone, & Richardson, 2005), and religious
affiliation (Bowman & Small, 2010; Bryant,
2005; Lee, 2002). Moreover, while generic
measures of spirituality and religiosity have
existed for some time (Hill & Hood, 1999),
only recently has attention shifted to measures
within the postsecondary context. The work
of Astin, Astin, Lindholm, Bryant, Calderone,
& Szelényi (2005) marked the first largescale attempt to quantify spirituality among
college students using a national, longitudinal
dataset. Through exploratory factor analysis
(EFA), Astin et al. constructed a number of
scales to measure the underlying dimensions
of collegiate spirituality, many of which have
been explored in subsequent research (Astin &
Keen, 2006; Brandenberger & Bowman, 2009;
Bryant & Astin, 2008; Bryant, 2009; Fleming,
Purnell, & Wang, 2009; Mayhew, 2009).
Most of these studies, however, have mirrored
earlier quantitative examinations of collegiate
spiritual development, in that they utilize a
specific dimension of spirituality as an outcome
measure in order to investigate the influence of
a set of personal and/or environmental factors.
Though this approach certainly contributes
to our collective knowledge regarding the
spiritual development of postsecondary
students, it reveals little regarding the ways
in which individual dimensions of student
spirituality relate to one another. In order
to address this gap in the research literature,
this study explored whether there exists
P. Jesse Rine is Director of Research & Grants Initiatives at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. The
UCLA Spirituality in Higher Education Project, Alexander W. Astin, Helen S. Astin, and Jennifer A. Lindholm,
directors, provided the data for this study and is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. This
article reflects the views and opinions of the author and not necessarily the John Templeton Foundation.
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an epistemological orientation that fosters
openness to difference among college students
who hold to exclusivist metaphysical beliefs.
In particular, I hypothesized that individuals
who adopt a fallibilist epistemology (see
below) grounded in provisionality of belief
can maintain their personal commitment to
Christian faith while simultaneously taking
an open stance toward difference.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The Epistemological Spectrum
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy
concerned with the limits and scope of human
knowledge, so I begin with a brief discussion of
how one’s personal epistemology, or philosophy
of knowledge, affects the extent to which one
engages with pluralism. Alexander (1995)
has provided a helpful overview of three
epistemological orientations and their typical
responses to cultural diversity. On one end of
the epistemological spectrum stands absolutism,
an orientation grounded in a metaphysics, or
philosophy of being, that affirms the existence
of an ultimate, knowable reality that transcends
cultural context. Alexander cites religious
fundamentalism and scientific positivism
as examples of absolutism, because both
approaches understand truth as a universal and
exclusive entity, derived either by the correct
reading of sacred texts or by following the
scientific method. Moreover, because absolutism
views truth as a singular entity existing beyond
cultural particulars, it rejects any perspective
that fails to comply with an unambiguous
understanding of orthodox teaching.
On the opposite end of the epistemological
spectrum stands relativism, an orientation
grounded in a metaphysics that denies the
existence of an ultimate reality operating
outside of particular cultures. Alexander
(1995) cites cultural anthropology as an
example of relativism, because it understands
828
truth to be a function of cultural context,
so that the values of one culture cannot
legitimately be evaluated on the basis of some
outside criterion. Relativism, then, welcomes
differing perspectives on reality to be expressed
according to the terms of their own conceptual
frameworks.
In between these two extremes stands
fallibilism, an orientation allowing for belief in
an ultimate reality that does exist and can be
known, but asserting that that our knowledge
of that reality will always be incomplete, and
often incorrect, and must therefore be held
provisionally (Alexander, 1995). Consequently,
fallibilism welcomes cultural diversity as a
potential source of greater understanding,
not out of a wholesale denial of objective
knowledge, but from a conviction that differing
voices may make unique contributions to our
understanding of ultimate reality.
As a philosophy of knowledge, fallibilism
can be incorporated into any number of
faith traditions; however, to illustrate how
fallibilism can serve as a bridge between belief
in exclusivist truth claims and openness to
difference, in this study fallibilism was explored
within the context of Christian spirituality. In
particular, an evangelical theological lens was
employed to conceptualize fallibilist Christian
spirituality (though the resulting scales may
ultimately be judged broad enough to measure
fallibilist Christian spirituality writ large),
an approach offering three main advantages.
First, because evangelical Christianity places
such a strong emphasis on exclusivist truth
claims (McGrath, 1994, 1996), it presents
an appropriate case for testing whether or
not fallibilist epistemology can harmonize
intense personal commitments with tolerance
of diverse perspectives. Secondly, evangelical
students have received increased attention in
the higher education research literature of
late (Bramadat, 2000; Bryant, 2005, 2008;
Kim, 2006; Magolda & Ebben, 2006, 2007;
Journal of College Student Development
Modeling Fallibilist Christian Spirituality
Magolda & Gross, 2009; Moran, 2007), with
one qualitative study (Bryant, 2008) finding
evidence that evangelical students, though
largely committed to the notion of absolute
truth, often recognize the limitations of their
human perspective, a hallmark of fallibilist
epistemology. Employing an evangelical
theological lens ensures that the quantitative
results of this study may be used to inform
qualitative findings already present in the
research literature. Finally, adopting such a
frame aligns this study with similar theories on
student spirituality, such as Mannoia’s (2000)
notion of critical commitment, a personal
orientation that rejects both the “credulity of
dualism” (i.e., absolutism) and the “incredulity
of multiplicity” (i.e., relativism; p. 61) in favor
of “an open attitude toward a firm belief ”
(i.e., fallibilism; p. 43). Consequently, this
alignment allows the results from this study
to inform the theoretical literature as well.
Fallibilist Christian Spirituality
How then would a fallibilist Christian spirituality manifest itself on a personal level? Similar
to an absolutist spirituality, it would begin
from a place of personal commitment to
the basic elements of the Christian understanding of ultimate reality, namely a belief
that God came to earth incarnate in the form
of Jesus Christ, was crucified, and rose again.
Moreover, this commitment to Christian faith
would be evidenced by a personal relationship
with the risen Christ, a distinguishing feature
of Christian spirituality (McGrath, 1995)
characterized by both internal and external
expressions. Internal expressions are the
less evident, more private aspects of one’s
commitment to Christian faith, and they
include a general desire to integrate spirituality
into one’s life and a motivation to seek out
opportunities for spiritual growth. Additionally,
the spiritual discipline of prayer serves as a
private means by which one communes with
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God through Christ, asking forgiveness for
transgressions and expressing gratitude for
divine provision (Foster, 1988; Whitney,
1991; Willard, 1991). In complement to these
internal expressions, a group of more public,
outward expressions characterize commitment
to Christian faith as well. The committed
believer regularly attends religious services,
praises God through song, and reads sacred
texts (Foster, 1988; Whitney, 1991; Willard,
1991). Moreover, those committed to personal
faith in Christ seek to follow his teachings in
their everyday life and to introduce others to
their faith (Whitney, 1991).
Unlike an absolutist spirituality, individuals exhibiting a fallibilist Christian spirituality
commit to a relationship with the person of
Christ rather than a set of abstract theological
propositions. This distinction brings us to the
second component of a fallibilist Christian
spirituality, provisionality of belief. While
individuals embodying a fallibilist Christian
spirituality certainly possess theological beliefs,
these concepts are considered draft expressions of the ultimate reality revealed by one’s
relationship with Christ. Provisionality of
belief has passive and active elements. Passive
provisionality represents an inwardly reflective
attitude, one that critically examines currently
held beliefs. It approaches truth with a spirit of
humility (Phipps, 2004), recognizing that all
knowledge is ultimately a gift from the divine
(Benson, 2001). Active provisionality turns
outward in a search for meaning and purpose;
however, unlike absolutism’s propositional
approach to truth seeking, active provisionality
recognizes the relational nature of truth. In the
tradition of the historic Christian notion of faith
seeking understanding (Anselm, 1998), active
provisionality seeks to uncover truth through
encountering the risen Christ (Palmer, 2003).
The final component of fallibilist Christian spirituality is openness to pluralism.
Because personal knowledge is provisional,
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it must remain open to revision. Revision
of present understandings never occurs in a
homogeneous context; it only occurs when
differing perspectives challenge preconceived
notions. Thus, similar to a relativist spirituality,
a fallibilist Christian spirituality exhibits an
openness to pluralism, understanding cultural
difference as a potential source for improved
understanding. Openness to pluralism has
two facets, knowledge and volition. Pluralistic
knowledge involves a desire to understand
diverse cultures and religions, and it stems
from empathy towards the other, a habit that
“precludes premature analysis or critique”
(Lakeland, 2002, p. 40). Pluralistic volition
sincerely engages the other by exhibiting
an “imaginative hermeneutical sensitivity”
toward the “radically different” and allowing
conflicting viewpoints to be expressed in their
own categories (Bernstein, 2002, p. 151).
ANALYSIS STRATEGY
Because no direct measure of fallibilist Christian spirituality currently exists, the primary
purpose of this study is to validate a theoretical
model for that orientation among the college
student population using individual-level
data. A scale was developed using items from
the College Student Beliefs and Values Survey
(CSBV) that were believed to measure the
dimensions of fallibilist Christian spirituality.
The Higher Education Research Institute
(HERI) at the University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA) recently created the CSBV
to accompany the Cooperative Institutional
Research Project’s (CIRP) annual Survey of
Entering Freshmen (Astin et al., 2005). The
CSBV was first administered to 112,232
entering first-year students at 236 institutions
in the fall of 2004, and a follow-up survey was
given to a subset of third-year students in the
spring of 2007, resulting in a longitudinal
database of 14,527 third-year students at 136
830
institutions (Astin et al., 2005).
After establishing reliability of the full scale
and its components, I turned my attention to
the relationships existing between the scale’s
components. Fallibilist Christian spirituality
was modeled as three independent yet correlated
components having two subcomponents each:
commitment to Christian faith (internal,
external), provisionality of belief (passive,
active), and openness to pluralism (knowledge,
volition). Because a strong literature base
exists for the theoretical construct of fallibilist
Christian spirituality, confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA) was used to test whether or not
the specified model adequately represents the
actual structure of the data (Stevens, 2002).
Before proceeding to a description of
specific procedures of data analysis, three
general observations regarding the nature
of the CSBV longitudinal dataset should
be made. First of all, the overwhelming
majority of variables in the CSBV dataset are
categorical in nature, preventing the use of
maximum likelihood estimation techniques.
Secondly, as with most large datasets, steps
must be taken to prevent various types of
bias from entering into statistical analysis
of the CSBV dataset. To avoid the sample
bias that occurs when incomplete cases are
deleted listwise, missing data was handled
through the use of multiple imputation, a
simulation technique that provides plausible
values for incomplete cases in a manner that
preserves the variability of the dataset (Peugh
& Enders, 2004; Schafer & Olsen, 1998). To
correct for the response bias that can result
from differential sampling of students within
institutions and disproportionate sampling
of institutional types, weighting was used to
ensure that the sample most closely represents
the population of first-time, full-time students
attending baccalaureate institutions (Stapleton,
2002). Finally, it is important to note that the
CSBV dataset’s nested structure of students
Journal of College Student Development
Modeling Fallibilist Christian Spirituality
within institutions results in variation at two
levels. Although this nested data structure
allows for analysis at both the individual and
institutional levels, the purpose of this study
is to validate a theoretical model for fallibilist
Christian spirituality, not to examine how
student expressions of that spirituality might
vary within particular institutional contexts;
therefore, subsequent analyses focused on
individual-level variation while controlling for
institutional-level variation.
METhOdOLOGY
Scale Reliability
The first step in data analysis was the construction of a reliable scale for measuring fallibilist
Christian spirituality. All 14,527 cases of
the CSBV longitudinal data set were used to
develop scales for the hypothesized constructs
(commitment to Christian faith, provisionality
of belief, openness to pluralism) according
to three a priori expectations of item clusters
from the spring 2007 survey of third-year
students (see Table 1). For example, the scale’s
first component, a latent construct intended
to quantify commitment to Christian faith,
included survey items measuring how often
participants engage in personal prayer, religious
service attendance, and reading of sacred texts
(Foster, 1988; Whitney, 1991; Willard, 1991).
One might expect that an individual’s level of
commitment to Christian faith would affect
his or her personal behavior in these areas, so
that a high level of commitment to Christian
faith would manifest itself in a high frequency
of participation in these spiritual disciplines;
conversely, one might expect that individuals
lacking a personal commitment to Christian
faith would report less frequent engagement
in these behaviors. If individuals who scored
high on one of the items also tended to score
high on the other two, and vice-versa, then the
items would exhibit internal consistency and
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the component could be considered a reliable
instrument for measuring commitment to
Christian faith. Using SPSS (version 18.0),
the reliability of the full 27-item scale, as well
as each of its three components, was tested
for internal consistency through the use of
Cronbach’s alpha, a coefficient that estimates
the percentage of true score variation measured
by a construct (Henson, 2001).
Construct Validity
Using all 14,527 cases of the longitudinal
dataset, a structural equation model was
specified to examine the construct validity of
the entire fallibilism scale as well as its three
hypothesized components (see Figure 1). To
accommodate the categorical nature of the
scale items, MPLUS (version 5.2) was used to
perform a second-order confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA) to investigate how well the
specified model represented the actual structure
of the data (Stevens, 2002). Based on the
conceptual framework discussed earlier, the
three hypothesized components of a fallibilist
Christian spirituality (i.e., commitment
to Christian faith, provisionality of belief,
openness to pluralism) were represented as
independent, but correlated, second-order
factors having two first-order factors each.
Because the primary focus of this study was
the individual phenomenon of fallibilist
Christian spirituality, specialized MPLUS
commands (i.e., type = complex) were used to
control for institutional-level variation without
biasing individual-level variation (Julian,
2001; Muthén & Satorra, 1995). The default
parameter estimator for models including at
least one ordered and one unordered categorical
factor indicator—weighted least squares with
robust standard errors and mean- and varianceadjusted chi-square (WLSMV)—was used.
The extent to which the specified model
accurately represents the actual structure of
the data was evaluated through the calculation
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TAbLE 1.
Fallibilism Scale Items
Construct / Item
Commitment to Christian Faith
Internal
Importance: Integrating spirituality into my life
Why pray?: To be in communion with God
Why pray?: To express gratitude
Why pray?: For forgiveness
Importance: Seeking out opportunities to help me grow spiritually
External
Activity: Attended a religious service
Activity: Religious singing/chanting
Activity: Reading sacred texts
Self-description: being committed to introducing people to my faith
Importance: Seeking to follow religious teachings in my everyday life
Provisionality of Belief
Passive
how often?: Questioned your religious/spiritual beliefs
Self-description: My spiritual/religious beliefs have been formed through much
Self-rating: humility
Active
Importance: developing a meaningful philosophy of life
Importance: Finding answers to the mysteries of life
Current spiritual/religious view: Seeking
Activity: Searching for meaning/purpose in life
Openness to Pluralism
Knowledge
Importance: Improving my understanding of other countries and cultures
Self-description: having an interest in different religious traditions
Self-Rating: Understanding of others
Self-Rating: Empathy
Volition
how often: Socialized with someone of another racial/ethnic group
Self-description: Ability to get along with people of different races/cultures
Self-description: Acceptance of people with different religious/spiritual beliefs
Activity: Accepting others as they are
Self-Rating: Cooperativeness
832
Journal of College Student Development
Modeling Fallibilist Christian Spirituality
of three separate goodness-of-fit indices.
Hu and Bentler (1995) classify fit indices
as either absolute or incremental, so that an
absolute fit index “directly assesses how well
an a priori model reproduces the sample data,”
whereas an incremental fit index “measures
the proportionate improvement in fit by
comparing the target model with a more
restricted, nested baseline model” (p. 82).
When evaluating model fit, the baseline model
is used for comparison because it assumes no
theoretical relationship between variables, and
as such, it provides model fit statistics based
on estimated means and variances alone.
Incremental fit indices quantify the percentage
of improvement that a specified model, which
uses structural paths to indicate relationships
between variables, demonstrates over the
baseline model. One absolute fit index, the
root mean squared error of approximation
(RMSEA), and two incremental fit indices, the
comparative fit index (CFI) and the TuckerLewis index (TLI), were calculated to evaluate
the fit of the specified model.
Finally, how the three components of
fallibilism relate to one another was examined
using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and
significance tests were employed to evaluate
the statistical significance of each coefficient.
Pearson’s r quantifies the strength and direction
Internal
Commitment to
Christian Faith
External
Passive
Provisionality of
belief
Active
Knowledge
Openness to
Pluralism
Volition
FIGURE 1. Path diagram – Fallibilist Christian Spirituality
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TAbLE 2.
resulting F-test statistics were then compared to
the critical value of F(1, 14525, .01) = 6.64 to
determine whether or not the higher Pearson’s
correlation values were significantly larger.
Scale and Components
Construct
Full Scale
.86
Component 1 – Commitment
to Christian Faith
.90
Component 2 – Provisionality
of belief
.63
Component 3 – Openness to
Pluralism
.65
RESULTS
Scale Reliability
of the linear relationship between two variables
(or in this case, latent constructs formed from
observed variables). After calculating Pearson’s
correlation coefficients for the relationships
existing between the three components of
fallibilist Christian spirituality, these values
were compared using a modified version of
null hypothesis significance testing (NHST;
Pedhazur, 1997) to determine if their variation
was statistically significant. In particular, the
two higher correlations were compared to the
lowest correlation using the F-test statistic to
determine if they were significantly larger.
The F-test statistic was computed by using the
lowest Pearson’s r value as the value for the null
hypothesis (i.e., H0), rather than zero. The
A summary of reliability testing results is
found in Table 2. The full scale and its three
components exhibited Cronbach’s alpha
coefficients above .60, indicating acceptable
reliability for exploratory purposes (Henson,
2001). Each item’s individual contribution to
the Cronbach’s alpha score for the full scale, as
well as its contribution to the Cronbach’s alpha
score for the item’s assigned component (i.e.,
commitment to Christian faith, provisionality
of belief, openness to pluralism), was examined.
Consequently, it was determined that the
specified pool of 27 items maximized the
internal consistency of both the full scale and
its three components. The full scale explained
86% of true score variance in student fallibilist
spirituality, while 90% of true score variance
in student commitment to Christian faith was
explained by the first scale component, 63%
of true score variance in student provisionality
of belief was explained by the second scale
component, and 65% of true score variance in
student openness to pluralism was explained
TAbLE 3.
Construct
CFI
TLI
RMSEA
Full Scale
.897
.914
.049
Component 1 – Commitment to Christian Faith
.971
.976
.062
Component 2 – Provisionality of belief
.949
.939
.026
Component 3 – Openness to Pluralism
.731
.686
.063
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Journal of College Student Development
Modeling Fallibilist Christian Spirituality
by the third scale component.
Component Correlations
Construct Validity
Statistically significant positive correlations
(p < .001) were found to exist between all
three components of fallibilist Christian
spirituality (see Figure 2), though the strength
of each relationship varied. The correlation
between commitment to Christian faith
and openness to pluralism, r = 0.34, was
significantly lower than the correlation
between commitment to Christian faith and
provisionality of belief, r = 0.73, F(1, 14525,
.01) = 13,000 > Fcv = 6.64, and the correlation
between provisionality of belief and openness to pluralism, r = 0.76, F(1, 14525, .01)
= 15,931 > Fcv = 6.64. According to Cohen
(1988), the first correlation could be classified
as moderate, whereas the other two could be
viewed as strong.
Table 3 presents results from the confirmatory
factor analysis (CFA) of the full fallibilism
scale and its components. Results of the single
absolute fit index employed, the root mean
squared error of approximation (RMSEA),
indicated an acceptable fit between the
specified model and the actual structure of the
data. RMSEA values for the full scale (.049)
and provisionality of belief (.026) were well
below Hu and Bentler’s (1999) recommended
maximum of .060, whereas RMSEA scores
for commitment to Christian faith (.062)
and openness to pluralism (.063) exceeded
that standard only slightly. Thus, all RMSEA
values fell within a range appropriate for the
exploratory purposes of this study (Marsh,
Hau, and Wen, 2004).
Results for the two incremental fit indices
employed, the comparative fit index (CFI) and
the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), revealed a fit
between the specified model and the actual
structure of the data that was acceptable for
exploratory purposes (Marsh et al., 2004).
CFI values revealed that the full model
exhibited an 89.7% improvement over the
baseline model, while the commitment to
Christian faith component achieved a 97.1%
improvement over the baseline model, the
provisionality of belief component a 94.9%
improvement, and the openness to pluralism
component a 73.1% improvement. TLI scores
for the full scale and its three components
revealed similar results. The full scale achieved
a 91.4% improvement over the baseline model,
while the commitment to Christian faith
component exhibited a 97.6% improvement,
the provisionality of belief component a 93.9%
improvement, and the openness to pluralism
component a 68.6% improvement.
Commitment to
Christian Faith
r = 0.73*
Provisionality of
belief
r = 0.34*
r = 0.76*
Openness to
Pluralism
Fallibilism Scale Components
* p < .001.
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dISCUSSION
The results provide empirical evidence for three
major findings. First, it appears that fallibilist
Christian spirituality is an orientation that
does in fact occur among the undergraduate
student population. Fit indices produced
from the second-order confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA) for the full scale suggest that the
specified model was an accurate representation
of the actual structure of the data, offering
empirical evidence for the notion that students
can be both committed to Christian faith and
open to difference. Secondly, the positive,
significant correlation (r = 0.34) between the
constructs for commitment to Christian faith
and openness to pluralism suggests that these
two orientations are not only compatible, but
they actually reinforce one another. Although
perhaps counterintuitive, this suggests that
as an individual’s commitment to Christian
faith increases, openness to pluralism should
increase as well, and vice versa. One could
conclude, therefore, that personal adherence
to an exclusivist faith tradition does not
require a closed stance toward difference,
nor does openness to pluralism necessarily
undermine faith commitments. Finally,
the strength of the correlation coefficients
suggests that fallibilist provisionality of belief
does indeed serve as the bridge between
commitment and openness. Although all
three components of the fallibilism scale were
positively and significantly correlated, the
correlation between commitment to Christian
faith and provisionality of belief (r = 0.73) as
well as the correlation between provisionality
of belief and openness to pluralism (r = 0.76)
were found to be significantly higher than the
correlation between commitment to Christian
faith and openness to pluralism (r = 0.34). The
magnitude of these correlations suggests that
students who are committed to Christian faith
are more likely to be open to pluralism if they
836
adopt a fallibilist epistemology that emphasizes
provisionality of belief.
CONCLUSION
The findings of this study empirically substantiate the existence of Mannoia’s (2000)
theorized construct of critical commitment,
an orientation synonymous with fallibilist
Christian spirituality. Moreover, these findings
offer further evidence for common components found in the widely held stage theories
of student development upon which Mannoia’s
construct is built. Three qualitatively derived
concepts similar to critical commitment—
Perry’s (1968) notion of moral commitment
within relativism, Parks’s (1986) notion
of a communal faith that is inclusive of
the other, and Fowler’s (1981) stage of
conjunctive faith—all describe an individual
orientation in which personal commitments
and awareness of difference coexist. Although
this study conceptualized fallibilist Christian
spirituality as an alternative to absolutism and
relativism, rather than a more advanced form
of those orientations, its results do provide
quantitative evidence for the existence of
similar orientations found in all three of these
stage theories. Lastly, study findings make a
quantitative case for the qualitatively derived
phenomenon Bryant (2008) discovered among
evangelical students, namely a personal commit ment to absolute truth tempered by a
recognition of the limitations of the human
perspective.
As postsecondary faculty and student
affairs professionals seek to foster openness to
difference among the student populations they
serve, two related principles should be kept
in mind. First, although a number of faith
traditions are grounded in exclusivist truth
claims, personal commitment to faith itself is
not antithetical to a pluralistic disposition. In
fact, this study offers empirical evidence that,
Journal of College Student Development
Modeling Fallibilist Christian Spirituality
at least in the case of evangelical Christian
faith, the two orientations may actually be
complementary. This suggests that students do
not have to relinquish their faith commitments
in order to develop an open attitude toward
difference. Secondly, while students of faith
can simultaneously exhibit both commitment
and openness, it is important to note that the
extent to which they engage with difference
will be informed by the personal epistemology
they adopt. For example, results of this
study suggest that students committed to
Christian faith are more likely to exhibit an
open stance toward difference if they have
adopted a fallibilist epistemology grounded in
provisionality of belief. Taken together, these
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vol 53 no 6
two principles suggest that the best strategy
for fostering a pluralistic disposition among
students of faith is not to ask them to abandon
their exclusivist truth claims altogether, but
instead to encourage them to hold those
truth claims with a greater sense of humility.
By taking this approach, faculty and student
affairs practitioners can themselves model the
openness to difference they hope to instill in
the students they serve.
Correspondence concerning this article should be
addressed to P. Jesse Rine, Council for Christian Colleges
& Universities, 321 Eighth Street NE, Washington, DC
20002; jrine@cccu.org
837
Rine
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