Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 43
7. Advocates social and global change to bring about greater social justice;
8. Serves humanity, consistently and passionately, through acts oflove and
justice (Benson et al. 1993, p.6).
Three of these eight dimensions describes faith maturity in relationship to God
which is also referred to as Vertical Faith Maturity. These aspects include a person"s
trusts and beliefs, experiences of personal well-being, and seeking of spiritual growth.
Three other dimensions describe faith maturity in relationship to others which is
labeled Horizontal Faith Maturity. These aspects include service to others, holding life
affirming values, being an advocate of social change, and acting and serving.
The Faith Maturity Scale is a reliable measure. Benson et al. (1993) reports
measures of internal consistincy of (.84 to .89) for Total Faith Maturity. The scale may
also possess content validity for religious traditions outside the five denominations
included. Following scrutiny by denominational and/or seminary professors, the scale has
been included in national studies involving the Seventh-day Adventist Church (Benson &
Donahue, 1990) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (Benson & Eklin, 1990), and
in local and regional studies ofCatholic, Episcopal, American Baptist, and Reformed
Church ofAmerica congregations.
Construct validity was assessed in a variety of ways through known groups,
expert raters, its relation to the age of the respondent, and its relation to other measures
(Benson et al. 1993). In known groups it was predicted that faith-maturity mean scores
would vary as a function ofreligious-leadership training and experience. This prediction
was confirmed between each pair of means. With expert raters, a person's level of faith
maturity as defined by a description of the eight core dimensions were significantly
correlated with subjects' scores on the Faith Maturity Scale.
Faith maturity correlates with a number of other measures such as intrinsic
religiousness (Feagin, 1964). Also significant correlations were found with measures on
importance of religion, prayer, reading religious literature, the Good Samaritan Scale, racial
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