Convergence and Conflict in the Development of Moral Judgment and Religious Judgment

Abstract

In this article the authors present results from research that tested well-established assumptions and explored longstanding dissatisfactions concerning questions about the relationship between moral development and religious development. Relying upon classical constructs derived from the work of Lawrence Kohlberg, Fritz Oser, and certain of their colleagues, the authors translated, revalidated, and employed a measure developed by John Gibbs for the measurement of moral judgment, and developed, validated, and employed a new measure of religious judgment for the purpose of comparing moral judgment and religious judgment levels in a population of French-speaking Belgian adolescents and young adults. Their findings introduce the beginning of a large-scale empirical effort in the testing of claims central to the literature of developmental psychology and the practice of developmental education where moral and religious judgment are concerned. The results of their research also raise a series of interesting questions about conflict and convergence in moral and religious development. Readers are invited to regard these findings both as a source of reinvigoration for the constructivist case about the relatedness of moral and religious development, and as an opportunity to enquire collaboratively into a series of perplexing questions which arise therein.