The faith development of the antiapartheid theologian Beyers Naudé: A psychobiography

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 3(4) of Spirituality in Clinical Practice (see record 2016-30735-001). In the article, Nico Nortjé's name and affiliation were originally omitted from the first page. All versions of this article have been corrected.] A century ago the South African theologian Beyers Naudé (1915-2004) was born into the Afrikaner culture. As an adult he adamantly opposed apartheid and became a renowned public figure of the antiapartheid struggle in his pursuit of social and political justice for all South Africans. He was purposively sampled as subject of this psychobiography, which involves the life span study of a significant individual in a socio-historical-cultural context. The aim was to uncover and illustrate Naudé's faith development throughout his life span by means of Fowler's faith development theory (FDT). FDT is regarded as an influential theory, relevant to the broad conceptualization of faith development, and is a popular resource used in pastoral counseling and spiritual direction. Alexander's psychobiographical indicators of thematic saliency, as well as a conceptual framework or matrix, were utilized to identify, categorize, and analyze significant themes of faith development. The findings indicate that Naudé progressed through all the stages of faith development as proposed by the FDT. He achieved a mature level of faith, namely universalizing faith, which guided his beliefs and the significant decisions he made during the antiapartheid struggle.