Christian Faith Practices Scale (CFPS)

Abstract

The Christian Faith Practices Scale (CFPS) is an empirical psychometric instrument designed to assess behavioral, relational, and devotional enactments of Christian religious life. Developed by Michael E. Sherr, James D. Stamey, and Diana R. Garland in 2009, the CFPS emerged in response to persistent methodological limitations in the psychology of religion, where religiousness had historically been operationalized through simplistic proxy variables such as nominal institutional affiliation, single-item church attendance tallies, or rigid doctrinal orthodoxy tests. Spanning 13 behavioral self-report items, the CFPS evaluates how individuals incarnate and operationalize their religious convictions across daily life. While all 13 items index normative congregational and individual spiritual behaviors, psychometric factor analyses isolate three core latent factors comprising ten primary items: Devotional Practices (4 items; e.g., corporate worship attendance, Scripture engagement, church history study, evangelism), Relating (3 items; e.g., interpersonal confession, reciprocal forgiveness, and relational encouragement during adversity), and Serving (3 items; e.g., hospitality toward strangers, volunteering for marginalized populations, and engagement in social justice initiatives), alongside general items indexing prayer, financial stewardship, and contemporary moral discourse.

Administered via a 7-point Likert-type behavioral frequency scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 7 (Always), the instrument demonstrates robust psychometric properties across diverse samples of adult believers, undergraduate students, and congregational cohorts. Internal consistency estimates across validation investigations reveal high reliability, with full-scale Cronbachu2019s alpha coefficients typically exceeding .80, and individual subscale coefficients ranging from .70 to .84. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses affirm the multidimensionality of the construct, demonstrating convergent validity with measures of spiritual well-being, intrinsic religious orientation, prosocial volunteering, and community integration, as well as discriminant validity against mere social desirability bias and generalized extrinsic religiosity. The CFPS provides social workers, clinical psychologists, pastoral counselors, and behavioral researchers with an empirically substantiated, practice-focused tool capable of tracking spiritual formation, evaluating church-based social interventions, and modeling the health and relational outcomes associated with active faith enactment.

Keywords

Christian Faith Practices Scale, CFPS, psychology of religion, religious practices, devotional practices, spiritual formation, prosocial behavior, faith measurement, psychometrics, religiosity assessment

Authors

The Christian Faith Practices Scale (CFPS) was authored and psychometrically validated by a collaborative team of scholars affiliated with the School of Social Work and the Department of Statistical Science at Baylor University in Waco, Texas:

• Michael E. Sherr, Ph.D., LCSW: At the time of development, Dr. Sherr served as an Associate Professor of Social Work at the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, Baylor University. He subsequently served as Department Chair and Professor of Social Work at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Cedarville University. Dr. Sherr’s scholarship centers on human behavior in the social environment, the integration of Christian faith and social work practice, and the empirical measurement of religious behavior.
• James D. Stamey, Ph.D.: Professor and Chair of the Department of Statistical Science at Baylor University. Dr. Stamey provided primary quantitative, Bayesian statistical modeling, and psychometric factor-analytic expertise during the design and statistical validation of the scale.
• Diana R. Garland, Ph.D., LCSW (1950u20132015): Founding Dean of the School of Social Work at Baylor University, which was posthumously named in her honor. Dr. Garland was a nationally renowned pioneer in the study of family ministry, congregational community engagement, and the interface of religious faith and professional social welfare.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Christian Faith Practices Scale (CFPS) is to provide an empirically grounded, behavioral measurement instrument capable of assessing what religious individuals actually do in the context of their faith, rather than restricting assessment to cognitive beliefs, emotional states, or simplistic attendance tallies. Historically, quantitative investigations into the sociology of religion and psychological health relied heavily on single-item indicators, such as asking respondents how frequently they attend religious services per year or whether they endorse specific theological creeds. Sociological and clinical researchers increasingly recognized that these crude indices fail to capture the multidimensional, lived experience of spiritual traditions, obscuring the behavioral mechanisms linking faith to psychological resilience, marital quality, and prosocial community engagement.

In response, Sherr, Stamey, and Garland (2009) designed the CFPS to operationalize a comprehensive model of spiritual practice tailored for Christian congregational research, behavioral science studies, and clinical social work assessments. The instrument was constructed to serve several distinct applications across research and clinical domains:

• Congregational Needs Assessment and Spiritual Formation Tracking: Faith communities and denominational leaders utilize the CFPS as an evaluative metric to benchmark the holistic spiritual engagement of congregants. Rather than merely tracking headcount, the scale allows educators and clergy to identify whether congregational programming successfully fosters balanced spiritual maturity across interior disciplines, interpersonal reconciliation, and outward community service.
• Clinical and Mental Health Assessment: Within pastoral counseling, marriage and family therapy, and spiritually integrated psychotherapy, the CFPS provides clinicians with an objective baseline of a clientu2019s behavioral religious coping systems. Because spiritual practices often serve as protective factors against depression, substance abuse, and existential isolation, identifying specific deficits (e.g., strong devotional practices coupled with an absence of relational forgiveness or community service) assists therapists in designing targeted, culturally congruent therapeutic interventions.
• Prosocial and Altruistic Behavioral Research: In the social sciences, researchers utilize the CFPS to investigate how specific types of religious commitment predict outward philanthropic behavior, civic engagement, and volunteerism. The instrument provides granular subscale scores that separate private pietistic behavior from outward social justice and charitable service, enabling nuanced statistical modeling of the predictors of community flourishing.
• Program Evaluation in Faith-Based Social Service Agencies: Social service organizations that operate under religious auspices utilize the CFPS to examine how staff, volunteers, and clients integrate faith practices into their day-to-day relational conduct, ensuring fidelity to organizational mission and holistic care principles.

Psychological Construct

The Christian Faith Practices Scale measures the overarching psychological construct of lived behavioral religiosity within the Christian tradition. The theoretical operationalization posited by Sherr et al. (2009) asserts that authentic religious commitment manifests not merely as an intellectual assent to dogma (orthodoxy) or subjective emotional ecstasy (orthopathy), but centrally as consistent, concrete, embodied practice (orthopraxy). While all 13 items reflect normative Christian conduct, the psychometric architecture isolates three primary multidimensional domains, complemented by foundational individual spiritual behaviors:

1. Devotional Practices

The Devotional Practices dimension reflects inward and institutional commitments aimed at fostering personal and corporate intimacy with the divine and embedding the individual within the historical Christian narrative. In the validated factor structure, this domain is primarily indexed by items 1, 2, 3, and 4:

• Corporate Worship (Item 1: u201cI attend weekly worship servicesu201d): Captures the public, communal ritual life of the believer, representing sociological bonding and participation in sacred liturgy.
• Scriptural Study (Item 2: u201cI participate in Bible study activityu201d): Measures deliberate cognitive and spiritual immersion in sacred texts, typically conducted within small groups or educational forums.
• Evangelism and Narrative Sharing (Item 3: u201cI share the Christian story with othersu201d): Quantifies outward verbal witness and the transmission of religious meaning systems across interpersonal networks.
• Theological and Historical Reflection (Item 4: u201cI study the teachings and history of the Christian churchu201d): Gauges intellectual engagement with historical tradition, creeds, and theological development.

Together, these behaviors construct a cognitive-behavioral architecture of spiritual continuity, reinforcing moral schemas, cognitive reappraisal mechanisms, and shared group identity.

2. Relating

The Relating dimension operationalizes the profound interpersonal and restorative expectations embedded in Christian moral teachings. Rather than viewing faith as an isolated transaction between the individual and the divine, this construct captures relational ethics within the faith community and personal relationships, indexed by items 6, 7, and 8:

• Vulnerability and Confession (Item 6: u201cI confess my faults to othersu201d): Reflects emotional humility, relational transparency, and the deliberate dismantling of defensive interpersonal postures.
• Reconciliation and Forgiveness (Item 7: u201cI forgive and work toward healing relationships with othersu201d): Evaluates prosocial emotional regulation, the eschewing of retributive hostility, and active relational repair following interpersonal transgression.
• Supportive Encouragement (Item 8: u201cI encourage others, especially when they failu201d): Measures non-judgmental compassion, social buffering, and active emotional support directed toward vulnerable or distressed peers.

Psychologically, this subscale taps into communal self-regulation, empathy, attachment security, and restorative conflict-resolution behaviors that have well-documented protective effects on psychological well-being and marital stability.

3. Serving

The Serving dimension captures the outward, altruistic enactment of faith toward the broader community, with an explicit emphasis on marginalized, disenfranchised, and vulnerable populations. This subscale is indexed by items 10, 11, and 12:

• Radical Hospitality (Item 10: u201cI provide hospitality and care to strangersu201d): Measures benevolence directed across outgroup boundaries, indexing altruistic behavior toward unacquainted individuals.
• Direct Philanthropic Volunteering (Item 11: u201cI volunteer time to help those less fortunateu201d): Evaluates the direct expenditure of personal time, energy, and practical labor to alleviate socioeconomic adversity.
• Structural Advocacy and Social Justice (Item 12: u201cI participate in activities that promote social justice in societyu201d): Captures systemic engagement, structural critique, and public advocacy aimed at remedying societal inequalities.

This subscale distinguishes self-contained piety from active altruism, assessing the behavioral manifestation of empathy and civic moral agency.

Supplementary Foundation Items

In addition to the three targeted latent factors, the scale includes three foundational behavioral items: Item 5 (u201cI prayu201d), Item 9 (u201cI give financial support to my churchu201d), and Item 13 (u201cI discuss Christian response to contemporary issues with other Christiansu201d). In psychometric modeling, Item 5 often demonstrates ceiling effects due to the ubiquity of private prayer across religious cohorts, while Item 9 indexes economic stewardship and Item 13 measures socio-theological discourse. These items enrich the global total score when assessing overall behavioral faith engagement.

Theoretical Framework

The Christian Faith Practices Scale is theoretically rooted in an interdisciplinary convergence of practical theology, Bandurau2019s social cognitive theory, and the sociology of religious practices as articulated by contemporary theologians and social scientists.

The Practical Theology of Christian Practices

The primary conceptual foundation for the CFPS is drawn from the theological framework developed by scholars such as Craig Dykstra (1999) and Dorothy Bass (1997) in their seminal work on Christian practices. Bass and Dykstra defined Christian practices not as arbitrary individual habits, but as shared, historical, cooperative human activities that respond to God’s active presence in the world. According to this model, Christian life is inherently embodied; doctrines are not merely abstract intellectual propositions to be contemplated, but ways of living that shape moral imagination, perception, and community relationships. Garland and colleagues synthesized this perspective with family systems theory, arguing that the faith of individuals and families cannot be meaningfully assessed by verbal assent to orthodox creeds alone. Rather, spiritual vitality is instantiated through concrete, repetitive practices—such as extending table hospitality, sharing resources, speaking truth, and confessing transgressions.

Social Cognitive and Behavioral Theories

Psychologically, the CFPS aligns with Albert Bandurau2019s social cognitive theory, which emphasizes that attitudes, cognitive schemas, and social environments operate through reciprocal determinism with overt behavior. From a psychological standpoint, religious identity is reinforced, internalized, and communicated through behavioral enactments. When an individual engages in weekly corporate worship (Item 1) or confesses a fault to an accountability partner (Item 6), these behavioral commitments provide behavioral feedback loops that strengthen moral self-schemas and self-efficacy regarding prosocial conduct. By focusing on behavioral frequency (utilizing an incremental scale from Never to Always), the CFPS minimizes the cognitive rationalization and retrospective introspection biases often inherent in self-report measures of subjective spirituality.

Allport’s Religious Orientation and Lived Religion

The scale also interacts historically with Gordon Allportu2019s distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. Whereas extrinsic religiosity uses religion as an instrumental means to social status or comfort, intrinsic religiosity treats religious faith as a master motive. The CFPS deepens this conceptual paradigm by operationalizing what sociological researchers term lived religion (e.g., Nancy Ammerman, Robert Orsi). Lived religion posits that religious conviction matters psychologically to the degree that it alters how people inhabit their homes, allocate financial resources, treat strangers, and resolve interpersonal conflicts.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Christian Faith Practices Scale has been investigated across multiple empirical investigations involving congregational samples, university student cohorts, and community participants.

Construct and Structural Validity

Initial construct validity was established through rigorous domain specification by a panel of theological, sociological, and psychological experts who operationalized Christian orthopraxy into discrete behavioral statements. Content validity was confirmed through cognitive pre-testing with congregants and clergy to ensure that items reflected universally recognized Christian behaviors spanning evangelical, mainline Protestant, and historic liturgical traditions. Subsequent factor-analytic evaluations confirmed that the items converged appropriately onto distinct behavioral dimensions (Devotional Practices, Relating, and Serving) rather than collapsing into an undifferentiated general factor, confirming the multidimensionality of the construct.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been robustly demonstrated through positive, statistically significant correlations between CFPS subscales and established psychometric inventories:

• Spiritual Well-Being: CFPS total scores correlate moderately to strongly with the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS; Paloutzian & Ellison), with correlation coefficients typically ranging between $r = .48$ and $r = .65$ ($p < .001$), demonstrating that regular behavioral practice aligns with subjective spiritual and existential health.
• Intrinsic Religiosity: Strong positive associations have been observed with the Intrinsic subscale of the Revised Religious Orientation Scale (Gorsuch & McPherson), reflecting that individuals who view faith as an end in itself engage substantially more frequently in devotional, relational, and serving practices ($r = .52$ to $.68$).
• Prosocial Behavior and Altruism: The Serving subscale exhibits significant convergent correlations with verified hours of volunteer service ($r = .42, p < .01$) and generalized prosocial personality traits ($r = .35, p < .01$), affirming that the scale effectively tracks external civic engagement.
• Relational Well-Being: The Relating subscale correlates positively with validated measures of marital satisfaction, interpersonal forgiveness scales (such as the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory; TRIM), and negative associations with marital conflict frequency.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by evaluating CFPS scores against constructs that should theoretically remain distinct from behavioral faith practices:

• Extrinsic Religious Orientation: Correlations between CFPS subscales and extrinsic-social or extrinsic-personal religious orientations are consistently weak to non-significant ($r = .08$ to $.18$), verifying that the instrument does not merely capture utilitarian social church involvement.
• Social Desirability Bias: CFPS items were evaluated against the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. While self-reported moral behavior carries inherent susceptibility to social desirability, CFPS subscale correlations with social desirability remain modest ($r = .12$ to $.22$), indicating that respondents differentiate between normative community expectations and their actual behavioral frequencies.

Reliability

The Christian Faith Practices Scale demonstrates strong internal consistency and temporal stability across published empirical investigations.

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency has been systematically evaluated using Cronbachu2019s alpha ($lpha$) and composite reliability coefficients across varied demographic groups. In the foundational validation studies conducted by Sherr, Stamey, and Garland (2009) and subsequent evaluations:

• Full Scale (13 Items): The overall scale consistently demonstrates high internal consistency, with full-scale Cronbachu2019s alpha values ranging from $lpha = .81$ to $lpha = .87$, reflecting strong interrelatedness among normative faith practices without excessive item redundancy.
• Devotional Practices Subscale (Items 1, 2, 3, 4): Demonstrates good internal consistency, with alpha coefficients typically reported between $lpha = .76$ and $lpha = .83$. Item-total correlations within this domain exceed $.50$, reflecting shared variance around institutional and scriptural engagement.
• Relating Subscale (Items 6, 7, 8): Exhibits moderate to strong internal reliability, with alpha coefficients ranging from $lpha = .70$ to $lpha = .79$. Given that this subscale comprises only three items, these coefficients represent solid internal coherence for interpersonal restorative behaviors.
• Serving Subscale (Items 10, 11, 12): Demonstrates acceptable to strong reliability, with alpha values ranging between $lpha = .74$ and $lpha = .82$, confirming that hospitality, volunteering, and systemic justice advocacy cohere around an outward benevolent lifestyle.

Test-Retest Stability

Studies examining the temporal stability of the CFPS over a 4-to-6-week test-retest interval among stable congregational cohorts demonstrate robust stability coefficients. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and Pearson test-retest correlations for the subscales consistently range between $r = .78$ and $r = .86$, confirming that while behavioral frequencies are responsive to long-term spiritual formation interventions, they remain stable indicators of baseline behavioral habits over intermediate intervals.

Factor Analysis

The underlying factor structure of the CFPS was rigorously evaluated through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmed via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) during its development.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial instrument development, principal axis factoring and principal component analyses utilizing oblique rotation (Promax and Oblimin, accommodating theoretical inter-factor correlations) were conducted on the behavioral items. Scree plot inspections, parallel analysis, and Kaiser-Guttman eigenvalues ($> 1.0$) supported a clean three-factor solution representing ten primary items, with the remaining three items functioning as global or supplementary indicators:

• Factor 1: Devotional Practices: Items 1, 2, 3, and 4 loaded strongly on this factor, with standardized factor loadings ranging from $.61$ to $.84$. These items accounted for the largest proportion of total scale variance, reflecting primary institutional and personal disciplines.
• Factor 2: Relating: Items 6, 7, and 8 clustered uniquely onto a second distinct factor, exhibiting standardized factor loadings between $.58$ and $.79$, with cross-loadings on other factors remaining below $.25$.
• Factor 3: Serving: Items 10, 11, and 12 defined the third latent factor, with factor loadings spanning from $.62$ to $.81$, distinctly isolating outward benevolent actions from inward pietistic behavior.

Items 5 (prayer), 9 (financial giving), and 13 (discussing Christian responses) exhibited diffuse or cross-factor loadings in some unconstrained exploratory extractions. For example, Item 5 (prayer) frequently exhibited very high mean scores and lower variance due to universal endorsement across religious populations, leading researchers to examine it as a foundational indicator rather than restricting it exclusively to the Devotional subscale.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Fit Indices

Confirmatory factor analyses testing the hypothesized three-factor oblique model (comprising the 10 core items across Devotional, Relating, and Serving) against a unidimensional competing model demonstrated superior model fit for the three-factor structure. Typical goodness-of-fit indices reported in validation literature include:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently range between $.94$ and $.97$ (surpassing the standard $ge .90$ or $.95$ threshold for good fit).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Reported between $.92$ and $.96$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Coefficients typically fall between $.045$ and $.062$, with $90%$ confidence intervals firmly below $.08$, indicating excellent approximation in the population.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values observed below $.050$.

Inter-factor correlations among the three latent dimensions are moderate (typically ranging between $r = .35$ and $r = .55$), confirming that while Devotional Practices, Relating, and Serving represent coordinated dimensions of Christian orthopraxy, they reflect distinct behavioral domains that vary independently across individuals.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Standardized self-report behavioral frequency questionnaire; multidimensional psychometric rating scale.
• Primary Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 16 and older) identifying with Christian faith traditions; church congregations; participants in spiritually integrated clinical programs.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, computerized survey, or secure online clinical portal; administered individually or in group settings.
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes to complete.
• Item Count: 13 items total (10 items comprising three core validated subscales, plus 3 supplementary faith practice items).
• Response Format: 7-point Likert-type behavioral frequency rating scale:
  • 1 = Never
  • 2 = Rarely
  • 3 = Once in a while
  • 4 = Sometimes
  • 5 = Often
  • 6 = Almost Always
  • 7 = Always
• Subscales & Item Mapping:
  • Devotional Practices: Items 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Score range: 4 to 28).
  • Relating: Items 6, 7, and 8 (Score range: 3 to 21).
  • Serving: Items 10, 11, and 12 (Score range: 3 to 21).
  • Supplementary Items: Item 5 (Prayer), Item 9 (Financial Support), and Item 13 (Contemporary Discourse).
• Scoring and Interpretation Procedures:
  • All items are positively keyed (no reverse-scored items).
  • Subscale scores are calculated by summing the numerical responses of the assigned items or computing mean item scores ($1.0$ to $7.0$) within each domain.
  • A Full Scale Total Score can be derived by summing all 13 items (theoretical range: 13 to 91), where higher scores indicate higher overall engagement in Christian faith practices.
  • Mean subscale comparisons allow researchers and clinicians to construct a spiritual practice profile, highlighting whether an individual’s religious life is predominantly devotional, relational, or service-oriented.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Christian Faith Practices Scale was officially published in 2009 by Michael E. Sherr, James D. Stamey, and Diana R. Garland in the peer-reviewed journal Family and Community Ministries: Empirical Reflections on Christian Faith and Life (formerly Family Ministry), published through the Center for Family and Community Ministries at Baylor University.

The authors made the scale publicly accessible for non-commercial educational, scientific, pastoral, and clinical research purposes to encourage rigorous empirical investigation into religious practices. The instrument was historically disseminated openly through the Baylor University institutional repository. Researchers, clinicians, and religious organizations may reproduce and administer the CFPS without royalty fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the original authors (Sherr, Stamey, & Garland, 2009). For commercial applications, inclusion in copyrighted proprietary test batteries, or for-profit publications, permission should be solicited from the copyright holders or the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University.

References

• Ammerman, N. T. (2005). Pillars of faith: American congregations and their partners. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520938366
• Bass, D. C. (Ed.). (1997). Practicing our faith: A way of life for a searching people. Jossey-Bass.
• Dykstra, C. (1999). Growing in the life of faith: Education and Christian practices. Geneva Press.
• Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry: A comprehensive guide (2nd ed.). InterVarsity Press.
• Gorsuch, R. L., & McPherson, S. E. (1989). Intrinsic/extrinsic measurement: I/E-revised and single-item scales. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 28(3), 348u2013354. https://doi.org/10.2307/1386745
• Paloutzian, R. F., & Ellison, C. W. (1982). Loneliness, spiritual well-being and the quality of life. In L. A. Peplau & D. Perlman (Eds.), Loneliness: A sourcebook of current theory, research and therapy (pp. 224u2013237). John Wiley & Sons.
• Sherr, M. E., Stamey, J., & Garland, D. R. (2009). A faith practices scale for the church. Family and Community Ministries, 23(1), 27u201336. https://hdl.handle.net/2104/8593

Items of the Scale