Understanding the spirituality of Christian Chinese-Singaporean older adults who are positively engaged with life

The purpose of this research was to understand the spirituality of Christian Chinese-Singaporean older adults and how it helped them to be positively engaged with life.Interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology was adopted where one-to-one interviews were conducted with a sample of six participants who were above 65 years old.The findings indicated that they used the contents of their faith to create a Christian worldview which they used to live their daily lives. Their five key beliefs were: that God cares about them; that He is in charge or in control of everything; and He has a plan which they are a part of. They also believed in heaven and the Bible. The research participants demonstrated skills including the ability to find themselves in the Christian master story; to own/disown local concepts and practices; to reframe their lived lives within the master story; and to reframe the master story. The participants also engaged in spiritual practices that helped them stay at peace through the vicissitudes of life. These were: attending church and small group, praying, “quiet time” with God and studying the Bible.The findings were coded and then analysed using literature from gerontology, faith development and theology. The conclusion was that all the participants had the “owned faith” style of Westerhoff’s theory. They did not fit well into Fowler’s theory, showing characteristics of non-consecutive stages though most showed characteristics of Fowler’s third stage, i.e. Synthetic-Conventional Faith. Using the skills identified above, a model of faith development from the Singaporean context is presented for testing and use in this and other contexts.