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Stages of Faith
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James Fowler (1984) wrote Stages of Faith,
a book about his theory of the stages people go through in their lives as their faith changes.
He suggested that atheists, agnostics and existentialists go through
the same stages.
Fowler sees each Stage of Faith as equally important. Stages cannot be rushed or
skipped. People can regress during times of stress.
People grow because each stage does not fulfill the person completely. They are
not satisfied. Not all their questions are answered. They go through crises that
demand their faith grow and change.
Stage 1: Intuitive-Projective faith
is a stage full of fantasy and imagination. The child imitates the faith of
adults without understanding the symbols and meanings of the rituals.
If sins are washed away, then perhaps one can see the sins floating on the
water after a baptism.
The child's faith is in the adults. The child imitates the adults' faith without
understanding it. The child becomes very upset when the adult rituals they have
learned are interrupted or changed.
The danger of this stage is the fears inherent in a child's mind. A child may
become terrified of hell and not be able to sleep, or an adult may use the fears
of a child to manipulate the child into cooperation by descriptions of God's
punishment.
Stage 2: Mythic-Literal faith
is a time when the child organizes the stories of the faith into an orderly
fashion. Symbols and words are one-dimensional and literal. Baptism is being
dunked in the water. Nothing more, nothing less.
Stories become powerful for the child or adult in this stage of faith. The child
may attempt to walk on water or imagine himself as Jesus performing miracles.
If I am good to God, God will be good to me is a strong belief of the Stage 2
believer. Jacob's bargain with God after the dream of Jacob's ladder is a prime
example of this kind of faith. Someone who believes there cannot possibly be a
God because of all the suffering of innocent children in the world is a Stage 2
atheist.
The child may believe that if they don't say their prayer every night they will
be lost and go to hell if they die. They hurry to say the "in Jesus' name, Amen"
before they die, so the prayer will be routed correctly.
The woman who loses belief after not having an important prayer answered when
she devoted herself all week to God, is firmly in Stage 2.
Superstitious religions are part of Stage 2. Job's friends, who insisted he must
have sinned if all of these terrible things were happening to him, were solidly
in Stage 2.
Stage 3: Synthetic-Conventional Faith
is the authoritarian time of faith. The individual is not strong enough yet to
hold their faith in themselves, so they entrust the faith to their group. Their
group holds their faith. The group interprets truth, and loyalty to the group is
of utmost importance. Groups are divided into groups like us and groups not like
us. Only groups like us are good. All others are bad.
Learning the rules and symbols of the faith are very important in this stage of faith.
"What do we believe about baptism?" "What does brother Smith teach on the topic
of premillenialism?" Most have a one-dimensional understanding of the
rules. Advanced Stage 3 people want to know why the rules are
the way they are.
Leaders are very important to the person in this stage of faith. If a leader
falls due to sin, or there is a church split, the person in Stage 3 may
have a crisis of faith: the group that held their faith did not hold it safely.
This person has difficulty understanding what is the most important thing to
teach a new convert. A stage 3 missionary in Africa may spend an hour teaching a
Swahili woman that the American Standard Version is the only reliable
translation of the Bible.
Most people in the United States stay in Stage 3 for the rest of their lives,
whether they are religious or not. They identify with a group and never go
beyond that identification. Fowler believes that most churches in the United
States aim to grow their members up to Stage 3 and almost to Stage 4, and then
stop. Any further and the church becomes uncomfortable with the member's faith.
Stage 4: Individuative-Reflective Faith
is the faith that no longer needs to depend on a group, but has strong personal
beliefs that have been worked through in one's own mind. This person has strong
black and white beliefs and may go on crusades to convert people.
A
woman in Stage 4 may be peaceful when separated for a time from her church by
illness. She has a personal way of praying to God that chases away her
loneliness. Others come to her to be taught how to be so peaceful. She can stand
outside herself and see what her faith looks like to outsiders, and ask
questions about her own faith. She is curious to grow and does not believe that
she knows everything.
A
man in stage 4 knows what he believes and he knows why he believes it. He has
reflected on his faith and has his own view unique to himself. Compared to Stage
3 he seems not to care what others think, except to argue and try to convert
them. When they threaten to withdraw from him, he is sad, but he stands firm in
his beliefs. Stage 4 people are often angry about what they view as the
hypocrisy of Stage 3.
People in stage 3 feel the stage 4 person is rebellious and angry and are
irritated by his constant questions and off-the-wall comments in Bible class.
Why can't he be respectful to the teachers who know what the group believes?
Most people
drop out of churches in Stage 4 and have a very difficult time finding a
church to worship with.
Stage 5: Conjunctive Faith
is faith that has gone beyond one's own group and has learned to see patterns in
outsiders' faith that look similar to one's own group. Other groups have much to
teach the person in Stage 5, and they love history, seeing themselves as part of
a long chain. Racial and ethnic barriers do not exist to the
person in Stage 5.
In Stage 5 people are fascinated with outside groups and may seem wishy-washy
to those in other Stages.
Their powerful appreciation for multifacets may make everything seem relative to
them and they may feel paralyzed when they need to make a stand.
Stage 5 people are usually in mid-life and are often willing to make large
investments in younger people to give them a sense of meaning in their
lives.
Another of the strengths of a person in Stage 5 is that they love symbols and
ritual. Baptism is so rich and meaningful to the person in Stage 5 that they
could not finish telling you all they love about baptism even if they taught it
for an entire semester. They are grieved when people rush through the Lord's
Supper because they relish partaking of the body and blood of the Lord and they cannot
explain why they look forward to it so much. Yet they understand that they still
only have a glimpse of the transcendent glory of God.
Stage 5 believers are not interested in rules at all. They are only
interested in principles. If a rule violates one of the principles they
believe in, the rule gets tossed out without a moment's thought. "Sabbath was made
for man, and not man for the Sabbath", Jesus taught when he found the Pharisees
getting upset that he had done a miracle ("work") on the Sabbath day. The
Sabbath day was to be kept holy by not working. It was one of the Ten
Commandments and the Pharisees held the Sabbath commandment to be in the top
four. Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath day, and did not feel he had violated
anything in that commandment at all.
Stage 6: Universalizing Faith
is very rare. It is the faith that makes someone suddenly sell their house and
move to Haiti to build a hospital because "they need a hospital in Haiti." If
you marveled at them for their sacrifice they would not know what you are
talking about. They were being joyful, not sacrificing. They have no
thought for themselves. They love to serve others.
People in Stage 6 create liberating spaces around themselves that attract
and motivate others. Mother Theresa saw the poor dying in gutters on the streets
of Calcutta. She asked permission from her order to open a hospice for them. She
nursed them during their last days and gave them dignity. And she loved doing
it. She taught her workers to look for Jesus in each one of their faces.
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