The Stages of Faith

When I was a school teacher, I learned about Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development theory. Later in life, when I lost a young son to lymphoma, I learned about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her theory of the stages of grief. In this essay, I will talk about Fowler’s Stages of Faith theory.

James W. Fowler (1940-2015) was a theologian, and a professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University. He is perhaps best known for his book, Stages of Faith, published in 1981.

I first learned about Fowler’s work while taking a graduate level Theology course from Loyola University of New Orleans, not too long after Fowler’s book was published. I was fascinated. I didn’t know that our faith can develop as we get older and wiser. I have since found out that many people didn’t realize this either.

Here are those stages as described by Fowler, followed by a brief capsule description of each one: (The ages shown are the average age of an individual when he/she is in a particular stage. A person could be older or younger when in each stage.

Stage 0: Undifferentiated Faith 0 to 2 years of age

At this stage, the environment is a major influence on the individual’s faith development. A loving, nurturing, (warm, safe and secure) one will develop a sense of trust and safety about the universe and the divine. Conversely, negative experiences, (hurt, neglect and abuse) causes one to develop distrust with the universe and the divine.

Stage 1: Intuitive-Projective 2-7 years

Religion is learned mainly through experiences, stories, images, and the people the individual comes in contact with. In both this and in the next stage, Christians often learn their faith from children’s Bible story books and from Sunday School classes often taught by volunteers who have not progressed beyond Stage 3 themselves.

Stage 2: Mythic-literal 6 to 12 years

Individuals have a strong belief in the justice of the universe and of reward and punishment for deeds, either on earth, or in an afterlife. Their idea of God is usually anthropomorphic. Metaphoric and Symbolic language are often misunderstood and taken literally. Scripture is looked at as totally literal true and as having been written by God,

Stage 3: Synthetic-Conventional 12+ years

This stage is characterized by conformity to religious authority, and the religious development of a personal identity. For younger adolescents, that authority resides with their parents and important adults. For older adolescents and adults in this stage, authority rests with friends and religious community. For all people in this stage, the authority exists outside of them, personally. Any conflicts with one’s beliefs are ignored because they are a threat. Most people never advance beyond this stage.

Stage 4: Individual-Reflective 21+ years?

This is when some who are studying to become ministers and priests leave their seminaries and divinity schools. This is because people in this stage start to question their own assumptions around the faith tradition. People in this stage also start to question the authority structures of their faith. Those who leave their vocational training programs often leave because the answers to the questions they have been asking are not to their liking. People gain greater maturity by rejecting some parts of their faith while affirming other parts. The individual starts to take greater ownership of his/her own faith journey.

Stage 5: Conjunctive 35+ years?

The struggles and questioning of stage four give way to a more comfortable place. The individual has found some answers to his/her questions, and is comfortable knowing that answers to all the questions may not be found easily. The strong need for individual self-reflection gives way to a sense of community in faith development. People in this stage are also more open to other people’s faith perspectives. They realize that the faith of other people might inform and deepen their own.

Many older, more mature ministers and priests are in this stage, but they don't talk about it to their congregations. They tend to preach the “company line”, because they might destroy the existing, more simple faith of their flocks. In addition, for Protestant ministers, they could easily be replaced by their church board of governors and be left without a job. For Catholic priests, there is more job security, but they could be transferred to a much less prestigious parish in a far more undesirable, isolated town. For the leaders of religious congregations, there is also the potential of losing people in their congregations who leave to find a church with a minister, priest, or rabbi who preaches what they want to hear.

Stage 6: Universalizing 45+ years?

Instead of saying “universalizing,” some people might say “enlightenment”. Fowler said that people in this stage have “a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human than the rest of us.” Those in this stage treat others with compassion because he or she views people as being from a universal community, and they should be treated with universal principles of love and justice. People at this stage put their faith in action, challenging the status quo and working to create justice in the world.

Gandhi and Mother Teresa have been mentioned by some as being in this stage.

According to Fowler, it is rare to find anyone who has reached the 5th stage of faith development, and rarer still to find someone in stage 6. In my experience of interacting with scores of people in my career as a deacon, I find that his observation to be true. Most people, whatever their denomination or religion, are stuck in either stage 3 or 4. Those are comfortable stages. A person in either one does not have to question their faith too much, or usually doesn’t even want to. Questioning might lead to some uncomfortable answers. For these people, it’s better to not “rock the boat.”

CONCLUSION

The realization comes to me that there is an inherent problem in one’s learning about the stages of faith development: The temptation is there to look upon someone who seems to be at a lower stage than oneself as being somehow inferior. The reality is that all people of faith are on their own spiritual journey, a pilgrimage, if you will. The important thing is to realize that it does not matter how far along the path someone is, but that we are all on our journeys together.