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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Stages of Faith
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Latchkey Kid
Shipmate
# 12444
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Posted
In a recent Hell thread Ken made an amusing diatribe against Myers Briggs and,for good measure, included Fowler's Stages of Faith in his rant.
Stages of Faith is a theoretical framework used in my chaplaincy course.
What do people think about it?
Is there a better framework?
Is the paradigm OK or not?
[ 05. January 2015, 01:41: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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'You must never give way for an answer. An answer is always the stretch of road that's behind you. Only a question can point the way forward.'
Mika; in Hello? Is Anybody There?, Jostein Gaardner
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
I think it is sound. I have studied it twice. Once when training to teach Religious Education to secondary school children. Then again when training to be a spiritual director.
I predict that this thread will attract a lot of conservatives who will trash Fowler because he seemed to exalt the liberal over the fundamentalist, the inclusivist over the exclusivist.
They have a vested interest in so doing since Fowler puts them at a lower developmental stage.
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tomsk
Shipmate
# 15370
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Posted
I read an alternative in a Rob Parsons book (not sure if he came up with it). It's more simply structured and is still related, in the early stages at least, to development.
Experienced faith (believing what your parents do)
Affiliative faith (from a peer group)
Searching faith
Owned faith
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
Nicola Slee in Women's Faith Development looked at a less linear approach.
When I first came across Fowler I was very defensive, but at that point people were using it as a stick to beat me with.
Now years later coming back to the original text as part of further study I recognise that Fowler doesn't use his descriptions as a level that needs to be worked through like some kind of exam achievement but more a statement of where things are there and then - like our height perhaps. The aim according to him is to be fully who we are whatever stage we are in.
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
True, but there still is a not-so-subtle implication that you are meant to "progress" to the higher stages, and that the higher stages represent "maturity". The other thing that might annoy, say, a stage-3-er would be that the highest stage ("most mature") sounds a lot like Fowler himself.
That being said, it still seems more or less sound. The problems with it are, as the OP suggests, pretty much the same as those w/ Myers Briggs-- overuse, seeing it as a sort of Holy Grail, misapplying it beyond it's scope/intention, using it to rigidly.
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
I quite like it. It fits with my need to have stuff in boxes.
I think it teaches an excellent and very important lesson for churches - we need peer groups for our young people!
I like the way Fowler shows 'how' we believe regardless of 'what' we believe.
There are many who come through the stages who have come to believe very strongly b y conviction those things they once held because of the group.
There is no need to assume that the 'higher up' you go the less conservative you will be. If your conservatism is a well-thought out thing, then it is just as valid as the beliefs held more loosely by others at the same stagte.
[ 11. July 2011, 20:58: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Here is my take on it. I have spent years (over a decade) cycling back and forwards over this one. To my knowledge nobody has done anything like the ground work that Fowler has done and yes I have read a fair number of his critics. I would want to question some of his basic assumptions, I would suggest rather than faith stages, these are faith skills that we can use and develop. It may well be that certain skills can only be learnt by people who have a certain level of maturity, but it does not follow that people cannot still use and develop further skills that could have been learnt earlier. Entering stage III does not mean abandoning stage II.
Jengie
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Angel Wrestler
Ship's Hipster
# 13673
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Posted
Two stages, according to some - be raised in the faith. Own it. The end.
Some like boxes, others don't. I'm in-between. Definitions and categories like this can be useful if their drawbacks are also considered. Those drawbacks are that not everyone fits into nice, neat little boxes, and there will be periods of transition where one is moving from one to another box.
It also implies a strictly linear approach: finish this stage, enter the next, and then the one after that. The issue of backsliding aside, there are times when we, on having "matured" (note the quotation marks), revisit the faith with which we were brought up and look at it with new insight and value it.
[ 11. July 2011, 21:20: Message edited by: Angel Wrestler ]
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
I hadn't read this before. I don't need to read this ever again. Fowler should have called his stages:
1. Childish faith.
2+3. Healthy faith.
4. Sick faith.
5. Dying faith.
6. Zombie faith.
The main lessons one can draw is to fight proactively the first symptoms of the illness listed as stage 4, and to avoid at all costs those Zombie faithful of stage 6. They eat brains, and more importantly, hearts.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
What bugs me is that this system seems tailored to those born into a religion--which leaves me and many others out in the cold.
Basically I would have skipped stages 1 and 2, gone straight to 4 but in the form of a conversion experience, wound up in an orthodox position that could be taken to resemble 3 (except it came after struggle), and also to bear some minor resemblance to 5. I'm not sure what 6 is all about, looks to me like "transcend orthodoxy" which I take to be impossible by definition (yes, I know large chunks of the Ship disagree with me).
But AFAIK my experience is fairly common. Which means that his stages don't work for a large bit of the population. I'd suggest he downgrade his system to "a pattern I have noticed in some people".
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Latchkey Kid
Shipmate
# 12444
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Posted
Thank-you for your responses so far.
From my software modeling days I bring with me quote:
Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
* Box, George E. P.; Norman R. Draper (1987). Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces. Wiley. pp. 688, p. 424. ISBN 0471810339.
I apply this to all models, including Fowler's and the Trinity.
Have to go out just now but will post more when I get back this pm.
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
But AFAIK my experience is fairly common. Which means that his stages don't work for a large bit of the population. I'd suggest he downgrade his system to "a pattern I have noticed in some people".
Yes. Or, rather than using "stages"-- which, no matter how much he protests, is going to sound like a hierarchical progression ("oh, you're only at stage 4? *I'm* stage 6...") calling them faith "styles" might be more accurate, as well as allow room for adding additional "styles" Fowler didn't recognize in his work.
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Lucia
Looking for light
# 15201
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Posted
I found this helpful Stages of Faith: A Map for the Spiritual Journey
It's also based on a stages of faith idea but I don't know how or if it matches up with Fowlers. It's based on a book "The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith" by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich. I'd like to read the book but I don't think it's available in my country. ![[Frown]](frown.gif) However I can certainly identify up to stage 4 where I'm probably wandering around at the moment...
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I predict that this thread will attract a lot of conservatives who will trash Fowler because he seemed to exalt the liberal over the fundamentalist, the inclusivist over the exclusivist.
They have a vested interest in so doing since Fowler puts them at a lower developmental stage.
That's the problem with Fowler. You would think that a child growing up in a liberal church would have to progress through Stage 3. Every year the new Youth Group would invent the Doctrinal Basis for themselves and demand that all new members of Sunday school sign up. But no. Somehow teenagers who go to liberal churches do not generally go through an exclusivist fundamentalist stage, but inherit the liberal religion of their church community.
If leo really believed in Fowler he would be helping Sunday school transition into Youth group by making them all sign up to the Doctrinal Basis and forcing them to sing There is a Green Hill Far Away, so as to help the transition from Stage Two to Stage Three. I don't think leo does that. The fact is that a lot of people only use Fowler to show that the Other Lot are at a lower developmental stage than they are. Where the theory would imply that they should help people become like the Other Lot, they quietly ignore it.
There's a further risk. Liberals who get themselves hooked on Fowler think that they've advanced to Stage 4 solely by virtue of being a liberal. So they can blind themselves to their own reliance on groupthink and approved opinion, and their inability to appreciate other points of view. Clearly those are traits of Stage 3, and those nasty evangelicals are Stage 3, so they can't possibly be exhibiting those traits.
You don't get people like leo saying that they're Stage 3, and happy to acknowledge it. Even though saying something like 'Fowler puts conservatives at a lower developmental stage' exhibits all the traits attributed to Stage 3.
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tomsk
Shipmate
# 15370
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Posted
Rob Parsons says something similar. Small children who are taught, say, that God is watching them and is angry when they step out of line maintain that conception of God in later life. Early influences are v. important. Of course, as Lamb C points out, many miss out on these early stages of faith altogether.
Linear views can be risky, 'cos you can see it as a journey with you having 'made it', same way as westerners see themselves as developed and others backward.
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AberVicar
Mornington Star
# 16451
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Posted
quote:
All models are wrong but some are useful.
Models like this are derived from research/experience and - yes - they can be useful in interpreting situations.
Too often situations are forced into the framework of a model, and then more damage is caused than the model is worth.
Keep the model in the book: don't let it out of the house...
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South Coast Kevin
Shipmate
# 16130
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lucia:
I found this helpful Stages of Faith: A Map for the Spiritual Journey
It's also based on a stages of faith idea but I don't know how or if it matches up with Fowlers. It's based on a book "The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith" by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich.
I read bits of that book for an essay I've just written. There were certainly parallels with Fowler's model although Hagberg and Guelich added some detail about the transition from stages 4 to 5 (IIRC) in their model. They call this transition the 'Wall' and, for them, it's a key experience that you have to go through in order to reach a certain level of spiritual maturity. Again, IIRC - I only dipped in to the book and it was several weeks ago now!
I like M. Scott Peck's model of faith development, partly because it's simple! His model just has four stages and is explained in his book Further Along the Road Less Travelled. And here is my tuppence-worth.
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I hadn't read this before. I don't need to read this ever again. Fowler should have called his stages:
1. Childish faith.
2+3. Healthy faith.
4. Sick faith.
5. Dying faith.
6. Zombie faith.
The main lessons one can draw is to fight proactively the first symptoms of the illness listed as stage 4, and to avoid at all costs those Zombie faithful of stage 6. They eat brains, and more importantly, hearts.
The snag is that you are then calling Mother Theresa's faith zombie faith, because six is based on people like her.
This is also why I reject stage six as a definite stage, it is built around people who liberal Christianity see as "Saints", it is not well researched like the other stages and I suspect built mainly on guess work.
The other stages are built on thousands of interviews, these are interviews with people of all religions and none. Stages 1 and 2 seemed to exist even for those in none religious settings. This structure is supposed to be totally outside of creedal belief.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
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Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by AberVicar:
quote:
All models are wrong but some are useful.
Models like this are derived from research/experience
No, it wasn't. There is no real research involved at all. Made up out of wholecloth to suit the inventors intentions. Intellectually without foundation.
Like all pseudo-science and pop-psychology its at heart a deeply conservative project, because it is all about preserving the power of a self-appointed elite. A pernicious piece of social control. Secularised priestcraft.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Ken
Fowler's was based on thousands of indepth interviews, I think the database is still growing. Most of the rest are not similarly researched.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
The snag is that you are then calling Mother Theresa's faith zombie faith, because six is based on people like her.
Not in the least. This merely tries to co-opt saints like her in order to justify a perfidious progression to just believing whatever the hell you please with fruits that this will never produce. Mother Theresa was firmly Roman Catholic, hence remained firmly "stuck" in phases 2&3, as every healthy believer would. The idea that this somehow would limit her doing good to non-RCs is just plain bollocks.
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
The other stages are built on thousands of interviews, these are interviews with people of all religions and none. Stages 1 and 2 seemed to exist even for those in none religious settings. This structure is supposed to be totally outside of creedal belief.
Yeah, right. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) Ask the right questions, and you get the answers that you want, or rather, you get answers that you can interpret toward the answers that you want. It's the oldest game in soft science town...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
I have heard Fowler's stages used to criticise those who attend and enjoy traditional CofE church services. The assumption was that they haven't moved out of stage 1. Evidence that many people have moved through the stages and have decided as mature adults that the faith they grew up in is the right one for them, years later, is ignored. It can therefore lead to people judging and coming to mistaken conclusions; also feeling self-satisfied about their own journey, which is superior.
I don't doubt that the model has some use, especially in clergy training courses, but it has to be used with discernment, not as a weapon.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I have a vague remembrance of some other person's "stages of faith,' which put mystical experience as the last and final stage and added "hardly anyone reaches this" (which I think just plain wrong, esp. after being on the Ship). Can anyone tell me whom I'm thinking of? It's bugging me.
[ 12. July 2011, 11:31: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Like all pseudo-science and pop-psychology its at heart a deeply conservative project, because it is all about preserving the power of a self-appointed elite. A pernicious piece of social control. Secularised priestcraft.
My objection to it is that it represents only one particular understanding of reality and faith.
And that "progression" is the ultimate aim.
I don't know where Grace fits in here.
I don't know where living in the moment with God fits in here.
But it's been a while since I looked at this stuff.
Dunno if this site does credit to the stages. It's just what I pulled up on Google.
But actually I found this quite helpful.
quote:
The new strength of this stage comes in the rise of the ironic imagination-a capacity to see and be in one's or one's group's most powerful meanings, while simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality. Its danger lies in the direction of a paralyzing passivity or inaction, giving rise to complacency or cynical withdrawal, due to its paradoxical understanding of truth.
Surely this is the Pomo position?
[ 12. July 2011, 11:44: Message edited by: Evensong ]
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
The snag is that you are then calling Mother Theresa's faith zombie faith, because six is based on people like her.
Not in the least. This merely tries to co-opt saints like her in order to justify a perfidious progression to just believing whatever the hell you please with fruits that this will never produce. Mother Theresa was firmly Roman Catholic, hence remained firmly "stuck" in phases 2&3, as every healthy believer would.
Do you think stages 2 and 3 are where it's at because Roman Catholic's have a very strong sense of communal identity? And veering from that is dangerous?
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a theological scrapbook
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Fowler's was based on thousands of indepth interviews, I think the database is still growing.
Anecdotal and, perhaps unconsciously, intepreted as strengthening his ideas. Also, however good his methodology was, a strongly selected sample.
It is probably impossible to do real research in this sort of subject anyway, other than in the anthropological particpant-observer tradition.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
The new strength of this stage comes in the rise of the ironic imagination-a capacity to see and be in one's or one's group's most powerful meanings, while simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality. Its danger lies in the direction of a paralyzing passivity or inaction, giving rise to complacency or cynical withdrawal, due to its paradoxical understanding of truth.
Surely this is the Pomo position?
Looks more like pompous blather to me. Almost a parody.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
The new strength of this stage comes in the rise of the ironic imagination-a capacity to see and be in one's or one's group's most powerful meanings, while simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality. Its danger lies in the direction of a paralyzing passivity or inaction, giving rise to complacency or cynical withdrawal, due to its paradoxical understanding of truth.
Surely this is the Pomo position?
Looks more like pompous blather to me. Almost a parody.
That would place you firmly in stage two. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Ken
Fowler's was based on thousands of indepth interviews, I think the database is still growing. Most of the rest are not similarly researched.
Jengie
In the original book the research sample is given in the appendix.
Conclusions were based on 359 individuals
gender evenly mixed
Ages
0-6 7%
7-12 8.1
13-20 15.6
21-30 25.1
31-40 13.4
41-50 8.9
51-60 4.7
60+ 17.3
All US based interviews
97.8% white, 2.2% black
45% protestant; 36.5 % Catholic; 11.2% Jew; 3.6% Orthodox; 3.6% other
Fowler also notes that trends linked to age may equally be linked to different life experiences of generations. Different attitudes and understanding of faith emerge from war generations, to the 60s to Thatcher/Reagan era to....
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Holy Smoke
Shipmate
# 14866
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Posted
The problem is that, in the more 'conservative' traditions, the whole process of coming to faith is structured in a very different way from that assumed by Fowler in his six stages. Thus, there is generally a fixed body of doctrine which has to be believed in order to be a member of the tradition, and the job of the catechumen is to conform his mind and intellect in such a way that he can convince himself that the dogma is in fact true, IOW, he has to be of that type of personality which habitually refuses (or is somehow unable) to think for itself (I have relectantly come to accept that this type constitutes a fairly large proportion of mankind), or if he is of a more intellectual bent, he must be able to suppress his own doubts and feelings in favour of those of the church, i.e. he has the classic struggle of faith, which, in favourable circumstances, he (or rather 'God') 'wins' in favour of the orthodox doctrine.
Thus, the orthodox Roman Catholic doesn't really decide for himself that, say, the Pope is infallible, or that the Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven, based on an objective assessment of the evidence, but he concentrates on the arguments in favour, and on the official apologetics in the Catechism, until such a point where he can truthfully say that he 'firmly believes and truly' that the Pope really is infallible, or that the BVM is in heaven, without consciously lying - what an unsympathetic critic might call a sort of voluntary brain-washing.
Thus, the mature Catholic is probably firmly situated at Stage 3, the 'Synthetic-Conventional' stage, while Stage 4 (Individuative-Reflective) and higher would increasing fall under the 'Invincible Ignorance' rubric, I would have thought. ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
OTOH, for a more liberal Christian, I'm not sure that he would even go to Stage 3 even in passing; it's probably more likely that he would reject the faith in its entirety for a greater or lesser period; the idea of believing something just in order to conform being such an alien idea. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posts: 335 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2009
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If leo really believed in Fowler he would be helping Sunday school transition into Youth group by making them all sign up to the Doctrinal Basis and forcing them to sing There is a Green Hill Far Away, so as to help the transition from Stage Two to Stage Three. I don't think leo does that. ...You don't get people like leo saying that they're Stage 3, and happy to acknowledge it. Even though saying something like 'Fowler puts conservatives at a lower developmental stage' exhibits all the traits attributed to Stage 3.
I DID, as a teacher of Religious Ed., follow Goldman, whose research was similar to Fowler. He said that we should never teach kids stuff that they must unlearn later. Also, that the best way to help people grow is to present them with material from one stage 'higher'. That cognitive dissonance irritates and produces development. Material from a 'higher' stage only serves to annoy so a person becomes defensive and refuses to think about it any more.
As for being at stage 3 and OK with it, I think I inhabited a split world all through my twenties because my study of theology, at under- and post-graduate level made me believe one set of stuff, while my heavy involvement in an inner city anglo-catholic church made me practice something different.
Most importantly is what Avila said, above, about the feminist critique suggesting that these stages are cyclical rather than linear. As a forty-year-old man about to undergo a serious operation, I prayed like a 5 year old.
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Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Twangist
Shipmate
# 16208
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Posted
quote:
I prayed like a 5 year old
Frequently that's the only way I know how to pray!
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JJ
SDG
blog
Posts: 604 | From: Devon | Registered: Feb 2011
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you think stages 2 and 3 are where it's at because Roman Catholic's have a very strong sense of communal identity? And veering from that is dangerous?
Not really. While unkind and one-sided, the analysis of Holy Smoke above is basically correct concerning the practicalities. Just read that. Progress in traditional Christianity simply is not along the lines that Fowler lays out.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I DID, as a teacher of Religious Ed., follow Goldman, whose research was similar to Fowler. He said that we should never teach kids stuff that they must unlearn later. Also, that the best way to help people grow is to present them with material from one stage 'higher'. That cognitive dissonance irritates and produces development. Material from a 'higher' stage only serves to annoy so a person becomes defensive and refuses to think about it any more.
People coming out of Sunday school into youth group should be about right to be presented with Stage 3 material then.
quote:
As for being at stage 3 and OK with it, I think I inhabited a split world all through my twenties because my study of theology, at under- and post-graduate level made me believe one set of stuff, while my heavy involvement in an inner city anglo-catholic church made me practice something different.
And the implications of that are?
If you don't mind my saying so, you open your post by citing a battery of authorities. IngoB who would like to think of himself as more conservative hasn't been citing any authorities at all. I think that there's a difference in cognitive style between the two of you, and it's the reverse of what one would predict based on your material attitudes to authority.
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Most importantly is what Avila said, above, about the feminist critique suggesting that these stages are cyclical rather than linear. As a forty-year-old man about to undergo a serious operation, I prayed like a 5 year old.
That's not what cyclical means. Also, it rather invalidates the idea that conservative theology can be associated with any particular stage of spiritual development.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
This is also why I reject stage six as a definite stage, it is built around people who liberal Christianity see as "Saints", it is not well researched like the other stages and I suspect built mainly on guess work.
The other stages are built on thousands of interviews, these are interviews with people of all religions and none. Stages 1 and 2 seemed to exist even for those in none religious settings. This structure is supposed to be totally outside of creedal belief.
Problems with Fowler's work parallel criticisms of Kohlberg's work on moral development. In both cases the criticism is that, despite the ostensible empirical nature of the claims, modes of reasoning that fit in with a pre-existing theory are privileged over modes of reasoning that don't. For example, in Kohlberg abstract reasoning based on priciples is very highly valued, while reasoning based on emotional engagement is downplayed. One could put forward arguments for and against that idea, but Kohlberg's empirical studies don't address the problem at all.
AIUI Kohlberg, at least initially, found that according to his empirical work that men are more morally developed on average than women. As this seems highly unlikely, it shows that this kind of empirical research does not suffice to guarantee the coherence of the conclusions.
I don't believe that anyone has paralleled the specific allegation of sexism. However, it seems to me that Fowler is open to the same broad lines of criticism: that an assessment of how faith develops is intrinsically normative and therefore can't pretend to be the neutral result of empirical research.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Holy Smoke:
The problem is that, in the more 'conservative' traditions, the whole process of coming to faith is structured in a very different way from that assumed by Fowler in his six stages. Thus, there is generally a fixed body of doctrine which has to be believed in order to be a member of the tradition, and the job of the catechumen is to conform his mind and intellect in such a way that he can convince himself that the dogma is in fact true, IOW, he has to be of that type of personality which habitually refuses (or is somehow unable) to think for itself (I have relectantly come to accept that this type constitutes a fairly large proportion of mankind), or if he is of a more intellectual bent, he must be able to suppress his own doubts and feelings in favour of those of the church, i.e. he has the classic struggle of faith, which, in favourable circumstances, he (or rather 'God') 'wins' in favour of the orthodox doctrine.
Thus, the orthodox Roman Catholic doesn't really decide for himself that, say, the Pope is infallible, or that the Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven, based on an objective assessment of the evidence, but he concentrates on the arguments in favour, and on the official apologetics in the Catechism, until such a point where he can truthfully say that he 'firmly believes and truly' that the Pope really is infallible, or that the BVM is in heaven, without consciously lying - what an unsympathetic critic might call a sort of voluntary brain-washing.
Thus, the mature Catholic is probably firmly situated at Stage 3, the 'Synthetic-Conventional' stage, while Stage 4 (Individuative-Reflective) and higher would increasing fall under the 'Invincible Ignorance' rubric, I would have thought.
Thank you Holy Smoke. That's what I thought. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
As a forty-year-old man about to undergo a serious operation, I prayed like a 5 year old.
I'm probably going to express this badly, but here goes…
"Praying like a five year-old" sounds to me very much like something Christians are supposed to do. Receive the Kingdom like a child and all that. Now if that's what the founder of our religion (for want of a better word) told us to do, why should we be aspiring to anything else? It makes progressing to a "higher stage" sound distinctly problematic to me.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
quote:
In the original book the research sample is given in the appendix.
Conclusions were based on 359 individuals
gender evenly mixed
Ages
0-6 7%
7-12 8.1
13-20 15.6
21-30 25.1
31-40 13.4
41-50 8.9
51-60 4.7
60+ 17.3
All US based interviews
97.8% white, 2.2% black
45% protestant; 36.5 % Catholic; 11.2% Jew; 3.6% Orthodox; 3.6% other
Fowler also notes that trends linked to age may equally be linked to different life experiences of generations. Different attitudes and understanding of faith emerge from war generations, to the 60s to Thatcher/Reagan era to....
There is a very obvious problem here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this basically trying to construct some grand over-arching narrative of faith progression out of the experiences of a single generation of Judeo-Christian Americans? Both Fowler's research and his subjects' responses were no doubt conditioned by a whole host of subconcious assumptions rooted in their particular society, culture and religious formation. I doubt if his stages of faith are even usefully applicable to my generation (born 1980) in the UK, let alone to a non-20th century or non-western experiences. IMO attempts to try and squeeze the diversity of human religious experience into some tidy theory of religious progression are horribly arrogant.
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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AberVicar
Mornington Star
# 16451
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
IMO attempts to try and squeeze the diversity of human religious experience into some tidy theory of religious progression are horribly arrogant.
Check. And stupid. And dangerous.
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Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
Posts: 742 | From: Abertillery | Registered: May 2011
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
PS I suspect that the desire to locate oneself and others on a ladder of 'faith progression' may be a sign that one's own faith has not progressed very far
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Here's another vote for praying like a five-year-old. If I could do that all the time, I'd be a blessed woman.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by AberVicar:
quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
IMO attempts to try and squeeze the diversity of human religious experience into some tidy theory of religious progression are horribly arrogant.
Check. And stupid. And dangerous.
But we do it all the time.
We judge who is "more holy" or a "better Christian" or who is a "true Christian" and "what that means".
It's just his (Fowler's) apologetic.
Helpful to some that follow his line, unhelpful to others who follow a different line.
Yet his sixth stage would seem to countermand that.
Doesn't matter where you are.
[ 13. July 2011, 11:46: Message edited by: Evensong ]
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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AberVicar
Mornington Star
# 16451
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
But we do it all the time.
Then whoever 'we' are need to put a stop to it PDQ. Because it's arrogant. And stupid. And dangerous.
...and because it's plain unChristlike.
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Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
Posts: 742 | From: Abertillery | Registered: May 2011
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
la vie en rouge ... there's nothiing to stop us praying like five year olds and thinking like 40 year olds, though.
The problems start when it's the other way around, when we pray like 40 year olds and think like five year olds ...
Says Gamaliel the 50 year old.
Who acts like a teenager aboard Ship ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
la vie en rouge ... there's nothiing to stop us praying like five year olds and thinking like 40 year olds, though.
The problems start when it's the other way around, when we pray like 40 year olds and think like five year olds ...
Says Gamaliel the 50 year old.
Who acts like a teenager aboard Ship ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
quote:
But we do it all the time.
We judge who is "more holy" or a "better Christian" or who is a "true Christian" and "what that means".
I've always had a lot of sympathy for Martin Luther, who famously rejected the 16th century equivalent of stages of faith in favour of the idea that we are all really at the lowest stage imaginable and completely dependent on the grace of God. The only difference is between people who accept their dependence and people who don't.
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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RadicalWhig
Shipmate
# 13190
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Posted
The problem with this model is that when you get to the latter stages, those who got stuck in the middle think you are a heretic.
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Radical Whiggery for Beginners: "Trampling on the Common Prayer Book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of King Charles I, railing against priests in general." (Sir Arthur Charlett on John Toland, 1695)
Posts: 3193 | From: Scotland | Registered: Nov 2007
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Here's another vote for praying like a five-year-old. If I could do that all the time, I'd be a blessed woman.
My kids (one year either side of five) can pray very profound, sincere and moving prayers. And also very silly, selfish and disrespectful ones. A child's prayer is not necesarily an especially pure one.
I don't think I'm that different from a five year old really - I'm just a bit fatter and know more stuff.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RadicalWhig:
The problem with this model is that when you get to the latter stages, those who got stuck in the middle think you are a heretic.
And those who reach the latter stages become rather pompous, patronising and superior as this thread demonstrates.
Which may well show they are moving through Fowler's stages of faith, but doesn't really bear any resemblance to Jesus' description of someone who has a deep faith in God.
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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