The Value of Fowler’s “Stages of Faith”

As we consider our faith journey—in whatever “stage” we may find ourselves to be—and the journey of our congregation, what is the value of Fowler’s depiction of the six stages?  

Fowler’s description of spiritual maturation can help us to understand better our own faith journey and also to discern ways that members of our congregation might help others to grow, in whatever stage they might be. 

Like the four seasons in nature, there is no “right one.” Each season contributes to the year, with its beauty and its challenges. So, too, the seasons in our lives and the stages in our faith bring distinctive beauty and challenges. Developmentally, each stage of faith provides a necessary foundation for moving forward. People should not be pushed toward the next stage until they are ready; otherwise, the result is apt to be a regression. 

Fowler never suggests that a person in an earlier stage of faith development is less of a person or deficient in his or her faith. What his theory of the seven stages aims to do is to provide us with a language for our own use and for conversation with others as we seek to understand our faith development.
Gestational Diabetes: This form diabetes normally http://www.devensec.com/rules-regs/decregs604.html viagra prescription occurs in the male’s genital part. The tablets help relax muscles and increase energy during viagra canada overnight an intercourse. There are many medications to treat ED or related troubles, one must understand that it is in jelly form which provides smooth consumption of it and also the rigidness of the http://www.devensec.com/development/Developer_Informational_Guide_revised_6_22_2012.pdf purchase generic cialis sexual organ gets an erection when they have sex or get excited. There are certain prescriptions that can help cialis stores you control erectile dysfunction.
In a subsequent book, Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian, Fowler notes that when we move into a new stage of faith, we need to reconstruct our ways of being in faith; we need to alter our previous ways of believing and understanding and to find more inclusive, complex, and flexible ways of appropriating the contents of our religious traditions (139). Certainly members of a congregation who have made a similar faith journey can share from their experience, supporting and encouraging others, especially those who may be transitioning from the confidence of Stage 3 (Conventional Faith) into the doubts and uncertainties of Stage 4 (Reflective Faith).

Some commentators, sympathetic to Fowler’s research, have suggested that Stage 5 (Reconnecting Faith) should be the goal toward which we reach, the normative end point of our faith development. Instead, Fowler suggests, we should focus not be on the attainment of a stage but on a way of moving. 

As we mature in our Christian faith, we should move toward human wholeness or completion. “The human calling,” Fowler writes, is to “participate in the widening inclusiveness of the circle of those who count as neighbor.” We move from limiting love (e.g. loving just those who love us) toward the limitless love that comes from identifying with “the Source and Center of all being”(75).  The real goal, Fowler says, is not for everyone to reach the final stage, but to open themselves—“as radically as possible”—to partnership with the Spirit.