Faith: A Developmental Process

We got on the road early – well, at least early for us on a weekend morning. The plan was to drive north out of Atlanta toward North Carolina into the Chattahoochee National Forest. The goals for the day were pretty simple: see some autumn colors, take a few pictures of the foliage, and just relax over a long Sunday drive.

As we got out of the urban area, the scenery began to change: more open spaces, colorful trees, a rural way of life, and, to my frustration, a visual assault by garish religious signage. The first marker I noticed, which was impossible to miss, was a large white barn in the middle of a field with huge red letters proclaiming, “Jesus is Lord.” That one wasn’t particularly offensive in itself, just odd. It’s probably no more obtrusive than the red barn on my aunt’s farm which was painted with a sign for Mail Pouch tobacco in my youth. As we drove, I couldn’t help but notice roadside monuments of the Ten Commandments in people’s yards or signs blazing “Thou Shalt Not Kill” with the picture of a human embryo. The peaceful countryside was dotted with messages of a particular religious perspective: all of them very bold and all of them conveying a literal and legalistic understanding of religion. The pastoral country side was dotted with monuments to a violent sort of religion.

North Georgia isn’t an area I would consider to be ripe for Christian missionary activity. With the residents overwhelmingly Christian by birth and raised in either Baptist or Methodist churches, I have reason to suspect that it would be difficult to identity any residents there who had not heard that “Jesus is Lord” or who hadn’t memorized the Ten Commandments in their youth. While the signage is clearly preaching to the choir, I suspect that the signage reflects something very different from the desire to convert people to Christianity.

In 1981, developmental psychologist James Fowler published his critical book, Stages of Faith. Drawing on the work of other developmental psychologists, including Piaget and Kohlberg, Stages of Faith presents a research-based understanding of how faith develops over the life course. The seven stages begin at birth and extend into adult maturity. In truth, many people never make it past the first few stages.

Fowler’s second stage of development, called mythic-literal faith, is developmentally reflective of school age children. It is rooted in an understanding of reciprocity. For example, a child believes that if I’m good and do what I’m told, then Santa will bring me the Christmas gifts I want. Religious beliefs at this stage hold an anthropomorphic view of a deity: one who is created in my image.

Fowler’s stage three of development, called synthetic-conventional faith, is a belief system founded on literalism. Any information that conflicts with literal beliefs is rejected as necessarily untrue. Fowler understood this stage to naturally emerge in middle-school age youth to early adolescence.

It’s only after these stages that Fowler finds more adult approaches to faith that begin with questioning belief, something more like a mid-life experience of coming to a resolution between the inconsistencies of belief with life’s realities, and moving toward the experience of enlightenment. What’s particularly important about this model is that while Fowler identifies a natural period in the life-cycle that are consonant for these various understandings of faith, a person may stay at a particular stage throughout all of life.

As I think about my weekend drive in North Georgia and the signs that marred the natural beauty of the landscape, I can’t help but consider how tragic it is that so many people are trapped in Fowler’s stages two and three of faith development. Their growth is stunted. More than that, they seek to impose their poorly developed perspectives on others.

Clearly, this is not a problem that’s unique to North Georgia or to Christianity in the United States. The same lack of development is found in Islam with groups like the Taliban and among reactionary Jewish groups. In each case, adults who remain at Fowler’s stages two and three have a unique capacity for dominating their religions with their narrow beliefs. It’s the same stunted faith development that fueled the inquisitions of the Middle Ages.

I don’t have a resolution for this problem. In fact, it’s to the advantage of many power-seekers that large numbers of people remain stuck in early stages of faith development. Stunted growth predisposes people to judgementalism and intolerance in many forms.

To take Fowler’s work at step further, I find it safe to say that simplistic religious beliefs that trumpet literalism on billboards and bumper-stickers are nothing less than childish expressions of faith. Their proper place is among youth who are attempting to integrate faith and belief in their overall life development. Maturity in faith — no matter what the religious and spiritual beliefs – leads one beyond literalism to living with ambiguity in life creatively. Those who are able to live with a sense of peace and contentment in the midst of ambiguity are nothing less than frightening for those who cling to the certainties of literalism. Perhaps that’s the root of the division in the United States today.

As we continued on our drive, I considered my need to practice asceticism on this trip. To enjoy it, I had to give up looking at the signs and mindfully focus on the beauty of nature. After all, what could be more inspiring and draw one to reflect on the mystery of life than the mountains painted with the bright yellows, oranges, and reds of autumn. Mindfully focused on that beauty, I was filled with gratitude for life.