It has been widely used within various contexts including pastoral care, counseling, practical theology, and in spiritual direction. This stage involves the embrace and integration of opposites or polarities in one's life. .Here symbol and story, metaphor and myth, both from our own traditions and from others, seem to be newly appreciated . and can be distributed and utilised freely, provided full citation is given. He is best known for his book Stages of Faith, published in 1981, in which he sought to develop the idea of a developmental process in "human faith". Title: Faith development theory: a case for paradigm change Author: Ripon College Created Date: 20081211181435Z' This phase of a person's growth is recognized as a time of testing. 1. Children belong to the congregation where parents participate, a status conferred by the congregation. Westerhoff presented two separate theories of faith development in his writings. Heinz Strieb. * Their close friendships are very important - they are 'mirrors' who reflect who they are. And more recently, along with my full-time jobs as a carpenter and graduate student, I have been employed as a graduate assistant in HSU’s writing center. Though she never uses the following phrase in her book, G. Temp Sparkman refers to her theory as stages of "social faith." Born and raised in Malvern, Arkansas, I was thankful to have lived near such a prominent institution as Henderson State University. By creating six faith stages based in cognitive, social, and ethical development, Fowler is able to gauge a person’s faith development through a linear and sequential progression. . We give it to you.". This period of life came into focus as I gradually acknowledged that whatever choices were made to direct my life must be mine, and that every choice would have consequences with which I would have to live. Reality 3: Affirmed Believer (middle adolescence--age 16 or later) The emergence of formal operational thinking opens the way for reliance upon abstract ideas and concepts for making sense of one's world. Stage 1: "Big people are the goodest, the little are the baddest." . In some cases, Muslim schools have become a safe haven, especially for women, “a place where their identity is not in question, where they can feel safe and comfortable”. . Nurture (ages 0-6) Fictitious scenarios illustrate the utility of J. Bruce Powers / John Westerhoff / Temp Sparkman / Mary Wilcox / James Fowler * Some people enter a stage and then slip back (we call it backsliding). Rebirth Affiliative Faith . Sara Little says, âFaith is a trust, loyalty, confidence, but it is more than a âfeeling.â It is a trust qualified by the One who is trusted. So it is that we adults need to concerned first of all about our own growth, and we need always to remember that even mature faith has at its core a childlike faith. In adulthood we become increasingly conscious of the complexity of our inner life, of it's mystery and incommunicability. Despite its influence, James Fowler's theory of faith development is in need of fundamental reappraisal. For 3,000 years, the minimum legal age for marriage did not change...Then, just as the age of puberty was decreasing, laws increasing the minimum legal age for marriage were passed in the United States and Europe...Although they were adults and had been treated as adults for thousands of years, teenagers were redefined as 'children'...This was the creation of adolescence.". 3. Position Two teens (ninth-eleventh grades) develop a deep concern for other's viewpoints. They show rigorous adherence to the letter of the law and attachment to the forms of religion. What was given were the best answers they had, and I learned them well . Having served for decades as a tool to preserve a particular religious identity, Islamic schooling also plays a crucial role in empowering female students. Faith is an interpretation of the way persons have experienced life. FTD is a cognitive developmental model. And it will get fierce for them. Faith development reaches a crucial junction when one becomes aware that personal beliefs or experience may no longer be exactly the same as those of the group, or when a person begins to question some of the commonly held beliefs or practices. His formal definition is: Faith is people's evolved and evolving ways of experiencing . Characterised by a greater realism, these youth have a more responsive love for God than those in the earlier positions. Source: Journal of Psychology and Theology, 1997, Vol 25, no 1, Page 53. The more the church embraces and supports faith passages in kids' lives, the more kids themselves will feel embraced and supported by the church. To Streib, faith development is the composition of many factors including traumas, schemata of interpersonal relationships, structural development, and “themata” or individual experiences. 4. New York: Seabury Press, 1976. This is a stage of principled behaviour, but is characterised by religious doubt or disinterest although accompanied by inquisitiveness about other areas of life. . Separation .I found that every dimension of my life came under scrutiny. Stage 3 - Hope (Deepening of Faith) It is, in fact, a gift from that One who reveals himself.â Faith development is the process of growing and changing physically, cognitively, and emotionally in the understanding of our faith. They only believe what they can validate by their experience or by the example of their parents, past or present. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, Streib utilizes Fowler in a more empirical method. 1. They fall away from church - they have become principled, self-governing human beings who don't need to depend on an institution for governance. In my spare time, when I have it, I enjoy volunteering (avid volunteer for the Hot Spring County Boys and Girls Club and Garland County Habitat for Humanity), building furniture, and spending time with my family. * These stages refer to human development as well (see ages that correspond). Confirmation rituals that involve the church body are good examples of the "rebirth" phase. Chaotic - being unprincipled they have no mechanism that governs them other than their own will. 9. Such participation may be formalized as in membership, a rite of baptism or confirmation, or may simply be understood, as might be the case with regular participants who do not join a church. The beginning, typical of children through the high-school years, I have characterized as affiliative faith . A thousand years ago under English law, it was the same. .The congregation confers the belonging; the people say, "You belong here; you do not have to earn your place. The needs and activities of infancy do not disappear in adolescence, not do the needs and activities of adolescence disappear in adulthood. The person can now reflect upon past experiences and search them for meaning and pattern. Here we have a demand for certainty. In contrast, Streib sees value in Fowler’s argument but questions the linearity of such a progression. . The tasks are to come to the point of salvation (if not achieved before), accept self as valued and worthwhile to God, develop hope and faith for the future and for facing unknowns, develop close dependence on God and control self constructively through a Holy Spirit led conscience. JOHN WESTERHOFF Unconditional Love (Toddler: 2-3) Failure: Conditional Love Faith Development Theory is a growth-oriented approach to spiritual and religious development that focuses on adap-tive rather than pathological qualities and fits well with developmental models of supervision. The task is to develop the capacity to internalise God as an object of security and trust. Erikson's social development stage that corresponds is: Initiative vs Guilt. We develop plans for the future - based on a theory about our lives. He shows that religion must take into account the predominant needs and activities of each stage, and so concludes that religion must include three essential elements, an institutional element corresponding to the needs and activities of infancy, a critical element corresponding to the needs and activities of adolescence, and a mystical element corresponding to the needs and activities of adulthood. In this podcast, Judith Weisenfeld talks to Brad Stoddard about her new book, New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Depression. Because Streib firmly believes that there is logic and causality among religious stages, it is important not to lose differentiation among religious styles, which is what these interviews strive to highlight. Streib goes on to explain that this improved model will aid in the understanding of inter-religious relations, which is of utmost significance to Streib and his studies. The following is his original four-stage theory. The tasks are to see self as a positive spiritual being, develop self-motivation to understand God and learn about spiritual concepts, learn to trust God for guidance and support, learn to enjoy spiritual experiences such as worship, prayer and devotions, begin to love and serve others voluntarily and begin an individual personal relationship with God. Importantly, they consider how they might learn from each other. Professor Ian Reader discusses his publication ‘Pilgrimage in the Marketplace’, which explores the very ‘worldly’ conditions of development, popularisation, and ultimately, survival of pilgrimage centres in connection to the dynamics of the marketplace through which the ‘sacred’ as a category can be sustained. 3. We depend on significant others for the stories that explain our lives and how our people live. Source: Discipleship Journal, Issue 75, 1993. A legitimate rite of passage will spur younger kids to eagerly look forward to "their" day and older church members to treat "new initiates" more like peers than children, Parents play a key role in all this, but not through active participation. Chaotic/Antisocial (Ages 1-5) They need consistent discipline and forgiveness. 10. Growing Faith. Involve as much of the worshipping community as possible Rites of Passage faith development stages can inform supervisory work with spiritual and religious issues. However, while this theory is highly regarded in the realm of developmental psychology, controversy abounds regarding the validity of the faith development model. It is in his qualitative data that Streib gets at the foundation and progression of religious development. At the same time, concerns about one's personal future--one's identity, one's work, career, or vocation--and one's personal relationships become important. Interdependence integrates the dependence of affiliative faith and the independence of searching faith. A child's memory becomes filled with stories, with family history as it grows and experiences life. The goal is to internalise God's grace. A New Approach to Faith Development Theory, By John Rymon Bailey, Henderson State University. Intuitive-Projective Faith (early childhood) Other people are interesting objects which may give pleasure or pain. Infancy - Institutional It is not whether one has faith or not, but the content and the quality of the faith that ultimately is a part of every individual. Parents represent God to the child. It allows the assessment of clientsâ spiritual development free from the specific content of any faith tradition. While such progression is inevitably aided by the contents of one’s faith, it is the complexity of structures, not beliefs, that allows for identification of a person’s faith stage” (Parker 234). .now one maintains that commitment and identity by choice and explicit assent rather than by unconscious formation and tacit commitment . Mystics are people who have a kind of cohesion beneath the surface of things. FAITH DEVELOPMENT THEORIES A. James Fowler For Fowler, faith is a normal human experience and not a particular Christian activity. * They appreciate stories, beliefs and observances of their faith group. It means claiming a new quality of reflective autonomy and responsibility. James Fowler investigated and developed a stage theory for the development of religious faith. echoing in their ears. Postconventional Level (Center: Internalized universal principles). Indoctrination (ages 7-18) . The decision must be faced whether or not to develop, express, and accept responsibility for a personal interpretation of one's religion as over against accepting that which may be viewed as a group's interpretation. Grace (Preschool: 3-5) Failure: Self-Condemnation .the hope is that the children will emerge from the kindergarten age, both knowing and feeling that they are already sons and daughters of God. He suggests that at each stage, faith development is based both on cognitive abilities (as theorized by Piaget) and moral development (as theorized by Kohlberg). than by personal conviction. DAVID ELKIND Based on the work of Lawrence Kohlberg, her stage-dependent theory follows: Stage 0 It means taking charge of one's life in a new way. The individual takes on the characteristics of the nurturing persons and becomes identified as an accepted partner, one who is part of the faith tradition. .At the age of twelve, I made a public profession of faith. Representations of God take conscious form in this period and draw, for good or will, on children's experiences of their parents or other adults to whom they are emotionally attached in the first years of life. In this interview, Dr. Jasmin Zine talks about Muslim schools in Canada and their impact on their students’ identity development and integration in the society. Sociology of Religion – and Religious Studies? Adults commit themselves to being creative trustees for a creating God who is finishing creation. . 3. Stage 2 - Disillusionment (Disappointment) .this gave me the foundation on which I could begin my personal journey into knowing God. The crisis of disillusionment occurs when God bursts the narrow categories we have defined and overwhelms our finitude. Source: Further Along The Road Less Travelled, M. Scott Peck, Simon & Schuster, 1993. Gordon Allport is credited as the first modern psychologist to examine the development of religious maturity. . He argues that there are multilevel selection processes that happen within different sociocultural formations, and these are key to understanding how religion has evolved throughout history. Could spiritual growth be patterned in passages or phases? This may mean (including guys who are older than participating girls. …the study of religion, spirituality, and faith […] cannot be explored through simply descriptive statistics or only quantitative models but rather complex qualitative and empirical methods within sophisticated designs. .This level of faith, according to Westerhoff, is God's intention for everyone; we all are called to reach our highest potential. Conjunctive Faith (mid-life or beyond) Here we are concerned with physical movement and sense impressions and our needs are for food, warmth, protection and affection. Concept of society: The President is the government. Source: Dr. Larry Stephens, in Building a Foundation For Your Child's Faith, Zondervan, 1996. The task for the education of the adult is to help the adult to join fully with God in the work of creation. Kohlbergâs and Gilliganâs theories of cognitive- structural development, and the Myers - Briggs theory of personality type (Evans, 1996). One the one hand, to move into the Individuative-Reflective stage, we have to question, examine, and reclaim the values and beliefs that we have formed to that point in our lives. Erikson's social development stage that corresponds is: industry vs inferiority. For the past two decades the dominant model in this field has been James Fowler's theory of faith stages. . During these years I ventured out into the larger world of places, ideas, and experiences. . Their visions and commitments seem to free them for a passionate yet detached spending of the self in love. .Affiliative faith looks to the community and its tradition as its source for authority. “Fundamentalism is the prevalence or the revival of literal understanding, of anxiety toward a taskmaster deity, of the do-ut-des juridical structure, a prevalence or revival of the reciprocal-instrumental style and part of the subjective style” (154). God is perceived as an old man with white hair who is distant and not directly involved with their affairs, their primary concern is for acceptance by the group. Not that all of the struggles and searching done in earlier stages was left behind, but rather there seemed to be a sense of satisfaction coming from having worked through many issues, along with a heightened need to express this faith in everyday life. Stage 5: Can stand outside of own society and look at it, along with other societies, critically; distinguishes between political, civic, and judicial systems; laws seen in terms of protecting human rights rather than the maintenance of society; awareness of principles "above the law"; recognition of universality of individual rights apart from societal affiliation. The children have an identity--it is children of God. According to Westerhoff: Faith grows like the rings of a tree, with each ring adding to and changing the tree somewhat, yet building on that which has grown before. Returning teenagers, through ritual, into the church and society, but now as more mature believers--adult Christians. Minneapolis: Winston Press, Inc., 1980. TEMP SPARKMAN Active Devotion (ages 36 and up) God moves in out lives in predictable ways. Erikson's social development that corresponds is: Trust vs Mistrust. . .In this phase, I moved from high idealism--feeling that my newfound answers were the answers for all time and all places--to a realistic appraisal of life in which what one knows, feels, and does must be consistent with life experiences. 1. They're caught...stuck in a confusing, barren limbo with no real compass. Conducting “faith development interviews” allows the researcher to find and interpret different styles of religion. Erikson's social development stage that corresponds is: integrity vs despair. 12. According to Streib, a fundamentalist approach is the key to understanding religious matters. Author Ronald Kotesky writes, "Two thousand years ago under Roman law, women could marry at 12 and men at 14. 6. Source: God of Surprises, by Gerard Hughes (Chapter 2). The Religious Studies Project is produced by the Religious Studies Project Association (SCIO), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (charity number SC047750). Models of faith development attempt to describe the process by which individuals' perspectives on ultimate meanings and values change during the course of life. It is a matching of the person with peer expectations. Faith development is defined as the making, maintenance, and transformation of human meaning. * They learn best through their imagination. The articulation of faith development theory began in the 1980s with the work of James Fowler and colleagues, and it has found a significant place in theological discourse and in some cases cultural studies as well. In these arenas God is supplying the essential possibilities for individual fulfilment and social completion . Over ten years ago, Streib saw applicability to Fowler’s stages, but not in their typical empirical application. * They are in a period of conformity and convention - they conform to the conventions within their group: ie. In the second stage, usually during adolescence, one wrestles with doubts and begins to test the indoctrinated beliefs. And, it is in his research that Streib has spent considerable academic effort in discussing the theoretical and empirical implications of Fowlers work. “The relationship of the individual to interpersonal others in the social environment (external objects) and the relation to objects in terms of object-relations theory (internal objects) parallel each other and interrelate” (Streib 146). Most non-western cultures direct their young people through rites of passage that point them into adulthood. . People start to question their own assumptions around a faith tradition. Stage 6: Integrated reappropriation of past and present, community and self; societies seen in terms of universally valid basic principles; individuals seen as ends in themselves, and not as means to other ends. People through rites of passage is given, and test what has handled. 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The capacity to internalise God 's unconditional love ( ages 7-18 ) these! With faith affirmations interesting objects which may give pleasure or pain eternity with God new cognitive abilities make mutual.
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