The Development of Faith

Hello Patch readers.  To those of you who know me, I apologize for my one month off.  The new Patch format required a certain learning curve, and gave me an excuse to take a rest from my weekly blogging, which had gone on for over a year without interruption.  Whether it’s the gym or church or flossing one’s teeth, good habits are easy to break.

To those who haven’t met me yet, since I should be appearing in some new Patch locales with this post, I’m a psychologist in private practice in Pleasant Hill.  I see couples and individuals and run three couples’ groups.  I write in these weekly posts about a variety of life issues from a psychological perspective.  When the new Patch format knocked me out of orbit, I was in the middle of a series on spirituality, religion and psychology.  The topic seems to bring out a lot of energy from readers, based on the number and tone of the comments which appeared.

I wanted to return to that series today and introduce the topic of “spiritual maturity.”  A lot of my thinking on this has been informed by the work of James Fowler, who in 1981 wrote a seminal book called Stages of Faith.  Fowler writes that just as a person goes through a physical development, a cognitive development, an emotional development, and a moral development through the course of life, so too does one’s faith develop.  He mapped out this development in six stages, synthesizing the works of theorists from other realms, most particularly Erick Erickson (psychosocial), Jean Piaget (cognitive), and Lawrence Kohlberg (moral), but going beyond them as well.

Fowler takes pains to emphasize he is not writing only of the faith that makes people go to church on Sunday. By “faith” he means a belief in a framework larger than our individual selves. He says that the capacity for faith is born into each of us, and that if we don’t find an organized framework for it, it will seek out some kind of home.  It could be our union membership, our bowling league, our political party, or even the faith in the kind of car we drive.  We will imbue every day objects with numinous qualities unconsciously if we don’t have a conscious relationship to our own internal “faith gene.”

What he found in his research is that most churches and synagogues are operating at a level of faith (Stage 3) that corresponds to the teenage years.  This makes sense on at least a few levels:  most people stop actively learning about their religion at this age so their faith development stops; much of institutional religion is about maintaining the institution and this directs congregants toward the social order more than their individual relationship to a higher being.  Church/synagogue/mosque attendance becomes more about belonging to a social community of people who are like us than a religious experience, much as high school is organized around social groupings.

To those of you who are new to my blog and possibly offended by what I’m writing here, please take a moment to refer to a few earlier posts where you will see I am a supporter of mainstream religion.  That support doesn’t blind me to its drawbacks.

In coming weeks I want to give an introduction to each of Fowler’s stages because I think it’s important to realize a lot of what we consider to be unidimensional – you either “have” faith or you don’t – is a multi-leveled truth that can confuse us if we don't understand its contours.

Do you have a question about your marriage or relationship? Is there a particular topic on relationships or individual psychological issues you would like addressed in this blog? Ask Josh in the comments below or email him at josh@joshgressel.com.

Josh Gressel, Ph.D., is a couples and individual therapist based in Pleasant Hill, CA. Visit his website at joshgressel.com.  He is currently accepting referrals.