Stages of Faith Development

Making Sense of Other People's Weirdness, Part 5

In the late 1990s, I was walking through Barnes & Noble and came across a book entitled Stages of Faith by James Fowler. I was all about the topics of religion and spirituality at the time. On top of that, I loved psychology. So, what’s not to like about this book? I had to read on to find out what the six stages were that he proposed. 

Then…yikes!

I locked onto what is called the Mythic-Literal stage. It develops in late childhood and looks at the world through a black-and-white lens. This stage is typical of fundamentalism. 

I was aghast. 

Having adopted a fundamentalist mindset myself, this made absolutely no sense. It was perfectly clear to me that fundamentalism was the biblical understanding of what a truly mature faith looked like. Why in the world would Fowler place this at Stage 2 out of 6?

I became angry. 

As I read on, I discovered that Fowler considered a spiritual life accepting open-ended uncertainty to be the more mature one. As far as I was concerned, this book was not just problematic, but also dangerous. Fowler was actively doing harm to Christians because he was leading them away from having true faith and into some sort of wishy-washy, grey-colored, luke-warm worldview.

As I recall that memory, I’m now embarrassed. I can see myself standing between the bookshelves looking at this book. I can feel the emotions that I felt back then. Boy oh boy, did I have a surprise coming for me in the near future years.

Today, I love Fowler's theory. Just like any theory, it has problems. But, for the most part, it is one of the best and most accepted models for understanding Faith development out there…and for good reason.