James Fowler’s Stages of Faith
Fowler’s Stages of Spiritual Development through Assessment
He then situates Fowler’s work in context of Integral theory and practice, emphasizing the Stages of Faith as one of many different developmental lines—each measuring distinct “intelligences” or vectors of human growth. Other examples of these developmental lines include cogntion (studied by Piaget and Aurobindo), values (studied by Graves, Beck, and Cowan), self identity (studied by Cook-Greuter and Loevinger), worldviews (studied by Gebser), and morals (studied by Kohlberg). Taken together, these psychological models offer a comprehensive map of human growth and development in all its multifarious dimensions. Each successive stage of consciousness adds more complexity and more understanding of the world around us, as well as more capacity for love, compassion, and connection. By ascending the spire of psychological development to higher and higher altitudes of consciousness, humanity becomes increasingly more human with each and every step.
“As human beings, we have imaginations, intuitions, and moments of awakening that disturb us into awareness of dimensions of circumambient reality that we can only name on our own as Mystery. And yet our feet mire in the clay of everyday toil—getting and giving, spending and being spent—in the struggle for survival and meaning. In the midst of contingency, suckled on uncertainty, we spend our blessed and threatened years becoming selves through relationships of trust and loyalty with others like us—persons in communities. We attach to one another in love; we struggle with fidelity and infidelity; we share our visions of ultimate destiny and calling; our projections and hope; our moments of revelations. We are language-related, symbol-born, and story-sustained creatures. We do not live long or well without meaning—that is to say, we are creatures who live by faith.” –James Fowler
"Là con người, chúng ta có trí tưởng tượng, trực giác và những khoảnh khắc thức tỉnh khiến chúng ta nhận thức được những chiều kích của thực tại bao quanh mà chúng ta chỉ có thể tự gọi là Bí ẩn. Tuy nhiên, đôi chân chúng ta lại sa lầy trong bùn đất của những công việc thường ngày - cho và nhận, chi tiêu và cống hiến - trong cuộc đấu tranh sinh tồn và tìm kiếm ý nghĩa. Giữa những điều bất định, được nuôi dưỡng bởi sự không chắc chắn, chúng ta trải qua những năm tháng hạnh phúc và đầy nguy hiểm để trở thành chính mình thông qua các mối quan hệ tin tưởng và lòng trung thành với những người giống chúng ta - những con người trong cộng đồng. Chúng ta gắn bó với nhau bằng tình yêu; chúng ta đấu tranh với lòng trung thành và sự không chung thủy; chúng ta chia sẻ những viễn kiến về vận mệnh tối thượng và tiếng gọi của mình; những dự phóng và hy vọng của chúng ta; những khoảnh khắc mặc khải của chúng ta. Chúng ta là những sinh vật liên quan đến ngôn ngữ, được sinh ra từ biểu tượng và được duy trì bởi câu chuyện. Chúng ta không thể sống lâu hay tốt đẹp nếu thiếu ý nghĩa - nghĩa là, chúng ta là những sinh vật sống nhờ đức tin."
Faith, Rollie reminds us, is better understood as a verb than a noun. It’s original meaning, unfortunately lost in modern English translation, is “to set one’s heart on”—that is, to set your heart upon something is to place your faith in it, to enact a sacred connection between lover and Beloved. The shape, range, and intensity of this faith can change over time, growing through magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and integral stages of development—but the overall role of faith as a fountainhead of meaning and purpose remains a permanent fixture in our hearts, regardless of our explicit relationship with God, spirituality, or religion.
Ken offers a brief summary of the distinction between states of consciousness and stages of consciousness, both of which have had a profound influence upon how we think of and relate to our faith. Vertical stages of development (such as Fowler’s Stages of Faith) act as containers of consciousness—unseen structures that pattern our knowledge and mold our interpretations of the world around and within us. Horizontal states, on the other hand, are the stuff of experience itself—gross physical and emotional experiences; subtle visions, inspirations, and revelations; causal glimpses of transcendence, clarity, and emptiness; nondual states of radical union, flow, and atonement.
Spiritual practice such as meditation or contemplative prayer typically works to transform temporary states into permanent traits by stabilizing gross, subtle, causal, and nondual states in succession. However, we do not experience these horizontal states in a rigidly sequential way like we do vertical stages of development. States are ever-present, meaning they are accessible to all people at all times—“peak experiences” that punctuate our personal narratives with moments of catharsis, epiphany, clarity, and unity. This is true regardless of our psychological and spiritual growth—a person can experience a subtle state of divine Illumination early in life at Fowler’s stage 2 (Mythic-Literal), and then again decades later, after developing to stage 6 (Universalizing). Though the actual phenomenological state may be similar, the interpretations of the experience would differ drastically from different altitudes of consciousness, with an immense chasm of meaning, context, and sense of personal duty separating the two experiences.
Finally, Rollie offers a quick breakdown of some of the different ideas people typically have when they hear the word spiritual: the idea of spirituality as it’s own developmental line; spirituality as the highest potential in any developmental line; spirituality as first-hand experience of the divine; spirituality as a general attitude, disposition, or openness; etc. Again, as it pertains to Fowler’s work, we are discussing the first definition: spirituality as a distinct line of human development, growing through its own stages of maturity—in fact, while many other versions are certainly possible (and needed!), Fowler’s work represents one of the finest and most sophisticated treatments of the spiritual line of development that we have ever seen.
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STAGE 0: PRIMAL FAITH
STAGE 1: INTUITIVE-PROJECTIVE FAITH