THE STAGES OF FAITH
DEVELOPMENT1
PRESTAGE (Primal): CAN I
TRUST MY WORLD?
* Infancy
* Trust overcoming fears of abandonment.
The seeds of trust, courage, hope and
love are fused together and contend with
The sense of threat: abandonment,
inconsistencies, and deprivations.
* Mutuality with caring others.
The emergent strength of faith in this
stage is the fund of basic trust and the
relational experience of mutuality with
the one(s) providing primary love and
care.
* Autonomy and courage v. shame and
anxiety
* These qualities (or lack thereof) are
the foundation of all that comes in later faith
development.
STAGE 1
(Intuitive-Projective): GOD IS LIKE MY MOMMY AND DADDY
*Ages 2-6.
*Awakening to consciousness and memory.
*Awakening to reality beyond everyday
experience – death, God.
*Differentiation of self from others.
*Imagination and Fantasy: No
distinction between what is real and what is fantasy; not rational.
*God and story: No coherent form, fluid
and magical.
*Right and wrong is determined by who or
what is BIGGER.
*Long lasting images of God and Satan.
*Image of God as Abba-Daddy.
*Introductory learning of language and
gestures – rituals of faith.
*Caregivers provide trust.
Caregivers provide care and protection
no matter how big the enemies are or how undeserving the child might be.
STAGE 2 (Mythic-Literal):
WHAT’S FAIR IS FAIR
*Ages 7-12 (School age).
*Affiliation, belonging, being
cherished.
Differentiation of self and group from
others.
Can take “other person” perspective: “I
see you seeing me.”
*Motto: “You get what you deserve (or
ought to) from parents, God, and others.”
This motto is a concrete way to bring
order and insure fair treatment.
*Learning the lore, legends, and
language of religious group.
Stories are important and give meaning
and value.
Good vs. Evil stories; Superheroes.
*God is anthropomorphic (like humans)
and literal.
*Sorting out fact and fantasy, the real
and the “made up”
*Conflict of faith
The Bible as Law (Good are rewarded; Bad
are punished) vs. Gospel
(Trustable promise and
unconditional love).
Parables of the Prodigal Son and the
Workers in the Field.
STAGE 3 (Synthetic –
Conventional): I BELIEVE WHAT THE CHURCH BELIEVES
*Ages 12-(18-25).
Can remain through adulthood.
Stable and well-organized. (But persons
will have difficulty saying why they
believe what they believe.)
*Growing in personal relationship with
God.
Deep religious hunger for God who
accepts “in spite of” our flaws and failures.
God as Guide, Friend,
Counselor.
*Synthesizing beliefs, attitudes and
values into a personal style.
*Synthesizing images of the self into an
identity.
*Commitment and self-hood deriving from
belonging and affiliation and from roles
*Conformist stage.
Influenced by expectations and
judgements of others.
Conflicting authorities.
Hunger for acceptance and belonging.
Reflective - Third person perspective:
“I see the me I think you see.” (The
mirror)
STAGE 4 (Individuative –
Reflective): AS I SEE IT, GOD IS…
*Young adulthood through adulthood.
*Clarifying boundaries of selfhood and
commitment.
Following the crisis of conflicting
authorities of Stage 3, Stage 4 is characterized
by confusion and distrust.
Move from conformity to individuality.
Ability for objective reflection on
different points of view.
*Making or confirming commitments to
ideology and community from the standpoint of a self-aware identity.
How one thinks about faith may change
more than the content of faith.
Propositions over poetry.
Explicit meanings over
symbols.
Abstract knowledge over
sense of mystery.
AS MUCH LOSS AS GAIN.
*Achieving authenticity and congruence
between identity and outlook,
selfhood and commitment, belief and
action.
STAGE 5 (Conjunctive):
DON’T CONFUSE THE MAP WITH THE TERRITORY
*Committing to the reality of God beyond
all our symbols and apprehensions of God.
All of our “maps” for thinking about the
faith are incomplete and limited in
capturing the depth and beauty of the
experience of faith.
Welcome dialogue with others about
deepest convictions.
Comfortable with difference in faith
traditions.
Recognizing the relativity
of my ideology and the thought-world of my group(s).
*Opening to the disruptive invasions of
the Spirit (God and the deep self).
Beyond intellect. Felt sense of God.
Deeper awareness beyond reason.
Open to many new “conversions”.
Surrender to the richness of God’s
revelation and its many forms.
Depth of appreciation of
religious symbols within self.
*Complementary relation between self and
kingdom of God.
STAGE 6 (Universalizing): I HAVE A DREAM
*Relinquishing of self as centering
reference point.
Motto: “Lose your life for the sake of
the Gospel.”
*Embodying and real-izing the divine
actuality in human reality.
New meaning of self as “with” God and
all humanity.
*Participating in the quality of
“eternal life” (John’s Gospel).
The person becomes a “living symbol of
the faith”:
Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa,
Jesus, Ghandi.
Living in the “Kingdom of
God”
Graceful radicals
1. Based on work by Dr. James Fowler of Emory University
