James Fowler Continues Faith Development

After talking through James Fowler’s theories on faith development last month, I undertook to explore the literature that’s been written in response.

One very helpful source I’ve found is an article written by Fowler himself in Religious Education, volume 99, no. 4, Fall 2004. The article is available as a pdf (80k) from Religious Education’s archive of featured articles. This is a follow up to the first article on faith development theory, entitled, Agenda Toward a Developmental Perspective on Faith, published in Religious Education in volume LXIX, March – April 1974, pp. 209 – 219.

Influences

James starts with an account of the early influences on his life. He talks about the effect of his father, a Methodist preacher. At the ages of five, eleven and sixteen he had experiences of emotional awakening and of dedicating his life to God in Christ.

His theological formation was tied together with experience in youth ministry and Christian education. His thoughts on faith development were being formed as his first child was growing up at the same time as his engagement with the work of Richard Niebuhr’s Faith On Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith and Paul Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith.

He spent weeks in intensive seminars at Interpreter’s House, participating and leading in a process of deepening personal, vocational and spiritual lives. As part of that process Fowler invited participants to engage with the eight ages of the life cycle laid out in Erik Erikson’s Childhood and Society.

Fowler’s students introduced him to Lawrence Kohlberg who was etablishing the Center for Moral Development, using Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Fowler was inspired to commission his students to conduct ‘faith development interviews’. James talks about the influence of Jesuit students who challenged his focus on cognitive development alone, introducing him to spiritual exercises of Ignatius. He talks also of the influence of colleagues Carol Gilligan, Robert Selman, Robert Kegan and Sharon Parks. Eventually in 1981, while teaching at Emory University, Fowler published “Stages of Faith: the Psychology of Human Development“.

Since the publication of Stages of Faith, there have been four other books by Fowler that extend faith development research and its implications for practical theology:

Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian, Harper 1984, Jossey-Bass (Revised) 2000;

Faith Development and Pastoral Care, Fortress Press, 1987

Weaving the New Creation, Harper 1991, Wipf & Stock, 2001

Faithful Change: The Personal and Public Challenges of Postmodern Life, Abingdon 1996.

Recommended Reading

Developing a Public Faith: New Directions in Practical Theology, Chalice Press, 2003
a thoughtful collection of essays by international authors honoring and critically engaging this author’s work in faith development and practical theology appeared in 2003. Edited by Richard R. Osmer and Friedrich L. Schweitzer.

Responses from religious educators

Now what is fascinating is Fowler’s outline of the responses of religious groups to faith development theory.

James writes about the adoption of the model by Catholic religious educators, made possible by a Thomistic trust in the power of reason, informed by faith, to help discipline and offest the corrosive effects of the Fall.

Protestants were certainly mixed in their response. Positive responses came from traditions that emphasise the rational potential of human persons and communities, such as Unitarian Universalists, United Methodists, liberal Baptists, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ and Reform Jews. Fowler found a more cautious response from Lutherans, Presbyterians and Orthodox Jews who were the least likely to entertain hopes of responsible selfhood associated with development in faith.

Fowler graciously doesn’t mention the people who rejected his work outright because of the word “psychology”. I’ve mixed in some circles where Fowler was held in deep suspicion because of what was perceived to be worldliness. No doubt this was matched by a Calvinist belief in total depravity in which any attempts at human improvement were regarded as almost blasphemous.

Some affirmations

1. Characterization of faith that combines phenomenological account of what faith does with a conceptual model of waht faith is.
2. Extension of structural development traditions in the research of Piaget, Kohlberg and others – beyond a dominantly cognitive perspective.
3. Offering of implications and pointing to methods that resonate with what we think we have learned about religious nurture and formation.
a. Need for a relational nurture that receives the child as God’s blessed creation.
b. Need for ways of engaging children and youth that include sacred practices and texts (including images) as sustaining resources in their imaginations, will, knowledge and moral development.

Significant Discusssions

1. Toward Moral and Religious Maturity, Brusselmans, 1980
   – from a 1979 conference in France.
2. Faith Development and Fowler, ed. Dystra & Parks, 1986
   – from a conference in 1982
3. Christian Perspectives on Faith Development: A Reader,
   ed. Astley and Francis, UK, 1992
4. Stages of Faith and Religious Development: Implications for Church, Education, and Society,
   ed. Nipkow, Schweitzer, Fowler, 1991

Critical Issue of Inclusiveness

James names the most central divider between critics and fans of faith development theory: the inclusive generic nature of the model which allows for a variety of traditions, Christian and other. Fowler responds by saying that it should never be the primary goal of religious education simply to precipitate and encourage stage advancement. Movement in stage development, properly understood, is a byproduct of teaching the substance and the practices of faith.

Faith Development Present and Future

James reflects on the context of higher education in which he first developed his model of faith development. He recognises that higher education is giving way to technical and occupational learning associated with economic survival. Charismatic and mega-style churches are thriving in many cases because their members are not hungering for complexity. He points to the success of Rick Warren’s book and program, “Purpose Driven Life”. James describes this trend as a “new and more sophisticated version of the synthetic-conventional stage of faith.”

Fowler says that we may need to evaluate faith development less in terms of how it addresses cognitive and emotional structures, and “more by its intelligence and commitment in practical engagement with the life issues that threaten to overwhelm so many among us”.

Interesting to me is James’ naming of prison as a place where faith development is needed desperately.

“Faith development, with many of them (prisoners), will have to begin at the very early stages and be accompanied by medical care, group therapy, and spiritual development, including treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. Most of all, the healing power of human love, and of the Holy Spirit’s presence are required for opening hearts hardened through abuse, and throughand the wrongful influences and actions that have shaped their lives.”

Fowler finishes with what he’d like to focus on next – meeting the moral and spiritual demands of postmodern life. His suggested title: “In With All Our Hearts: Joining Systems Understandings with Practical Faith, Justice and Hope“.