Mr. Sergio M.

Sarza
Presentor – Dev. Ed. D.

Jana Gloria F. Almerino, Dev. Ed. D., RGC

Faculty In-charge
• An American theologian
and Professor of
Theology and Human
Development at Emory
University
• Director of both the
Center for Research on
Faith and Moral
Development and the
Center for Ethics until he
retired in 2005
• A minister in the United
Methodist Church
James W. Fowler III
(Oct.12, 1940- Oct. 16, 2015)
• Best known for his
book, published in
1981, in which he
developed the idea of
a developmental
process in "human
faith".
• Stages of faith
development were
along the lines of
Piaget’s theory of
cognitive
development and
Kohlberg’s stages of
moral development.
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic -Literal

Intuitive-
Projective

Undifferentiated
Undifferentiated Faith
No. Age Description
0–2 • Trust, hope and love compete with
0 Infant environmental inconsistencies or
threats of abandonment
• “pre-stage” referring to infancy
• Develops basic trust and mutuality
(or lack thereof) with the one’s
providing care
• The quality of interactions underlie
all future faith development for the
individual
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic-Literal

Intuitive-
Projective

Undifferentiated
Intuitive-Projective Faith
No. Age Description
2-7 • Imitates parental behaviors and attitudes
1 Toddler- about religion and spirituality
Preschooler • Has no real understanding of spiritual
concepts
• The child is egocentric
• Imagination is formed
• Reality is not well-differentiated from
fantasy
Note: adults preaching about the negative
aspects of religion - the devil and the evils of
sin - can cause great harm to a child of this
age, leading him toward a very rigid, brittle
and authoritarian personality as an adult.
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic-Literal

Intuitive-
Projective

Undifferentiated
Mythic-Literal Faith
No. Age Description

7-12 • Accepts existence of a

2 School- deity
aged child • Religious and moral beliefs
are symbolized by stories
• Appreciates other’s
viewpoint
• Accepts concept of
reciprocal fairness
Mythical-Literal Faith
No. Age Description

7-12 • The child ( or adult) is likely to start

2 School- sorting out the real from the
aged make-believe
child
• Story becomes the major way of
giving unity and value to
experience, but the symbols in
those stories are seen as one-
dimensional and literal
• Beliefs, moral rules and attitudes
are also held literally.
Mythical-Literal Faith
No. Age Description

7-12 • God is anthropomorphic being in

2 School- the sky; heaven and hell are
aged viewed as actual places
child
• The person in the second of James
Fowler's Stages is also more able
to take the perspective of another
person but his view of reciprocity
is also rather literal. "If I follow the
rules, God will give me a good life."
"If I pray, God will grant my wish."
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic -Literal

Intuitive-
Projective

Undifferentiated
Synthetic-Conventional Faith
No. Age Description

12 + years • Questions values and religious

3 Adolescent
(Puberty)
beliefs in an attempt to form own
identity
• Here authority is located outside
the self - in the church leaders, in
the government, in the social
group.
• Religious concepts are "tacitly"
held - the person is not fully
conscious of having chosen to
believe something.
Synthetic-Conventional Faith
No. Age Description
12 + years • "Synthetic" - beliefs are not the result of any
3 Adolescent
(Puberty)
type of analytical thought. Any attempts to
reason with a person in this stage about his
beliefs, any suggestion of demythologizing his
beliefs is seen as a threat.
• "Conventional“ - that most people in this
stage see themselves as believing what
"everybody else" believes and would be
reluctant to stop believing it because of the
need they feel to stay connected with their
group.
• Most of the people in traditional churches are at
this stage.
• The majority of their congregation is in Stage 3
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic-Literal

Intuitive -
Projective

Undifferentiated
Individual-Reflective Faith
No. Age Description

21 + years ? • Assumes responsibility for own

4 Late-adolescent attitudes and beliefs
and young adult • What once was tacitly held
becomes explicit.
• The faith the person never
reflected about, and was not
completely able to articulate how
he arrived at it, becomes filled
with both a freedom that he now
CAN reflect on it, and the burden
that he now feels he MUST
examine.
Individual-Reflective Faith
No. Age Description

21 + years ? • The responsibility of this can be

4 Late- frightening, and it seems
adolescent religious groups are always
and young trying to discourage people
adult from making this examination
(of course, because it threatens
the viability of the institution if
people start questioning!)
Individual-Reflective Faith
No. Age Description
21 + years ? • It requires that the person be willing to
4 Late-
adolescent
interrupt their reliance on external authority
and relocate the source of authority within
and young himself.
adult • This the formation of an "executive ego,"
which is not a bad thing, like the other kind
of ego. It just means the person is more able
to govern himself without the need for rules
from the outside.
• Meanings in stories are separate from the
symbols themselves, so the stories are
demythologized.
Individual-Reflective Faith
No. Age Description

21 + years ? • Loss or demytholization of the

4 Late-
adolescent
symbols can result in grief and guilt
in some cases, and the process can
and young take up to seven years to complete.
adult • But in the place of the literal
symbol, the person gains the ability
to make comparisons and whatever
meanings they retain are explicitly
held.
Individual-Reflective Faith
No. Age Description

21 + years ? • The strengths of this stage lie in the

4 Late-
adolescent
capacity for critical reflection (and
the willingness to face truths that
and young may cause distancing from
adult comfortable thought patterns and
thus pain.)
• But a weakness of this stage is that
the person may put excess
confidence in the rational, conscious
mind, thus ignoring unconscious
forces that become more prominent
in the next stage.
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic-Literal

Intuitive-
Projective

Undifferentiated
Conjunctive Faith
No. Age Description

35 + • Integrates other perspectives about faith

5 years?
Adult
into own definition of truth
• People in this stage are willing to engage
in dialog with those of other faiths in the
belief that they might learn something
that will allow them to correct their own
truths.
• To get to this point, it is critical that the
person has moved through the stage of
demythologizing phase of Stage 4 where
they could move away from the literal
meanings.
 Conjunctive Faith
No. Age Description
35 + • The person in Stage 5 has already had their
5 years?
Adult
symbols broken by rational inspection and
consciously wills themselves to a more
comprehensive (metaphorical)interpretation of
the symbol. (i.e. God is not a literal being,
heaven and hell are not literal places).
• Ex. "...doesn't matter what you call it. Whether
you call it God or Jesus or Cosmic Flow or
Reality or Love, it doesn't matter what you call
it. It is there. And what you learn directly from
that source will not tie you up in creeds....that
separate you from your fellow man." (a
"Mystic")
Conjunctive Faith
No. Age Description
35 + • The Stage 5 person in Fowler's system is
5 years?
Adult
learning how to reengage with some type of
faith that is beyond their rational control, can
recognize the partial truths that any given
religious tradition might offer but may choose
to re-engage with it anyway.
• He can appreciate and recognize symbols as
such, without holding to their literal meaning
and is committed to a form of justice that
extends to those outside the confines of tribe,
class, religious community or nation.
Conjunctive Faith
No. Age Description

35 + • With this very inclusive worldview,

5 years? people at Stage 5 are in an
Adult excellent position to make huge
contributions to society but often
give in to a paralyzing passivity out
of fear for their own comfort and
well-being or are paralyzed by the
huge gap between reality and the
view they would like to hold as real.
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic-Literal

Intuitive-
Projective

Undifferentiated
Universalizing Faith
No. Age Description

45 +? • Makes concepts of love and justice

6 Adult tangible
• It is reached only by the very, very few.
Examples he names are Gandhi, Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa.
• Apparently people in this stage are able
to overcome the action/inaction paradox
of Stage 5 and are able to sacrifice their
own well-being to that of their cause.
Universalizing Faith
No. Age Description

45 +? • This is very different! Fowler uses the

6 Adult word "subversive" to refer to these
people because their contributions are
so radically different from the views of
the rest of society.
• Such people commit their total being to
their identification with persons and
circumstances where the futurity of
being is being crushed, blocked or
exploited. (They risk their own safety in
order to help the helpless in unexpected
ways.)
Stages of Faith
(Spiritual Development) Universalizing

Conjunctive

Individual-
Reflective

Synthetic-
conventional

Mythic-Literal

Intuitive-
Projective

Undifferentiated
What color is the chameleon?
Three men went into the
jungle on different
occasions and saw a
chameleon. “A chameleon
is red,” said the first man.
“No, a chameleon is green,”
said the second man.
“Nonsense, a chameleon is
brown,” said the third man.
Those who disagree about
the nature of God are like
these three men.
Hindu Teaching Theory
 “I believe faith is a human universal. We
are endowed at birth with nascent capacities
for faith. How these capacities are activated
and grow depends to a large extent on how
we are welcomed into the world and what
kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is
interactive and social; it requires community,
language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also
shaped by initiatives from beyond us and
other people, initiatives of spirit or grace.
How these latter initiatives are recognized
and imaged, or unperceived and ignored,
powerfully affects the shape of faith in our
lives.”