STAGES OF FAITH FROM INFANCY THROUGH ADOLESCENCE

8/11/2019 STAGES OF FAITH FROM INFANCY THROUGH ADOLESCENCE

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3STAGES OF FAITH FROM INFANCY

THROUGH ADOLESCENCE :REFLECTIONS ON THREE DECADES

OF FAITH DEVELOPMENT THEORY

JAMES W. F OWLER

MARY LYNN DELL

Faith development theory was pioneeredoriginally in the 1970s (Fowler, 1974)and 1980s (Fowler, 1981) as a framework

for understanding the evolution of how humanbeings conceptualize God, or a Higher Being,and how the influence of that Higher Being hasan impact on core values, beliefs, and meaningsin their personal lives and in their relationshipswith others. Because of the formative influenceof this theoretical work in both religious andspiritual development (including multiple refer-ences in this volume), it merits full articulationand a recounting of its origins. This chaptergives the early history of the author’s faith

development theory and introduces readers to itskey concepts, with special emphasis on thosestages most commonly seen in children andadolescents. It also reviews some of the criticaland constructive assessments of faith develop-ment theory by scholars in the field, through thelenses of several volumes of collected articles.

THE B IRTH AND NURTURE

OF FAITH DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Harvard Divinity School in 1968 was a placewhere a diverse community of students studied

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Portions of this chapter are adapted from Fowler, J. W. (2004). Faith development at 30:Naming the challenges of faith in a new millennium. Religious Education, 99, 405–421, used by permission of the Religious Education Association; and from Fowler, J. W., and Dell, M. L. (2004). Stages of faith and iden-tity: Birth to teens. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 13, 17–34, used by permissionof Elsevier.

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copying and sending the notes and handoutsfor the course to colleagues all over the world.In 1977, I had moved to Emory University’sCandler School of Theology to teach and doresearch. There, with strong support for the faithdevelopment enterprise, I was able to completeStages of Faith, which was published in 1981.The book is now in its 40th printing, if youcount both the hardback and paperback editions.

AN OVERVIEW OF

FAITH DEVELOPMENT THEORY

Faith development theory and research have

focused on a generic understanding of faith thatsees it as foundational to social relations, to per-sonal identity, and to the making of personaland cultural meanings (Dell, 2000; Fowler,1980, 1981, 1986a, 1986b, 1987, 1989, 1991,1996). Like many dimensions of our lives, faithseems to have a broadly recognizable pattern of development. This unfolding pattern can becharacterized in terms of developing emotional,cognitive, and moral interpretations and responses.Our ways of imagining and committing in faithcorrelate significantly with our ways of know-

ing and valuing more generally. We are askingyou to think of faith in a more inclusive sensethan Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, or Judaicfaith. Faith, in the sense used here, even extendsbeyond religious faith. Understood in this moreinclusive sense, faith may be characterized asan integral, centering process, underlying theformation of the beliefs, values, and meaningsthat:

1. Give coherence and direction to persons’ lives;

2. Link them in shared trusts and loyalties withothers;

3. Ground their personal stances and communalloyalties in a sense of relatedness to a largerframe of reference; and

4. Enable them to face and deal with the chal-lenges of human life and death, relying on thatwhich has the quality of ultimacy in their lives.

Faith, taken in this broad sense, is a commonfeature of human beings. In the language of child psychiatrist Erik Erikson, faith begins with

basic trust, as the child forms bonds with themother and other intimate caregivers. As thechild matures, physically and emotionally, faithaccommodates the development of an expand-ing range of object relations, and exposure toreligious symbols and practices may nurture asense of relatedness to the transcendent. We willdraw on research, theory, and clinical observa-tions that provide more detailed perspectives onthe emergence and development of faith, under-stood in this broader sense, from birth throughthe teen years.

STAGES OF FAITH : AN OVERVIEW

In the following descriptions of the faith stagesand the changes they bring, we acknowledge thecomplex interplay of factors that must be takeninto account if we are to begin to understandfaith development. These include biologicalmaturation, emotional and cognitive develop-ment, psychosocial experience, and the role of religiocultural symbols, meanings, and prac-tices. This complexity is increased if we con-sider gender and race, which we try to do in thisaccount. Because development in faith involves

all of these aspects, human development—movement from one stage to another—is notautomatic or assured. Persons may reachchronological and biological adulthood whileremaining best described by a structural stage of faith that would most commonly be associatedwith early or middle childhood, or adolescence.By the same token, contexts of spiritual nurtureand practice, coupled with a person’s spiritualaptitude and discipline, may lead some childrento a deeper and more rapid development in faith.

Primal Faith (Infancy to Age 2)

More physical and neurological growthand development occurs in the first year of lifethan during any other life stage. Assuming a rel-atively uncomplicated pregnancy and deliveryand a healthy neonate, parents can expect thebirth weight to double by 5 months of age andtriple by the first birthday. Length at birth willincrease by 50% during the first year. By thesecond birthday the brain will attain 70% of itsfull adult weight, its neurons sprouting millionsof dendrites. By 3 months of age infants can

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or control of the universe—along the lines of simple fairness and moral reciprocity. God isoften constructed on the model of a consistentand caring, but just, ruler or parent. In this stageone often sees a sense of cosmic fairness atwork: The child believes that goodness isrewarded and badness is punished.

In shaping meanings the mythic-literal childprimarily employs narrative. In this respect, thisstage provides a permanent contribution tomeaning making. Stories are as close as themythic-literal stage comes to reflective synthe-sis. Neither children nor adolescents (or adults)of this stage carry out extensive analytic or syn-thetic reflection on their stories. They offer nar-ratives from the middle of the flowing streams of their lives. They do not “step out on the banks”to reflect on where the streams have come from,where they are going, or on what larger mean-ings might give connection and integrated intel-ligibility to their collection of experiences andstories. In this stage the use of symbols and con-cepts remains largely concrete and literal.

The mythic-literal stage begins to wane withthe discovery that ours is not a “quick-payoff universe”; that is, evil or bad persons do notnecessarily suffer for their transgressions, at

least in the short run. And often, “bad thingshappen to good people.” We have coined theterm “11-year-old atheists” for children who, inhaving this latter experience, temporarily or per-manently give up belief in a God built along thelines of simple cosmic moral retribution.

The mythic-literal stage initiates and devel-ops the beginnings of reflection on the feelingsand ideas of faith. It may be that girls, whomCarol Gilligan and others see as having an earlierand more developed interest in and vocabularyfor interpersonal relatedness, progress morerapidly in an awareness of the emotions andskills of interpersonal relatedness. This can meanthat girls may give attention to the dynamics of relationships earlier than do boys, bringing bothgreater sensitivity, on the one hand, and moreease in both managing and manipulating inter-personal relations, on the other (Gilligan, 1982).

Synthetic-ConventionalFaith (Adolescence and Beyond)

Puberty (for girls) brings accelerated growth inheight and weight, an increase in the percentage

of overall body fat, and the emergence of sec-ondary sexual characteristics. In addition itbrings the menarche, usually beginning between8 and 13 years of age. The average age formenarche in the United States among girls of European American ancestry is 12.9 years;among girls of African American descent itis slightly more than half a year earlier at 12.2years (with a standard deviation of 1.2 yearsfor both groups) (Ford & Coleman, 1990;Neinstein, 1990; Offer, Schonert-Reichl, &Boxer, 1996). For boys, on average, the com-parable patterns of the onset of the bodily andemotional transformations of adolescence comea year or so later.

Accompanying the exploding physical, glan-dular, and sexual changes brought on by adoles-cence, the synthetic-conventional era also bringsrevolutions in cognitive functioning and inter-personal perspective taking. With the emergenceof early formal operational thinking (Piaget),a young person’s thought and reasoning takewings. Capable of using and appreciatingabstract concepts, young persons begin to think about their own thinking, to reflect upon theirstories, and to name and synthesize their mean-ings (Piaget, 1970, 1976).

In this period we see the emergence of mutual interpersonal perspective taking (Selman,1974, 1976): “I see you seeing me; I see the meI think you see.” And the obverse can also beappreciated: “You see you according to me; yousee the you you think I see.” This capacity canmake youths acutely sensitive to the meaningsthey seem to have for others, and the evaluationsthose meanings imply. The lack of “thirdperson” perspective taking, however, oftenmakes the young teen overdependent on theresponses and mirroring responses andevaluations of significant others. Identity andpersonal interiority—one’s own and others’—become absorbing concerns.

Personality, both as style and substance,becomes a conscious issue. From within this stageyouth construct the ultimate environment in termsof the personal. God representations can be popu-lated with personal qualities of accepting love,understanding, loyalty, and support during timesof crisis. During this stage youths develop attach-ments to beliefs, values, and elements of personalstyle that link them in con-forming (forming-with) relations with the most significant others

Stages of Faith From Infancy Through Adolescence –•–39




among their peers, family, and other nonfamilyadults. Identity, beliefs, and values are stronglyfelt, even when they contain contradictory ele-ments. They tend, however, to be espoused intacit, rather than explicit, formulations. At thisstage one’s ideology or worldview is lived andasserted; only gradually does it become a matterof critical and reflective articulation.

Where earlier deficits in the self and in one’spatterns of object relations have not been workedthrough and healed, they become factors that caninhibit the use of cognitive abilities in the tasksof identity and ideology construction in adoles-cence. Frequently we see splits between theemotional and cognitive functioning of adoles-cents or adults that are directly attributable tosuch unresolved issues and relations from earlychildhood. Sometimes the potential of God as aconstructive self-object must be jettisonedbecause God can only be emotionally populatedwith the shaming or narcissistic qualities grow-ing out of our experiences with our earliest andmost salient object relations.

One decisive limit of the synthetic-conventionalstage is its lack yet of third-person perspectivetaking—a lack of the capacity to construct andwork from a perspective that holds both self and

other in the same frame, and provides a basis forgrowing objectivity regarding interpersonalrelationships. This means that in its dependenceon significant others for confirmation andclarity about one’s identity and meaning tothem, the synthetic-conventional self does notyet have a third-person perspective from whichit can see and evaluate self–other relations froma viewpoint outside themselves. In the syn-thetic-conventional stage the young person oradult can remain trapped in the “Tyranny of theThey”—that is, an overdependence on the mir-roring and evaluations of influential significantothers.

The Later Stages of Faith

In order to place faith stages typicallyencountered in childhood and adolescence incontext with the trajectory of growth that maybe experienced in young, middle, and olderadulthood, readers may find somewhat lessdetailed explanations of the final three stages of faith development theory helpful. In addition,we recognize that many professionals not only

work with parents and other adults significant inthe lives of children, but continue clinical work with adult patients and thus may be interestedin the entire theory from birth through the endof life.

As one considers faith development theory ingeneral, and especially the final three stages, itis important to bear in mind three points.

First, by determining which stage an individ-ual may be operating from at any given time, weare in no way assigning a grade to or judgmentabout the validity, sincerity, value, or effective-ness of that individual’s relationship to the deityof his or her faith. To identify a person’s stage orstage transition does not imply that his or herspiritual life is better, more faithful, or desirablethan anyone else’s, whether in that stage oranother. Faith development theory is notintended to be used, nor should it ever be used,as a measure of “how good a Christian,” “howgood a Jew,” “how good a Muslim,” or “howgood” anyone of any faith tradition may be.Making such judgments constitutes a majorabuse of this theory. We are not putting a value

judgment on the contents of a person’s faith andreligious/spiritual identity. We are attempting todescribe patterns of knowing and relating

through assessing cognitive, moral, and otherforms of development that constitute a person’srelationship to the transcendent or the HigherBeing of a particular religious tradition andrelationships with other humans, both inside andoutside a person’s particular faith community.

Second, with each successive stage comes aseries of qualitatively distinguishable patterns of thought, realizations, and behaviors, and in eachstage qualitatively new and more complex oper-ations and capacities are added to those of thepreceding stage(s).

Third, transition from one stage to anotheris not inevitable or assumed. For instance,although many elementary school–age childrenare best described by the mythic-literal stage, soare many adolescents and some adults. Whilethere are no upper age limits to these stages,there are minimum ages below which the laterstages are not normally found. For instance, it isunlikely for an individual to meet the descrip-tion of the synthetic-conventional stage beforethe early teens or early adolescent years, and itis rare to see someone fully grounded in theindividuative-reflective stage prior to the early





20s. On the other hand, one can see individualsmuch older than the minimum ages experienc-ing transitioning into a next stage. And it is notunusual for many not to reach the later stages.Again, this does not constitute a value judgmenton the maturity, sincerity, or worth of any indi-vidual’s religious faith (Fowler, 1981, 1987).

Individuative-Reflective Faith

Two significant indicators mark the individu-ative-reflective stage. First, one must developthe ability to reflect critically on the values,beliefs, and commitments one subscribed toas part of constructing the previous stage, thesynthetic-conventional. This reexamination of deeply held beliefs can be a painful process.Second, one must struggle with developing aself-identity and self-worth capable of indepen-dent judgment in relation to the individuals,institutions, and worldview that anchored one’ssense of being up until that time. Questions rep-resentative of this stage include: Who am I whenI am not defined primarily as someone’s daugh-ter, son, or spouse? Who am I apart from myeducational, occupational, or professional iden-tity? Who am I beyond my circle of friends

or familiar community? In constructing theindividuative-reflective position, inherited orfamiliar symbols, creeds, beliefs, traditions, andreligious trappings are scrutinized, and thoseof other faiths and traditions may be evaluatedfor what they might have to offer. This testingapplies, as well, to secular value systems, world-views, and the circles that espouse them. In theend, the familiar and traditional beliefs andpractices may not be rejected or discarded, but if they are retained, they are held with more self-aware clarity and intentional choice (Fowler,1981, 1987).

Conjunctive Faith

The conjunctive stage is characteristic of areflective adult thinker who recognizes thattruths of all kinds can be approached from mul-tiple perspectives and that faith must balanceand maintain the tensions between those multi-ple perspectives. This stage makes sense out of paradoxes. In Christianity, for instance, Godis seen as all-powerful and yet God limits thedivine expression of power in granting humans

agency and freedom. And though the sovereignof history, God took on the humble and lowlyform of a human man who permitted himself to be put to death at the hands of other humans.This knowledge and faith build on necessaryparadox and tensional, complex trust andcommitment.

Individuals in the conjunctive stage expressa principled interest in and openness to truthsof other cultural and religious traditions, andbelieve that dialogue with those different othersmay lead to deepened understandings and newinsights into their own traditions and beliefs.Other paradoxes that are dealt with in this stageinclude the realities that one is both old andyoung, with both masculine and feminine qual-ities, conscious and unconscious, and intention-ally constructive and well meaning while at thesame time being unintentionally destructive insome aspects of life and community member-ship. One is both singular and individuated, yethas an increased awareness of being dependenton and in interdependent solidarity with bothfriends and strangers. This results in the desirefor new ways to relate to God, others, and self (Fowler, 1981, 1987).

Universalizing Faith

In this review of faith stages, we note that thecircle of “people who count” has in each stageexpanded, so that by the time one reaches theuniversalizing stage, one is concerned aboutcreation and being as a whole, regardless of nationality, social class, gender, age, race, polit-ical ideology, and religious tradition. In this ulti-mate stage of faith, the self is drawn out of itsown self-limits into a groundedness and partici-pation in one’s understanding of the Holy.Those once seen as enemies may be understoodalso to be children of God and deserving of unconditional love. Evil of all kinds is opposednonviolently, leading to activism that attemptsto change adverse social conditions as anexpression of that universal regard for all lifethat emanates from God’s love and justice.

While persons of universalizing faith con-tinue to be human, with common shortcomingsand inconsistencies, they are exceptional in thestrength of their passion that all creation shouldmanifest God’s goodness and that all humanitybe one in peace. In their boldness to live out the





convictions of their faith, they are both freeingand threatening to the rest of us. Relatively fewindividuals claim this level of vision and faith-related action. Among those exceptional figuresmost would agree manifested or manifest theuniversalizing stage are Mohandas Gandhi,Mother Teresa, the Reverend Dr. Martin LutherKing Jr., and, perhaps some would say, formerU.S. president Jimmy Carter, ArchbishopDesmond Tutu, and anti–death penalty activistSister Helen Prejean (Fowler, 1981, 1987).

Stages of Faith:The Effort to Be Inclusive

Faith development theory bridges the cate-gories of specific religions. Wilfred CantwellSmith (1979), a great scholar in the interpreta-tions of the world’s religious traditions, set fortha succinct characterization of faith:

Faith, then, is a quality of human living. At its bestit has taken the form of serenity and courage andloyalty and service: a quiet confidence and joywhich enable one to feel at home in the universe,and to find meaning in the world and in one’s ownlife, a meaning that is profound and ultimate, and

is stable no matter what may happen to oneself atthe level of immediate event. Men and women of this kind of faith face catastrophe and confusion,affluence and sorrow, unperturbed; face opportu-nity with conviction and drive; and face otherswith cheerful charity. (p. 12)

Smith contrasts faith with other terms thatare frequently used as synonyms for faith: reli-gion and belief. He finds that, closely studied,most of the major world traditions see faith not

just as a matter of believing or of adhering to theteachings of a religious tradition. Rather, hesays, “faith involves an alignment of the heart orwill, a commitment of loyalty and trust” (p. 11).His explication of the Hindu term for faith,sraddha, puts it best: “It means, almost withoutequivocation, ‘to set one’s heart on.’ To set one’sheart on someone or something requires thatone has ‘seen’ or ‘sees the point of’ that towhich one is loyal” (p. 11). Faith is a resting of the heart, the investing of trust in and loyalty toa Reality or Being or Power (Fowler, 1981).Smith points out that the Hebrew ( aman he’min,munah ), the Greek ( pistuo, Pistis ), and the Latin

(credo, credere ) words for faith parallel thosefrom the Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu sources(Fowler, 1981; Selman, 1976).

SIGNIFICANT D ISCUSSIONS OF FAITH

DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND RESEARCH

There have been four collections of writings inwhich commentators and critics of faith devel-opment research and theory have written on thetopic. 1 [Author: PLEASE CONFIRM THATTHE NOTE PRECEDING THE REFER-ENCES IS THE ONE TO BE CITED HERE]The first appeared in 1980 and was initiated byDr. Christiane Brusselmans, a religious educatorfrom the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.She, with her colleagues at Leuven, and with theHarvard developmentalists Lawrence Kohlberg,James Fowler, and Robert Kegan, convened aconference in the 12th-century Cistercian Abbayed’Senanque in the south of France in 1979. Thisconference brought together an internationalgroup of scholars, principally from Belgium,Switzerland, Ireland, and the United States. Itincluded Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Thecollection of essays from that fruitful conference

was published as Toward Moral and Religious Maturity (Brusselmans, 1980).The second collection of writings was edited

by Professor Craig Dykstra, then on the facultyof Princeton Theological Seminary, and Dr.Sharon Daloz Parks, then a professor at HarvardDivinity School. With the support and hospital-ity of President Barbara Wheeler of the AuburnTheological Seminary in New York, ProfessorsDykstra and Parks convened a group of 13professors of theology, psychology, and reli-gious education in New York to present papersthat provided constructive criticism and sugges-tions in critical engagement with faith develop-ment theory and research. A striking themein this conference grew out of the intentionalinclusion of feminist voices in commentingand proposing alternatives to faith developmenttheory, based on gender studies and women’stheological voices. The conference took place in1982; its proceedings were published in 1986as Faith Development and Fowler (Dykstra &Parks, 1986).

A third collection of writings that criticallyengaged with faith development theory took





form under the editorship of Dr. Jeff Astley of the North of England Institute for ChristianEducation and Dr. Leslie Francis of TrinityCollege, Carmarthen, Wales. Unlike its prede-cessors, this volume did not result from a con-ference. Rather, the editors drew together a setof Fowler’s writings along with commentariesand critical articles on faith development byother authors from the United States and theUnited Kingdom, many of which had beenpublished previously in journals. The majorityof the authors were religious educators andscholars from developmental studies (Astley &Francis, 1992).

The fourth volume of critical commentarywas primarily prepared by and for Europeanscholars, though it was translated for English-speaking readers as well. Edited by Karl ErnstNipkow and Friedrich Schweitzer of theUniversity of Tübingen, the essays in this vol-ume placed faith development theory alongsidethe work on religious development of the Swissscholar Fritz K. Oser, whose research in thestructural developmental tradition of Jean Piagethas strong empirical grounding, particularly inrelation to the study of children and youth. Oserwrote to inform the teaching of religion in Swiss

and other European schools and schools (Fowler,Nipkow, & Schweitzer, 1991). Both Fowler andOser owe debts of gratitude to LawrenceKohlberg as well as Jean Piaget. In this volume,some of the most penetrating commentary on thebackground and criticism of structural develop-mental theories comes from Nipkow andSchweitzer, from Clark Power of the Universityof Notre Dame, and from Nicola Slee of Rohampton Institute, Whitelands College,England. From the standpoint of religious edu-cation, Gloria Durka of Fordham University,Gabriel Moran of New York University, andJohn W. Hull of the University of Birmingham(England) provided trenchant insights.

A C RITICAL ISSUE IN THE D ISCUSSION

OF FAITH DEVELOPMENT THEORY

The most central divider between those whoendorse faith development with few reservationsand those who have some strong critical resis-tance lies, I believe, in the effort of faith devel-opment theory to define faith in a functional and

structural form that can be inclusive of thedynamics of faith in many traditions, and evenfor some persons or groups who hold secularideologies. Those who embrace the use of struc-tural developmental trajectories, with theirfocus on different levels of cognitive, moral,and emotional operations, generally find theresearch and stage theory helpful in addressingquestions of readiness and of matching edu-cational methods. They find that the scaffold-ing the theory offers is also helpful in shapingthe educational aims involved in teaching andexploring faith traditions. They acknowledgeand assert—as I do—that the substantive con-tents of faith traditions, with their scriptures,liturgies, ethical teachings, and visions of theHoly, do provide strong, distinctive, and uniqueelements for religious formation. The “structur-ing power” of the substantive contents of faithmakes a tremendous impact on the perceptions,motives, visions, and actions of believers. Thestage theory makes its contribution, however, byhelping to match the competences of eachstage—and the operations of mind and emotionthat characterize them—with ways of teachingand with the symbols, practices, and contentsof faith at different levels of reflective inquiry

and complexity. Educators of this mind-set findfaith development theory helpful for preparingpersons to teach at different age and stagelevels, and to match their methods and commu-nicative practices with the groups’ probablestage or range of stages.

On the other hand, there are those who, fortheological reasons, hold faith to be unique andparticular to the Christian or to another specificreligious tradition. For them, faith is notgeneric, and it is not definable apart from thecontents and the practices of particular tradi-tions. In his first article in the volume Faith

Development and Fowler (Dykstra & Parks,1986), Dykstra (1986a) engages in a close argu-ment in which he objects to distinguishing thestructuring and functioning of faith from thesubstance, content, and practices of Christianfaith. It pleases me, however, that later in thatsame volume, Dykstra (1986b) provides astrong and clear account of the usefulness of thestage theory for helping to guide and check theappropriate levels of teaching and curriculumfor persons based on their structural stage—if the structuring power of the contents of a faith





tradition is not excluded or treated as inter-changeable with that of other traditions or secu-lar orientations.

This issue is an important one, and it shouldbe made clear that the structuring power of thecontents of religious faith traditions—the teach-ings, scriptures, practices, and ethical orienta-tions, with their substance and power—arenever to be ignored in the use of faith develop-ment theory. It should never be the primary goalof religious education simply to precipitate andencourage stage advancement. Rather, payingattention to stage and stage advancement isimportant in helping us shape our teaching andinvolvement with members of religious tradi-tions. Movement in stage development, properlyunderstood, is a by-product of teaching the sub-stance and the practices of faith.

CONCLUSIONS

In closing, some of the strengths, limitations,and criticisms of faith development theory needto be acknowledged. Fortunately, the formativesample of 359 interviews was almost equallybalanced at 50% from each gender. In the origi-

nal sample Protestants made up 45% of theinterviewees, Catholics represented 36.5%,11.2% were Jews, and 3.6% were OrthodoxChristians. A remaining 3.6% were “other.”Given the growth in the numbers of adherents toother major traditions in the United States, inter-view research needs to be conducted to widenthe sample to include Muslim, Buddhist, andsecular respondents. Interviewees have not beenstudied longitudinally.

Further, most of the foundational researchwas conducted in the 1970s and 1980s.Subsequent research in the early 1990s largelyconfirmed the theory. Professor Heinz Streib of the University of Bielefeld is presently conduct-ing the most significant research in the faithdevelopment tradition. The research he and hiscolleagues are carrying out in Europe and in theUnited States promises to yield considerabletangible new data and insights into these issues.

A new major round of faith developmentinterviews could shed light on the impacts onpeople’s faith of “globalization” and of the fea-tures of experience that have come to be calledthe “postmodern condition.” Both of these

phenomena reflect patterns of radical secular-ization and the erosion of religious and moralauthority, on the one hand, and, paradoxically,the worldwide growth of fundamentalist andconservative faith practices, on the other. Add tothese factors the rise in interest of many “nonre-ligious” persons in “spirituality,” and one beginsto grasp the richness and diversity that faithdevelopment research encounters today.

NOTE

1. A recent, thoughtful collection of essays byinternational authors critically engaging this author’swork in faith development and practical theology isOsmer and Schweitzer (2003).

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STAGES OF FAITH FROM INFANCY THROUGH ADOLESCENCE