This is a paper that critiques theories of spiritual development including Fowler, Oser, and McGoldrick that articulates a personal theory of spiritual development using at least five sources in the APA style. All biblical quotes are from the New American Standard Bible.
Fowler faith development
Fowler and Dell define faith (2006): An integral, centering process underlying the formation of beliefs, values, and meanings
Stages of Faith Development
Stage 0 – Primal Faith (infancy to age 2)
Stage 1 – Intuitive-Projective Faith (toddlerhood and early childhood)
Stage 2 – Mythic-Literal Faith (middle childhood and beyond)
Stage 3 – Synthetic-Conventional Faith (adolescence and beyond, Erford, 2017, pp. 72-73)
Later stages one might experience in their spiritual journey:
Stage 4 – Individuative-Reflective Faith “a person beings to reflect on and even question what one believes and why one believes it” (Erford, 2017, p. 73)
Stage 5 – Conjunctive Faith “rarely encountered before midlife, and when a person is in this stage the person begins to accept that there may be multiple truths.“ (Erford, 2017, p. 73)
Stage 6 – Universalizing Faith “evil of all kinds is opposed nonviolently, leading to activism that attempts to change adverse social conditions” (Erford, 2017, p. 73)
“many develop a mature sense of spirituality . . . universalizing faith stage . . . Fowler gives examples of Mother Teresa” (Erford, 2017, p. 447), a Catholic.
“faith development theory “[A] framework for understanding the evolution of how human beings conceptualize God, or a Higher Being, and how the influence of that Higher being has an impact on core values, beliefs, and means in their personal lives and in their relationships with others” (Erford, 2017, p. 456) The writer personally does not like the use of the word evolution here. He agrees God impacts our values beliefs, ends, ways, and means that things are done.
Fowler wrote on a developmental perspective on faith and the quest for meaning (Erford, 2017, p 481). The writer agreed faith develops and meaning is important in life.
This reminds the writer of the Engel scale which he learned from C. Peter Wagner, Ph.D.:
+5 Stewardship
+4 Communion with God
+3 Conceptual and behavioral growth
+2 Incorporation into body
+1 Post-decision evaluation
0 New birth
(Implementation of the Personal Styles of Evangelism in the Highland Seventh-day Adventist Church for Maximal Evangelistic Impact, 2007)
The writer leads two weekly reentry-to-society classes at the Federal prison in Florence, CO called Threshold. (Inmates Embrace Threshold, 2016) It uses a scale like the Engel scale. Most of the inmates at the Federal Prison Camp are towards the “self-centered” left side compared to the “God-centered” right side. Prayerfully they will get closer to Christ.
Oser religious judgments
Oser was a professor of educational psychology in Switzerland who “addressed moral, religious and faith development.” (Erford, 2017, p. 73)
“religious judgment refers to the human “reasoning that relates reality as experienced to something beyond reality and that serves to provide meaning and direction beyond learned content” (Erford, 2017, p. 463) It is important to have direction and meaning in our lives.
Stage 1 – “An incomprehensible God is seen as simply acting upon the world uninfluenced by people” (The writer respectfully disagrees with this according to 1 John 5: 14 “if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”)
Stage 2 – “actions by God can be influenced by a person’s good or bad deeds” (We see this throughout the Bible. Exodus 32: 14 states: “So the Lord relented of the harm which He said He would do to His people.”)
Stage 3 – realization that God is separate or distinct from the autonomous human world (The first verse of the Bible states in Genesis 1:1 “- In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”)
Stage 4 – freedom stems from God’s ultimate and divine plan and gives meaning to a person’s life (Erford, 2017, slide 84) Galatians 5:13 states “It was for freedom that Christ set us free.”
Stage 5 is missing from the PowerPoint, which is “God is seen as intertwined in human action that takes place in the world, including love and kindness” (Erford, 2017, p. 74)
A summary of the above is “Faith development theory was first introduced by Fowler in an attempt to understand the evolution of how we conceptualize God or a supreme being, while Oser addressed the religious judgments made around a person’s religious understanding.” (Erford, 2017, p. 80) Fowler and Oser are important in understanding spiritual development.
Genograms by McGoldrick, Gerson, and Petry
They ask some questions in Chapter 2 that the writer may use in his counseling:
Do you participate regularly in religious services? (If not, the writer wonders about how close they are to God.)
What are your beliefs about God? (This helps to understand someone in our plethora of world religions.¬)
How do you deal with transgressions that violate your conscience? Forgiveness? (Sins of commission (on purpose) and omission (unknown) need to be dealt with, otherwise, there may be spiritual or physical ramifications from guilt. Forgiveness by God and others is necessary.
Have you had encounters with spirits, ghosts, angels, or demons? (McGoldrick et al, p.55) The latter gets at the worldview of the person. Some do and some do not believe in these. The writer uses a biblical worldview for these entities.
The writer’s theory of spiritual development
The writer has studied Fowler before, so he will continue to use it. Oser is new to the writer, so he may use it in the future. The writer read McGoldrick’s book so he quoted it here. He used it to do a genogram of his family back to his grandparents for Denver Seminary. Threshold in the Federal prisons asks inmates to do a simple genogram as well. The writer will continue to encourage others to use these resources so that spiritual development can be understood.
This was a paper that critiqued theories of spiritual development including Fowler, Oser, and McGoldrick that articulated a personal theory of spiritual development using at least five sources in the APA style.
Bibliography
Erford, Bradley T. (2017). An Advanced Lifespan Odyssey for Counseling Professionals. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Erford, Bradley T. (2017). An Advanced Lifespan Odyssey for Counseling Professionals. PowerPoint, Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Implementation of the Personal Styles of Evangelism in the Highland Seventh-day Adventist Church for Maximal Evangelistic Impact (2007). Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1007&context=hrsa
Inmates Embrace Threshold. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.bop.gov/resources/news/20160523_inmates_embrace_threshold.jsp#:~:text=(BOP)%20%2D%20The%20Threshold%20Program,in%20the%20community%20after%20release
McGoldrick, Monica, Gerson, Randy and Petry, Sueli. (2008) Genograms. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
New American Standard Bible. (1977). La Habra, CA: Lockman Foundation.
