Dr. James Fowler and his associates have asked these questions, and others like them, of nearly 400 people in the past eight years. They have talked with persons of all ages, from four to eighty-eight, including Jews, Catholics, Protestants, agnostics, and atheists. In many cases, the interviews became in-depth conversations that provided rare, intimate glimpses into the various ways our lives have meaning and purpose, windows into what this book calls faith.
Faith, as approached here, is not necessarily religious; nor is it to be equated with belief. Rather, faith is a person’s way of leaning into and making sense of life. More verb than noun, faith is the dynamic system of images, values, and commitments that guides one’s life. It is thus universal: everyone who chooses to go on living operates by some basic faith.
Now James Fowler’s long-awaited, trail-blazing book shows in rich detail how every life is progressively centered about some fundamental set of meanings and values, and identifies the developmental stages that characterize the basic faith we live by, the reasons we find life worth living.
Building on the contributions of such key thinkers as Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg, Stages of Faith draws on a wide range of scholarship, literature, and firsthand research to present expertly but engagingly the six stages that emerge in working out the meaning of our lives—from the intuitive, imitative faith of childhood through conventional and then more independent faith to the universalizing, self-transcending faith of full maturity (as exemplified by such modern leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr., Dag Hammarskjöld, and Mother Teresa).
The views and life stories shared in the interviews bring these stages to life, and Fowler shows concretely that all people move through the same stage sequence, despite the fact that the contents of their images, values, and commitments may be quite different. He explains too how many people do not complete the stage sequence, but remain on a plateau.
Stages of Faith helps us to understand our own pilgrimage of faith, the passages of our own quest for meaning.