Steve
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06:56:43 pm on January 12, 2009 | # |
Some of you might be familiar with this already, but an old book that I have found really helpful on my journey is James Fowler’s “Stages of Faith.” Alan Jamieson, the author of “A Churchless Faith” has a brief summary of it here.* In it Fowler uses his experience as a developmental psychologist to examine the way in which our faith changes over time through conversion and development. For Fowler, “faith” refers broadly to our operations of knowing and valuing, and is something common to all of us regardless of religious belief.
I realise there is a danger of over simplifying things, but I find Fowler’s stages to be quite useful for understanding the development of faith. For example, it helped me to realise that my own difficult faith-transition of the last few years was actually quite normal. Moving from one “stage” to another often involves radical upheaval. As Fowler describes:
Stage dissolution means enduring the dissolution of a total way of making sense of things. It means relinquishing a sense of coherence in one’s near and ultimate environment. It frequently involves living with a deep sense of alienation for considerable periods. (Fowler, 1978:37)
The ideas explored by Fowler have also helped me to appreciate that different people are at different stages, and that is ok. I don’t need to try to get my friends to deconstruct their beliefs or whatever if they are not ready for it. We don’t necessarily become better people by progressing to a new stage, and our energy is probably better spent trying to understand where people are at, and helping them within their current stage.
I think it will be interesting to think about Fowler’s ideas in relation to Headspace. This might be a bit too much of a generalisation, but it seems to me that alot of people at Headspace probably have an “Individuative-Reflective” faith. I wonder is it possible for us as a community to cater for earlier stages as well, or is that better left to other communities? Is it even possible for a community to cater to all?
*For those who are interested in exploring this further, there are some other useful resources by Alan available here.
bidgood 5:30 pm on 25 January, 2009 | # |
At the risk of also being simplistic, I think there are basically two options, inclusive and exclusive belief systems. Now, of course, almost every set of beliefs is on one level exclusive. If I am a committed believer in the basic uncertainty of the universe, I will inevitably be at loggerheads with anyone who wishes to make any bold assertion about reality (I will also be prey to the inherent paradox at the core of my belief system, but that is another matter).
However, if we can get over the fact that we are all individuals and that none of us believes exactly the same thing, no matter how many times we chant creeds or read holy texts, then there is a possibility of dialogue and humility in the face of the human condition. That, for me, is the heart of a meaningful concept of inclusivity.
As a result of this, i suspect it is impossible for any community to cater for all comers. Moreover, I really don’t feel that we should feel compelled to do so. Headspace is fairly unusual in the Christian middle class mainstream faith community. There are plenty of people who will reinforce exclusive belief patterns if that is what someone is looking for. I don’t feel our role is to be trying to create an environment that will cater for people who are in that place. Rather, we are here to help them celebrate when they start to see the cracks in that particular set of walls, and to peer through the chinks with them, to catch a glimpse of what is on the other side.
it’s a strange thing to be an evangelical refugee (as, indeed, most of us are in one way or another). We feel ourselves liberated, but spend so much time defining ourselves in terms of what we used to be and are no longer. I think, on reflection, that this is another of those though patterns from our upbringing that we can’t quite flush out of our systems. It’s the ‘I was once a miserable sinner, but now everything is peachy’ line that we are all so familiar with. Like so many things from my youth, it is no truer in this context than it was in my days of evangelical fervour. There is no line to draw between ‘then’ and ‘now’. I’m still the sum total of my faults and past failings, but i am also a process, a constantly shifting thing, growing, developing, living and dying by degrees.
So maybe we need to recognise that the thing that makes us ask this question so frequently is that we’ve never really stopped feeling guilty about The Evangelical Itch ; the ‘we must get more people in’ mentality. Marketing teaches us that the best way to do this is to spread out net wider, to appeal to as many people as possible. Why? Why not just be who we are and allow let this community live and die, moment by moment as people find it and people move on. We aren’t selling anything here, so market principles don’t really apply. Who wants to be part of a 4000 strong mega mall church anyway?
bidgood 6:44 pm on 25 January, 2009 | # |
Ps. just read the summary on emergent uk. Really interesting article, and one that reflects my development too. I’m definitely somewhere in the Conjunctive phase at the moment, striving and failing with the possibilities of the universalizing stage. It’s not a boundary i expect to cross any time soon.
problem #3 for us conjunctive types is, apperently
3. The dark side of receptiveness to the witness and the truth of other traditions can be a subdued sense of imperative to in `evangelization’.
Due to the faulty grammar, i am unsure as to what this is intended to mean. Can anyone who has read more on the topic shed any light? Does it mean that realising the value in other traditions and the imperfect nature of one’s own diminishes the urge to ‘evangelise’ rather than discoursing with other traditions? If so, I cannot see how that could be a bad thing. Or is the point that one can lose any sense of one’s own perspective in the fog of relativity? In which case, why the use of the word `evangelization’