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Wrought Faith: Minding What We’ve Missed in Faith Development

Joy Berry, Religious Educator

James Fowler's classic theory centered the individual's progress through six stages of faith. The first four have "shorthand" names that make it easy to remember how development happens in each. Faith is caught in stage one, and then it is taught, bought, and sought in stages two through four, Fowler offered.

Yet without a commitment to faith that is wrought - intentionally shared learning in our congregations - the promise of faith development, and indeed the very premise of a "covenantal faith", is in question.

Wrought is an old word that means worked. I use it because it rhymes with the those common shorthand versions for Fowler's stages. But also because wrought is a good old word: it describes something strong but flexible, able to be forged, changed, and strengthened, through active work. It's resilient and malleable: it's meant to be shaped with tools, by human hands. Its final form is determined by how it is worked.

Fowler believed that individuals move through the stages of faith in a linear process, and that most people never move beyond stage 4, to the "rare" stages 5 and 6.  

But why would they be so rare?

What if Fowler's emphasis on the individual made him miss something essential, about how individual development always happens in a context of connection: that our own, and even our congregations' potential faith development is determined by how much of it happens in shared work, learning and growing together across generations?

What if our human blueprint for faith development as individuals depends on the degree to which our communities of faith are engaged in shared faith work? What if our collective learning experiences are the the practice and training that determines how whole and strong and complete our faith can eventually become? Does that mean communities, like individuals, can be defined by their collective faith stage?

How much of our faith is shaped in shared work, in our congregations today? And how might doing more of it change the overall faith development stage of our congregations?

 

Stage four is about the individual journey: asking questions and seeking answers. It's where we become capable of setting aside the opinions of others and making decisions about what's best for us, about what we believe and don't believe, as independent and unique individuals. It's an important stage; but it should be a waystation, not a destination.

Is covenantal community possible without a majority of congregants moving on to Fowler's stage five, when the "strong need for individual self-reflection gives way to a sense of the importance of community in faith development" and "a realization that other people's faiths might inform and deepen their own"?

The most compelling question of all, to me, after a decade as a congregational religious educator, is this: Can we expect to develop the faith of our children and youth beyond the faith stage of the adults we recruit to be their teachers and mentors and guides?  

What do you think? What would a commitment to active, shared faith development look like?

How might more "wrought faith" change the faith of our children, and our adults?

 

How might it change our congregations -- and the future of our faith? Please share your ideas!

     

For a different audience (ministers and congregational lay leaders), I switched out some of the language above for this:

Many UUs and many of our churches seem to get "stuck" in stage 4 faith development. Fowler says moving into stage 5 and 6 is relatively uncommon. Why is that? Is there something special in the psyche of those few gurus and transcendentalists?

Or is it possible that faith development, like most other kinds of emotional-spiritual-social development, depends on the capacity of the environment to support it?

Fowler wrote that in stage 4, folks begin to question authority and that includes the rules and expectations of faith community. The UUA's handout on faith stages is here: http://www.uua.org/.../wholeness/workshop2/167602.shtml

It reports that stage 4 folks often leave churches when they don't get their way.

Stage 4 is all about "I". It's an important developmental stage; but it should be a spiritual waystation, not a destination.

Is it possible that having congregations with many individuals at stage 4 create challenges to the whole notion of religious education (led by adults from the congregation)?

Is covenantal community possible without a substantial population of folks able to move beyond stage 4, into the transition to 5, when "the strong need for individual self-reflection gives way to a sense of the importance of community in faith development...they have a realization that other people's faiths might inform and deepen their own."

Is work toward the Beloved Community, the world we dream about, or missional faith possible in congregations without a commitment to this kind of faith formation?

I believe that unless congregations make a real commitment to wrought faith that is shared, intentional, and collaborative (and throughout the lifespan) we are hard-pressed to succeed in our goals as a faith.

Of course, this puts faith development at the center of church. For THAT to happen, ministers, religious educators, musicians, the board would have to commit to a changed congregational life, RE, worship, and music ministries.

Is that possible?