04.09.08
What does drive growth in belief stages or styles?
In reading over a lot of the stories I am working with a pattern seems to be arising. Ok, I know I do not have a statistically significant sample size and double blind studies to work off of, but maybe my observation could trigger some solid research on the part of people with the credentials to do so.
I have worked with a lot of Rational level stories by now and it does seem the one thing that really drove their growth away from the traditional religion was reason - cognition. There was cognitive dissonance in their life between what their church or religion was teaching, and what their brain was telling them was possible. Despite the influences of their family or their social group, and sometimes at great detriment to their standing in their social group, these people moved out of their religion because their reason told them they could not stay. So in this case, Fowler would be right in that reason does drive development in faith stages.
But if you look at the people moving into the Faithful group (from a prior Lawless stage) it seems they did so almost out of desperation; being tired of the chaos in their life. In many cases, the move was prompted by someone in their family suggesting it, or an acquaintance bringing them to church. So in this case, it would seem Heinz Streib is right - social groups and life circumstances are part of what drives this type of growth.
And, if you look at the people moving into the Mystic stage, well, that is harder to define but one thing that comes up in a lot of cases is an early (like around age five or six) mystical experience in their life. Also, it seems these people may be motivated by factors in their unconscious.
So perhaps what drives faith development may be different for the different levels. And maybe some people are destined to arrive at the Mystic stage from early on while others are destined to happily live out their lives in the Faithful group.