05.26.08
The Faithful
The Faithful stage tends to arise some time in childhood. In some cases it lasts only until adolescence but sometimes a person gets stuck at this level for the better part of a lifetime.
The Faithful stage is more or less equivalent to Peck’s Stage II or what he called the Formal, Institutional , Fundamental Stage.
What Peck meant by saying people at this stage are Formal is not so much that they are stiff about social conventions but that they hold more importance to the forms given to rites, ceremonies and rules than to the meaning that may lie behind them. This means that when a church changes a ritual ceremony, such as when the Catholic Church did away with the Mass in Latin, this type of person can get very upset. Their involvement with their church (or in society in general) is all about the forms and not so much about the deeper meanings behind it all. So if the forms change, it seems to a person at the Faithful level that everything they held to in their religion is being done away with.
What Peck meant by Institutional is that these folks generally need to be affiliated with a larger institution because the rules and structure of the institution provide discipline to these individuals who may lack the internal discipline to succeed in life on their own.
My interpretation of what Peck meant by Fundamental is – as you may have guessed - many of these people are in the group we call Fundamentalist. Not all of them are Fundamentalists. But some of them are. if you had to break the Faithful down into two smaller stages, the Fundamentalists are at the end closer to the Lawless Stage in terms of development and more moderate believers are closer to the Rational stage.
The overriding trait of the Faithful is conformity. The Faithful tends to want to fit in with his group. He not only takes his cues regarding what to believe from his immediate social or religious group, but he would not want to stand out too far from them in terms of dress, behavior, or lifestyle. He would care about what the rest of the group thought of him and would expect his family to conform to group expectations as well. The Faithful is so intent on fitting in with the group, he may ignore conflicts in the information he receives from the group just so he needn’t risk having to jeopardize his membership.
In terms of governance, the Faithful is governed by a set of rules handed down to him by an established source of authority, often a church. He will follow these rules exactly (to the letter, per M. Scott Peck) because that is the only way he understands them. For the Faithful, the locus of authority rests within his group and whatever leader they have accepted, human or otherwise.
In very general terms, the God of the Faithful is an anthropomorphic being. This means a being that resembles man in many characteristics. He may be angry, jealous, punishing or loving. He may have a Son and a Mother. He may be a Father. He probably has a head, hands and a heart just like we do. He must have a gender and that is most certainly male.
For the most part, the God of the Faithful is a Being that is entirely external to the person and totally separate from any given person. This is the type of God this person needs and so this type of God appeals to the Faithful level person. That this type of God has expectations and will send punishment if his expectations are not met fits in very well with the needs of the Faithful.
In approaching religious texts, the Faithful will interpret them literally. Heaven and hell are places with an actual physical location. Whatever the Bible says, is exactly what is to be believed. In terms of church, the Faithful of many religions firmly believe that their way is the only way, their church is the only right one, or that belief in their exact description of God is the only route to salvation.