02.02.09
Posted in articles at 7:49 pm by MPJ
Hey, sorry I have not been posting too much on this blog in a while. I have been working very hard though on my topic. I have been making good progress on my book. AND: I am putting up a new site that maybe will explain these concepts a little bit more concisely and more accessibly than this blog. There is not that much on there yet but from time to time, do please visit my new site: www.Exploring-Spiritual-Development.com. And then let me know what you think!
Thanks for your interest!!
Margaret Johnston
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Posted in articles at 7:44 pm by MPJ
I have just been reading Gordon Allport’s The Individual and His Religion. I had this book once before - it was required reading for a college course way back in the seventies - and here I have had to buy it again! I dont’ know how much of it I understood way back then but I sure got a lot out of it this time!
Just over half-way through there is a chapter entitled The Nature of Doubt in which Allport makes some very important points - especially as they relate to the belief stages. Allport speaks of what he calls “verbal realism” as a stage when a child, for example, fails to realize that there is a difference between words and facts - that the two are not identical. Thus he believes just about everything he hears - especially if it comes from a seemingly credible source. This kind of primitive credulity exists when either the experience of the listener is limited or when the “prestige of the speaker arouses almost hypnotic deference.” (p. 114) This form of belief implies a sort of relinquishing of responsibility on the part of the believer to the speaker. The believer just accepts what the supposed leader says and fails to think it through for himself. This form of belief can also be roughtly equated to the “Faithful” stage (Stage 2) of religious development. And this I am afraid is the type of belief many of the organized religions are trying to promote.
With greater experience or greater awareness, the person begins to detect holes in the reality that was presented to him on faith alone and he starts to test the truths he has been handed against the reality of his own experience. Thus, when “pennies have not fallen from heaven in response to a self-centered prayer, or when miracles are denied at a time when they would prove convenient“ (p. 115) doubt arises. This doubting relates to our “Rational” Stage (or Stage 3) It is a more mature stance than the “verbal realism” stage mentioned above where everything a religious authority says is just accepted “on faith.” That is to say - even if the doubt involves rejection of religion, it is STILL a more mature stage than one in which responsibility for faith decisions is handed simply to a religious authority without personal investigation or consideration of some sort. Quoting from the book: “Unless the individual doubts he cannot use his full intelligence, and unless he uses his full intelligence he cannot develop a mature sentiment.” (p. 116) There you have it! Yet another proponent of this pattern - belief, doubt or questioning, then a more mature type of faith.
So that makes about the thirteenth example (that I have found so far!) of religious specialists over various centuries who have said that blind acceptance of religion from the hands of a religious leader is NOT the most mature type of faith. Why then is this the type of faith so many of the traditional churches seem to be promoting?? Why don’t they want to encourage spiritual maturity in their congregations? Could it be that their preachers and such have not studied theology in an open, investigative manner? Could it be that the clergy need to encourage spiritual immaturity among their people in order to assure themselves of a job?
With these words Allport begins to hint at the ”Mystic” level (or Stage Four) of faith: “A faith centered in self-interest is bound to break up. To endure at all it must envisage a universe that extends beyond the personal whim and is anchored in values that transcend the immediate interest of the individual as interpreted by himself.” (p. 120) Does this not sound like the expanding, widening circle of compassion of the Mystic? But Allport is awfully vague about there being any such thing as the Mystic level. He writes as though he assumes everyone but the child IS AT the Mystic level: “Conceivably the parent and the church school might do a better job…in assisting the child over the successive collisions of belief and experience, and in helping him identify religion with a positve attitude toward life rather than with immature images and interests.” (p. 115) DO YA’ THINK?
In the long run, IF the churches did a better job in handling doubt, if not promoting it, they could perhaps avoid all those apostates in the stories on my blog of people who moved away from their church. If the Rationals knew there was a way to support their own investigations and accept their own doubts without throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater by separating themselves from religion altogether, much of the strife surrounding religion could be avoided as well.
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