…stories of growth and stages of belief…
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 Read the rest of this entry »
What I am calling the Lawless are what Peck called his Stage One person. This stage really does not correlate as well with the earlier stages of the other theorists. I am including it here because I think the logic of it helps us understand the other stages in contrast.
Peck named this stage the Chaotic and Antisocial Stage. He estimated that while most small children pass through this stage, about one in five adults wind up Read the rest of this entry »
This week this story came in from a person in the United States and I am one hundred percent sure this person belongs in our “Mystic” group. He claims he never went through any of the stages and started out at the Mystic level as a child. This may well be the case. However, even though his story shows no progression through any stages, it certainly does give us a clear idea of how a mystic approaches spiritual concerns.
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Dear Ms. Johnston,
I just came across your website today via a Google search. FYI, your sight
comes up #1 for the search [temperament Fowler faith] not [Christian].
Just from this search you may be able to tell something about me, but of
course, I am writing to tell you my story, which I believe Read the rest of this entry »
On April 14, I posted “My Own Stage One Story.” That was an instance from my own experience that highlights what it was like to be in that less developed stage. I felt small and powerless. I saw no other way of obtaining the coveted Read the rest of this entry »
I have been thinking, if we all pass through the lower stages as we develop, then there has to be a time when all of us were at Stage One - called the Lawless Stage in some places on this blog. Well, searching my childhood memories, I have come up with a story of my own from that stage.
When I was little for some reason I had a strong fascination with nurse’s kits. I don’t think this sort of toy is Read the rest of this entry »
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 Read the rest of this entry »
So it turns out David Keirsey’s son runs this website http://www.personalityzone.com which is related to his father’s work, mentioned in my last post from March 31. I was able to contact Keirsey’s son through the site and ask him whether his father had found that temperament styles could change over time. I did this in hopes of shedding any light on whether the temperament styles could be related to our belief stages. Well, his reply was that they have evidence that temperament styles are formed very early in a person’s existence and are not subject to change over time. However, he did state that a person’s personality is a combination of their temperament style PLUS their character….and personality can and does change over time!
So that was helpful. Whether there really is any correlation between the temperament styles and our stages or not is still a bit up in the air, but at least there are factors allowing for the possibility of change over time.
A woman in my writing group and I were discussing the religious stages and something in our discussion rang a bell for her regarding something she had studied in grad school. She ran to another room in her house and came back with the book, Please Understand Me, by David Keirsey. It seems this Keirsey had taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Types and simplified them into four Read the rest of this entry »
In contrast to Fowler who says faith development occurs in stages, Heinz Streib, a more recent researcher, posits that instead we should use the word styles. What he means I believe is two things.
First, where Fowler says his styles occur in a set way in every person (”hierarchical and invariant”) Strieb posits that rather than being strictly hierarchical, the styles evolve more like geological layers, where elements of all the prior stages/styles still exist in the person and the newest one just sits on top. This means the layers can be subject to upheaval, Read the rest of this entry »
There is a movement afloat to petition the United Nations to establish an international World Unity Day. This in a way is related to the Stage Four or Mystic concept that we all are one. It speaks to a global consciousness instead of an ethnic (or patriotic) one. It honors the fact that we have to stop thinking in terms of “my church,” “my religion” or “my country” and Read the rest of this entry »