03.26.08
Religious Belief - Stage……or Style?
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, that a person can regress to a lower stage/style if bad things happen in their life or if their equilibrium is disrupted.
Second, Streib says there are many factors governing a person’s choice of belief - not just cognition. It is not just logic and reasoning that cause a person to move to the next stage or style. For example, the social group in which a person was raised, whether their parents taught them traditional beliefs, the social milieu in which they find themselves as an adult, whether they are exposed to conflicting idealogies all can affect what a person comes to believe. Also, conditions of adversity in a person’s life may play a big part; whether the person was brought up in a stable environment, whether they feel the need for an Ultimate being to whom to pray when the chips are down. I would add that in reading the stories I am dealing with, a large factor for some people seems to be the existence of mystical experiences. More about that later……