Stages of Faith, Part II

You may have heard of Fred Phelps, he is the minister from Topeka, KS known for his picketing at anything that he determines has to do with the abomination of homosexuality – Matthew Shepherd’s funeral 10 years ago, military funerals, Episcopal Conventions, high schools named for Walt Whitman, or those presenting the musical Rent – like Corona del Mar. His extended family, including children, carries signs that declare “God hates fags” and that’s kind of the nicest one. He’s been attracting a new kind of attention lately – people aren’t taking it anymore. Friday, students in Corona del Mar met Rev. Phelps’ minions with their own pickets – in vastly greater numbers, their signs said “God doesn’t hate anyone!” “God is love.” And “Do you need a hug?” Those signs proved to be like sunlight to vampires and the Phelpsites quickly retreated. The kindest thing that I can think to say about Rev. Phelps is that he appears to suffer from a case arrested spiritual development. He has no interest in moving beyond Stage 2.

For those of you who were not here last week, I preached a sermon for Samantha’s baptism about how we would work to honor our promises to her, to support her in her journey in faith. To do so, we have to understand how her faith needs to be nurtured and encouraged. To help with this, I used James Fowler’s work Stages of Faith. This 1981 classic work identified six stages of faith development, which follow the stages of moral and psychological development in humans. To recap quickly, Stage One is the faith of childhood in which an understanding of God comes from parents and being cared for. God is everywhere. Stage Two begins to see God as a supernatural being that is ultimately in charge of handing out approval or punishment. It’s a very literal and rule oriented time. Fred Phelps is the extreme example of adults who never move on. Stage Three, which corresponds with adolescence, is the troubling time of relationship building and wrestling with authority. Symbols and their meaning are inseparable so if inconsistencies are encountered, particularly for religious symbols, there can be a wholesale rejection or a refusal to acknowledge the inconsistencies. Stage 3, is not deeply analytical. But what comes next requires critical reflection on self and what you believe.
Here at Faith, our Journey to Adulthood leaders work with our young people in ways that honor where they are and how they are most likely to perceive the world and what we do here. But they also take part in the greater task of introducing the dynamics that move people beyond Stage 3. Fowler says that Stage 3 is a place of permanent residence for many adults. The transition out of 3 and into 4 is a most difficult one because it requires the deconstruction of much of how things are understood. It’s the traditional time of leaving home, physically and emotionally, which leads to self-examination and questioning. The more I work with this material, the more convinced I am that the majority of Americans do not make this journey. It is one reason the Episcopal Church is so small, for one committed to the view of Stage 3, it is too uncomfortable to pull away from a habitual way of understanding the truth. To continue your journey, you need to decide for yourself what is true and how you find it.

The discomfort of this time begins with the necessary demythologizing of the stories and doctrines. A myth is a story that tells a deeper truth. At this point in faith development, the details of stories are peeled back and set aside in search of that truth underneath. I’ve been telling you since I came here that the way to read the stories of our faith is not to ask if they are true but what they mean. What do they teach you? You are empowered to decide that. The authority that was previously held by family, religion and culture in Stage 3 is now relocated, in you.
In many situations, this will not win you approval and you’d have to be prepared for that. Jesus acknowledged this challenge – he said that all that you know, your families and your religion will turn against you when you challenge and walk away from where you were. This is a frequent topic of conversation for our Rome to Canterbury group. It is not the Anglican way to tell people what to believe, here you are allowed and indeed, expected to question. Part of our mission statement has to do with offering the hospitality of the gospel – that’s not just making someone glad they came – it is about creating an atmosphere that is conducive to spiritual growth.

The hospitality of the gospel is an invitation to go even further. Stage 5 is best understood as the change from either/or thinking to both/and thinking. Symbols and their meaning can comfortably come back together for now you begin to suspect that everything is part of one big whole. A level of self-understanding and peace has replaced defensiveness and duality. Mystics and Buddhists speak of detachment and it is at this stage that it is possible. Fowler says about this time that it is rare before mid-life and “knows the sacrament of defeat….Alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradictions, this stage strives to unify opposites in mind and experience.” Someone who has achieved this depth is acutely aware of the divisions within the human family because they have to come to know the true possibility of an all inclusive community.

The awareness of that gap is often what calls a few souls into the radical actualization of Stage 6. This is the domain of a disciplined, active incarnation of universal truth. This would best describe Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton and others. The work of true inhabitants of Stage 6 reveals an inclusive community, a radical commitment to justice and love and a selfless passion for a transformed world. These people are not perfect but they do believe that the Kingdom of Heaven can come on earth. Often we kill them because they frighten us. Chances are that the ones that do the killing see such spiritual growth as a threat to their narrowly ordered understanding of things and that’s why this is important work. Without the courage of these way-showers the world will not change.
The last two weeks I’ve spent immersing myself in understanding the stages of faith have helped me understand Fred Phelps and his followers a bit better. And it helps me admire all the more the kids from Corona del Mar High School. They chose a spiritually mature uplifting way to engage unevolved, hate-filled rhetoric. Their willingness to engage as they did was in invitation to a few angry people to consider a new way.

Everyone walks their path at their own pace. There are people who have left Faith because what we talk about here made them uncomfortable. Growth is change and it is hard. But Christianity is called the Way, not the way-station. We are to keep moving and the best way to do that is to know where you are going. On our spiritual journeys, we continue to die to old ways of knowing and being known with the promise of Easter life in ever more expanded ways of understanding the mystery of God.