I’d like to introduce you this afternoon to one of my favorite people, someone who has been my friend and faithful companion for about 30 years, ever since I invented her as a mythical 7th grader, struggling with the intricacies of beginning Spanish in 1970. Her name is Opal Clutchwater and she is here with us this afternoon. Because she is fictional, Opal is the Ultimate Typical Human Being. Opal's friend, Clyde Mugwort, also a typical human being, is with us today as well. Welcome, Opal and Clyde.
I've asked Opal's and Clyde’s permission to use their personal stories as illustrations for today's sermon. As typical human beings, they have experienced many of the same things you and I have, going through stages of development physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually.
My guess is that most of us have encountered, in the course of our education, many theories about how human beings develop. Weave heard of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Lawrence Kohlberg, all of whom postulated various developmental stages in human growth, in the areas of learning, life cycles, and morality.
In the 70’s, a young minister named James Fowler, intrigued by the similarities and differences he saw among his congregants, his own family members, and himself, set out to discover whether or not there were recognizable stages that human beings tended to go through as they matured in religious faith.
He could see that the small children in his congregation approached their religious education lessons in one way, and that their elders discussed their faith in a far different way. In between, the teens and young adults seemed to have certain approaches, whereas he himself tended to think about spiritual things in yet different ways.
He undertook a massive study of human behavior, using already established theories of development from Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg. He and his research team interviewed literally thousands of people, from all age groups, using an interview questionnaire designed to reveal not just beliefs but how people had arrived at those beliefs. And from this study, which lasted nearly a decade, the Rev. Dr. James W. Fowler developed a theory of the stages of faith development and the human quest for meaning.
His study has pretty well withstood critical scrutiny. At the same time, it is important to remember that a theory is just that--a theory. It can be exciting and powerful, giving us names for our experiences and ways to understand those experiences. But theories can also become blinders, causing us to see only those things that we can name and understand. As Erik Erikson said--and he was a great theorician--”We must take our theories with a serious playfulness and a playful seriousness.”
So let us embark on a serious but playful study of how we grow into spiritual maturity, using our friends Opal Clutchwater and Clyde Mugwort as our guides.
To begin, let's set forth the definition of “faith” that I am working with today. Faith is not a set of beliefs; rather, faith is a process of growing in trust. It is a way of giving meaning to the various events of our lives. It is our way of seeing ourselves in relation to others.
Faith takes form in our earliest relationships with those who care for us in infancy. We learn to trust and mistrust based on these experiences with those who are closest to us. And faith is also in our search for the deepest values which hold human beings together. Faith is a universal human concern; before we come to think of ourselves as Catholic or Jewish or Unitarian Universalist, we are already thinking about faith.
Whether we become atheists, agnostics, believers or nonbelievers, we are concerned with how to live, what will make our lives worth living. We look for mutual love, mutual value, mutual honor and respect. This is what I mean today by faith.
Dr. Fowler postulated 6 stages of faith, plus a pre-stage, which he believed preceded language skills. These stages generally parallel the stages of cognitive development or learning that most educators consider pretty reliable, from the pre-language of an infant to the magical thinking of a small child, to the concrete reasoning of an older child, to the abstract reasoning of older adolescents and adults.
So with this framework in mind, let's turn to our new friends Opal and Clyde
Opal was the first child for Bob and Mary Clutchwater. She was a happy, healthy baby, whose engaging personality assured her of constant attention from her parents and other adults. During the first year of her life, Opal received all the love and care she needed and she returned that love and affection quite joyfully. Opal was in what Fowler terms the pre-language stage--she had no language but her smiles and cries. She developed trusting relationships with virtually all of the people she encountered. She learned to trust her caretakers and to reach out when she needed additional care.
Clyde was the youngest of several Mugwort children. Though he received tender loving care, it often came from another child, rather than an adult, and children are not quite as faithful in their attention as a parent can be.
Clyde wasn't always sure his needs would be met; consequently, he became less trusting, and his pre-language faith stage was characterized by less trusting relationships than his friend Opal.
As Clyde and Opal developed, learning to use language to communicate their needs and ideas, they grew beyond this undifferentiated stage, into what Fowler calls Stage 1. This first real stage of faith development is a fantasy -filled, imitative phase in which a child is powerfully and permanently influenced by the examples, moods, actions, and stories of the visible faith of their closest adults--usually their parents. Most children ages 2-7 are in Stage 1.
When Opal started preschool at age 4, her parents noticed that she began to have some ideas about God. Because they were not active in any church, they wondered where she was getting her information and soon discovered that she had heard these things from her preschool teacher . She also, about this time, became very interested in what God would do if she misbehaved. In a conversation with her mother, Opal once explained that God was very smart and could see everything that everybody did, so he knew when Opal was being naughty and if he wanted to he could make monsters scare her.
Mary Clutchwater was not much help in allaying Opal's fears, though she tried to reassure her daughter, and the Clutchwaters decided they’d better find a church home so Opal could get some religious education.
Clyde, on the other hand, grew up in a staunch Catholic family and went to parochial school, where he learned Bible stories and the lives of the saints and absorbed a rich range of religious symbols. His parents and siblings often talked in religious language, and Clyde’s fantasies revolved around the stories he’d learned. He had strong ideas about heaven and death, though they were magic laden and fantastical.
As children grow, they move into Stage 2 thinking, which is characterized by literal, concrete thinking. The child begins to adopt for herself the stories and rituals which symbolize her community. The child's beliefs, moral rules, and attitudes are literal and depend on parental authority and models. This stage usually lasts up till pre-adolescence.
Both Opal and Clyde were in religious education classes in their stage 2 years, about age 8-11. Opal's parents had affiliated with a nearby non-denominational community church while Clyde continued in parochial school and weekly mass. The songs and stories they learned, they believed literally. The Ten Commandments figured strongly in the rules of their lives. Their parents’ views were also conservative and they were glad that their children were receiving this kind of religious instruction.
As Clyde and Opal grew older, entering middle school, where peers and school and teams and family were their primary influences, they each settled into a stage 3 faith, which is known as conventional faith, depending on external authority and how that authority explains the inevitable conflicts between doctrine and experience. Wrong and right were defined by others, because Clyde and Opal weren't quite ready to do that for themselves.
Clyde was chosen to be an altar boy at his parish church; Opal sang in the junior choir and was thrilled to be the virgin Mary in the Christmas pageant. The Mugworts and the Clutchwaters tried to reinforce in their children the importance of following the rules, staying on the straight and narrow, “just saying no!” And for awhile, things were calm and peaceful.
Now, Stage 3 is a very comfortable place to be. Somebody else makes all the big moral decisions. The rules are pretty well laid out. A priest or a minister or rabbi holds the key to salvation; just follow the rules and you'll go to heaven. Friends who don't agree with your ideas of right and wrong tend to fall by the wayside, shunned as “lost souls”.
We are not surprised to know that Opal and Clyde have conventional faith. They're 12 years old, for heaven's sake. What does surprise us is that we all know many adults who are still in Stage 3. We all know friends and relatives whose religious faith seems unchanging, dependent on external authority, accepting of supernatural explanations and uninterested in exploring further. And these are nice people! We love them. We don't always understand them, because we ourselves have very likely been catapulted during our experiences in older adolescence into a stage 4 faith.
Adolescence is that time of life when young people begin to examine their conventional faith. This time of life is marked by the struggle for independence from parents, the need to take responsibility for one's own commitments, lifestyle and beliefs. There is an increasing dependence on one's own experience rather than an external authority.
The person begins to evaluate what she or he has experienced in comparison to what s/he has been taught by others. She defines herself in terms of how she is different from others, what she rejects about her conventional belief system, and why she prefers to be different. This is typical of stage 4 faith. Many persons in Stage 4 remain in the tradition they grew up in, but interpret the symbols, stories, and attitudes in their own ways.
Opal Clutchwater quit going to church when she entered college. She sought out philosophy and world literature courses. Her English themes were full of derogatory references to her rejected religious past.
She investigated Hinduism and Buddhism, regaling her stunned parents during Christmas break with Eastern wisdom which she felt outclassed fundamental Christian doctrines. She proved that Jesus could not have been born in December and pooh-poohed the resurrection at Easter as a hokey stunt which was patently false.
Clyde was skeptical of many of the Catholic doctrines he’d learned growing up, but his experience as an altar boy had given him a glimpse of the mystical aspects of Catholicism, and he was eager to explore it. Clyde’s college experience was at a Jesuit university in another state; at this institution, the emphasis was on scholarly inquiry and spiritual discipline.
From his Jesuit mentors, Clyde learned to go beyond the traditional doctrines of Catholicism into a more speculative realm. He too shocked his parents at Christmas and Easter when he suggested that birth control was a good idea, that the Pope was not infallible, and that women should be ordained into the priesthood. Furthermore, he was considering taking holy orders himself, and working to change Catholicism from the inside out.
Let's look at this a little closer. Does any of this sound familiar? Many, perhaps most, UUs are in Stage 4 of faith development. We know what we DON'T believe very clearly; we know why we reject the old patterns and we relish our difference from others who may still be in a conventional faith stage. We cherish our intellect and use it to make our life's decisions. Stage 4 is pretty comfy.
But at the same time, many of us have gotten tired of just knowing what we DON'T believe. We have begun to examine what we DO believe and even how our beliefs may be similar in concept to others’ faith concepts, even though the metaphors and language we choose may be different. We may even go back into our past religious upbringing and re-examine it for current meaning.
This shift, from rebelling against one's early training to recognizing the values imparted by that training and coming to terms with it, is the chief characteristic of a person in Stage 5 faith. A stage 5 person identifies with other religious people, recognizing that his faith concepts are similar to theirs in many ways. He is not threatened by the differences; he is willing to acknowledge the value in others’ faith, even if it is very different from his own.
Truth becomes more paradoxical; relationship and living in community become more important than specific theologies or rituals. Religious conflict is seen as unnecessary.
A person in Stage 5 of faith development recognizes the integrity and truth of other religious positions and affirms and lives out his own commitments and beliefs in such a way as to honor that which is true in others’ lives without denying his own truth.
Opal Clutchwater avoided church for many years. She eventually found a life partner, a young Jewish man who was also in rebellion from his Orthodox upbringing. After their marriage and the birth of their first child, Opal and her partner decided they needed to find a religious home and visited several in the neighborhood before they settled on a small Unitarian Universalist congregation. They took part eagerly in RE activities with their child and studied world religions and spirituality in adult classes, hungry to find the deeper meaning that had eluded them in their earlier years.
Clyde, after taking his vows as a Jesuit priest, was assigned to a small parish in the inner city, where his efforts to reach out to the homeless and the poor were welcomed and supported by the local authorities. But Clyde had a secret which he had to confront. He was gay; he was hungry for relationship with a partner; and he knew that the church would not sanction this kind of need. After much prayer and agonizing, Clyde left the priesthood and the church, disappointing himself, his bishop, his family, and his parish.
For a time, Clyde avoided all religious institutions. He found a life partner and focused his attention on the development of that relationship. But he was angry at God, at himself, and at the church. Eventually Clyde and his partner decided to get married, to have a service of holy union, and they asked a UU minister to perform the ceremony. The two men felt that their life together needed a religious dimension and they did join a UU congregation.
But Clyde’s feelings of betrayal by the church made it difficult for him to hear religious language and to experience the rituals of worship comfortably.
Opal and Clyde are very different in their lives and in their experiences, yet they are both struggling to find a religious identity that meets their present needs. Opal, eager to learn and deepen her knowledge and experience, may find herself transitioning into Stage 5 thinking very soon. Clyde needs to heal a little more before he is ready to see much value in his Catholic heritage.
Here at Wy’east, we have folks from all kinds of religious backgrounds and from NO religious background. We are very different in our heritage and in our religious growth.
Because of this, some of us are still in Stage 3, even as Unitarian Universalists. Our UU faith is pretty conventional and externally directed. We are loyal to the rules of rational humanism and as yet unwilling to look beyond the rules of rationalism.
Some of us are in Stage 4, happy to be there, not wanting to leave. We want to be different, we want to continue to excite our conservative relatives, we enjoy the fun of our uniqueness. We are in no hurry to move into Stage 5 thinking.
Some of us are struggling with a transition from Stage 4 thinking into a place where we can acknowledge the value of our past religious experience and begin to understand and accept the very different paths others are on. We want to talk about what we believe, not what we hate.
Because we have folks in all stages of faith development, we design religious education curricula or programs in spiritual development which encompass the various stages that people may be in. When I design worship services, I try to meet the needs of as many groups as possible.
Naturally, this is not particularly easy. I have known congregations who became practically apoplectic if they heard the word God or any mention of the concept of prayer. Ministers’ heads had rolled occasionally in those congregations because of “too much” religious language.
Clearly, some folks in these congregations were--even as UUs--still very conventional in their faith, unable to see beyond the externally imposed “rules” of rationalism, which is our UU brand of fundamentalism, scared of others’ belief in what they called God, use of prayer and ritual, even the mere suggestion that there might be things too mysterious to be understood by science.
Fortunately, I have not encountered much of that here at Wy’east. Our congregation seems to be made up of children and adults who are learning to listen to one another, to experience the divine in many ways, to re-examine the ancient religious words that have meaning far beyond the rhetoric of fundamentalism.
And what about Stage 6 of faith development? Dr. Fowler describes these as our heroes of the faith, Jesus, the Buddha, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and others whose faith has matured to such a depth that they have gone beyond the limits of religious doctrine and behavior.
No longer are these men and women committed to mere human ideals; they see their mission in terms of complete commitment to a higher cause, regardless of the personal cost.
Few of us will attain Stage 6 faith. Most of us will continue to examine and explore the depth of our faith in less dramatic and life sacrificing ways. And that's okay.
My task as a minister is to encourage and support the spiritual growth of all the folk in this congregation, from child to adult. Whatever our current level of understanding, as humans and as Unitarian Universalists, we are compelled to grow in the ways we find best for us. One of the challenges of Unitarian Universalism is that we as individuals in a congregation are in many different stages of faith and life development. A traditional religious body may find it best if all its members are in Stage 3, of conventional faith; people who rely on external authority are less likely to leave the fold than those who are learning to rely on their own authority.
It can be frustrating as we try to form religious community with people whose ideas and beliefs are different. But it can be done. We are growing into it. As we talk together and listen to one another’s journeys, we are doing it.
May we always be mindful that trust is the bottom line here, not beliefs. We are here to learn to trust one another. And as we do, our life together as a community will bring us increased delight and nourishment.
Let's pause for a few moments of silent reflection and prayer.
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© 2000 Kit Ketcham. All rights reserved.