Faith Challenges

Overview

College is often a time of self-exploration that brings an opportunity to more deeply explore one’s personal values and beliefs. Religion and faith can be a source of community and purpose for people of all ages. Research shows that students often examine their religious beliefs and spirituality during their college years. The journey to or from any religion or faith tradition or seeking a form of spirituality that suits the individual can include difficult thoughts, feelings, and conversations that can be overwhelming or lonely. We hope these resources that come from a variety of perspectives may be of help. Below is a framework of faith development to help you understand the process you are going through.

A Framework for Faith Development

Based on the work of James Fowler, author of Stages of Faith.

Pre-Stage: Undifferentiated Faith

Generally, children from birth through about 2 years of age

  • Have the potential for faith but lack the ability to act on that potential
  • Through care from parents, caregivers, and other adults in their life young children start to build trust, courage, hope and love
  • At this stage, children experience faith as a connection between themselves and their caregiver

Stage 1: Intuitive-Projective Faith

Generally, pre-school-aged children

  • Children of this age is such that they are unable to think abstractly and are generally unable to see the world from anyone else's perspective
  • Faith is not a thought-out set of ideas, but instead a set of impressions that are largely gained from their parents, caregivers, or other significant adults in their lives
  • Children become involved in activities of their religious community by experiencing them and learning from those around them

Stage 2: Mythic-Literal Faith

Generally, ages 6 to 12

  • Throughout this stage, children are beginning to understand the difference between verified facts and things that might be more fantasy or speculation, and children's source of religious authority starts to expand to others in their community like teachers and friends
  • At this stage it is because children think in concrete and literal ways, so faith becomes the stories told and the rituals practiced
  • Later in this stage children begin to have the capacity to understand that others might have different beliefs or faiths

Stage 3: Synthetic-Conventional Faith

Generally, starts about the age of 13 and goes until around 18, however, some people stay at this stage for their entire life.

  • Unlike previous stages, people at this stage are able to think abstractly, and therefore, can see a more cohesive narrative about values and morals in the stories and rituals of their faith
  • People also start to have the ability to see things from someone else's perspective and can imagine what others think about them and their faith
  • People at this stage claim their faith as their own instead of just being what their family does, though, the faith that is claimed is usually still the faith of their family
  • Issues of religious authority are important to people at this stage
    • For younger adolescents, that authority still resides mostly with their parents and important adults
    • For older adolescents and adults in this stage, authority resides with friends and religious community
    • For all people in this stage, religious authority resides mostly outside of them personally

Stage 4: Individuative-Reflective Faith

This stage usually starts in late adolescence (18 to 22 years old). However, Robert Keeley points out that "people of many generations experience the kind of dissonance that comes with the real questions of faith that one begins to address at this stage of development."

  • People in this stage start to question their own assumptions around the faith tradition, and they start to question the authority structures of their faith
  • This is often the time that someone will leave their religious community if the answers to the questions they are asking are not to their liking
  • Greater maturity is gained by rejecting some parts of their faith while affirming other parts, and in the end, the person starts to take greater ownership of their own faith journey

Stage 5: Conjunctive Faith

People do not usually get to this stage until their early thirties.

  • This stage is when the struggles and questioning of stage four give way to a more comfortable place as some answers have been found and the person is comfortable knowing that all the answers might not be easily found
  • In this stage, the strong need for individual self-reflection gives way to a sense of the importance of community in faith development
  • People at this stage are also much more open to other people's faith perspectives because they have a realization that other people's faiths might inform and deepen their own

Stage 6: Universalizing Faith

It is a rare person who reaches this stage of faith.

  • James Fowler describes people at this stage as having "a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human than the rest of us."
  • People at this stage can become important religious teachers because they have the ability to relate to anyone at any stage and from any faith
  • People at this stage cherish life but also do not hold on to life too tightly. They put their faith in action, challenging the status quo and working to create justice in the world

Resources

  1. Postmormonmentalhealth.com “I’m Claudine Gallacher. I support ex-Mormons who want to break free of Mormon conditioning so they can fully trust themselves.”  Nice blog with topics like “What does a Mormon faith crisis feel like?” and “Are your LDS parents in pain because you don’t believe? Start here…”
  2. Coming Home talk by Margi Dehlin.  Describes her process of navigating a faith change with lots of great suggestions.
  3. Ex-Mormon subreddit—a lot of venting, sarcasm, and satire, so good if you feel that way too and need validation, but it can be more on the “bashy” side.
  4. Gospel Topic Essays—LDS-approved answered to questions that some members/former-members find “apologetic” or have a “why didn’t I know about this?” or “this isn’t good enough of an explanation” response to.  On the official LDS website.
  5. CES letter—document that cites evidence which disproves various LDS teachings.
  6. https://mormonstories.org/faith-crisis-resources/
  7. To explore more about what your sexual self is after moving through a faith challenge, check out these resources:
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