1 — Faith is a series of stages, not a destination

The growl of the coffee grinder and hiss of steam from the espresso machine fills the air. The smell of freshly brewed coffee tantalises my nostrils. The Cup is my favourite coffee shop, just across from the church. The young gen Xers, and Y’s with whom I work call it my second office. Exploring new ideas fits this bustling urban atmosphere. They seem to work here better than in the holiness of the Gothic-revival inner-city church across the busy street.

I remember Guy, a young accountant whom I met for coffee one day. He told me he was getting more courageous at accepting and living out his gay identity. But he found as he did, that his religious satisfaction sank. We drew rough graphs of his life experience on paper napkins at the table. They crossed and twisted apart to show that, as he came out more and more, and felt more at home in his identity, his church connections soured. I knew this didn’t have to be the case. I knew he could be clear about his identity at the same time as owning and enjoying his spirituality. The religion offered in his suburban church and others like it, however, is not compatible with his reality and authentic orientation. I remember he took with him the crumpled, coffee-cup ringed napkin on which I’d scribbled, illustrating our discussion. So had many of my coffee-and-conversation partners before and since.

Hope is my companion in trim flat whites this afternoon, her straight black hair shining in the sunlight slanting through the coffee shop window, deep blue eyes animated beneath her heavy fringe. She is straight, in her early thirties, and is considering applying for ordination as a minister of our denomination. She isn’t entirely sure what this will involve her needing to believe. She’s just told me that of late, she is not as certain as before of some beliefs she had as a child and adolescent. As a preacher’s kid she lived under her father’s at first evangelical, then later, very liberal preaching. What is the truth?

As I listened to her story, I thought of my own religious experience. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have known what label to put on my home church. Later, I used the term evangelical. Then I came to see my local church was fundamentalist. Life and faith were presented as black and white. In our local congregation we were expected to know what side we were on. We certainly knew it was vital to stay on that ‘right’ side to be acceptable within that community.

Even as a teenager, I noticed huge effort expended on getting people to ‘make a decision for Jesus Christ.’ Then more effort to get them to follow up with baptism (believers, immersion) and church membership. Looking back it seems like a farm with different paddocks. Everyone was urged to jump the fence into the ‘saved’ paddock. After you’d made that effort, though, it seemed grazing in that paddock was enough for the rest of your life (if you were morally good all the time).

It wasn’t that the New Zealand Baptist church didn’t believe in adult education. It did. Our local church ran ‘All Age Sunday School’ (copied from the American Baptists). An hour before morning worship, everyone could be in classes organised for their age group. Classes, however, did not encourage the type of questioning that allows our faith to evolve. We just learned more about the faith we already had and how to keep on living moral lives, being ‘good.’1

Our family had lively conversations after Sunday morning church at our dinner table. These taught me you don’t necessarily have to agree with everything the minister says. As minister succeeded minister, I also learned different clergy present the Gospel in a variety of ways. Even as a teenager, I noticed the quality is variable!

I wonder whether, being a preacher’s kid, Hope didn’t have that liberty. In her home, the minister carved the Sunday roast each week. She wouldn’t have observed a variety of ministers, from whom to learn about difference.

Hope finished her story of her journey through faith and church thus far. She sat absently stirring her flat white, looking at me expectantly. I wondered where to start.

“Your journey is like mine,” I said, “with a few differences. It wasn’t until I did academic theology as a ministry candidate, that I really started to question. There I discovered the ‘facts’ of faith I’d learned in Baptist all-age classes are actually only a few of many possible theories or approaches to belief. It isn’t ‘one-way fits all.’”

“When I learned those varying approaches, it wasn’t easy. I had moments of panic. They’ve now faded, but then, they were frightening. I’d been carefully brought up to deride what we called backsliders.” I grinned, “A good Baptist girl knew it was Not a Good Thing to be One of Those.”

Hope grinned. “Yes, I remember that categorising of people. There were those who really thought they had got being a Christian just right and judged others as just ‘playing’ at church. A bit arrogant, really.”

I drew a paper napkin towards me and fumbled for a pen in my handbag. Why could I never put the pen away in the same pocket.

“One panic attack I do remember involved the Bible. I was studying the Gospel of Mark in a university undergraduate paper taught at a distance. We were two hours’ drive from the university. We connected by audio with microphones in those pre-Zoom days. For homework one day, we were asked to look at a particular chapter of the Gospel. The task was to see what sections it could be divided into. Then we were to speculate why the editor arranged the sections that way.”

I looked at Hope. “Internally, I went into panic mode. ‘Editor?’ My Baptist soul protested! Was the lecturer suggesting someone had been ‘messing about’ with The Bible? I said nothing, too scared to let my panic show. I remember the strong feeling that if the Bible is a jigsaw, it was falling apart before my eyes. It was a horrible moment. But, I went home and did the homework like the goody-two-shoes that I was.”

I drew three oblongs one after the other on the napkin. “I found the chapter did have three sections; three different stories told by Jesus to three different groups of people.”

Hope nodded as she looked at the napkin where I wrote in the boxes, ‘Pharisees,’ ‘man born blind’ and ‘disciples.’

“It was only then I realised what I’d unconsciously been assuming. I’d assumed the three stories in the chapter happened chronologically. I assumed it was almost like first, Jesus telling a story in the morning. Then he told one in the afternoon. Then, I also assumed, the chapter ended with what he said in the evening. I could see these three sections easily enough. I didn’t get why these stories had been put together like this. And that’s assuming I was going to admit the existence of an editor. For me, the jury was out still on that issue!”

“I found the answer in the next teleconference. I was still keeping quiet about my sense of panic. We were told Mark’s Gospel is made up of several story ‘sandwiches.’ The ‘bread’ stories which come first and last might be of cynics or sceptics or opponents of Jesus. The ‘filling’ of that sandwich is a story of someone who understood Jesus’ message. Like this one here,” I said, pointing at the boxes on the napkin.

I drew three more boxes in a row, writing in them this time ‘Gentiles,’ ‘unbelieving disciples’ and ‘a group of women.’

“Or in another chapter, the ‘bread’ of the sandwich might be stories about people who ‘got’ what Jesus was saying and doing. They are sandwiched around a story of someone or a group who was faithless or unbelieving. We are invited to notice that the people who ‘got’ Jesus were those formerly outcast or ignored. Lepers, women, blind men, or Gentiles seemed to ‘hear’ what Jesus was teaching. Orthodox followers or clergy didn’t seem to understand him as well.”

“Sitting there, my panic subsided. I realised these stories being positioned like this taught me more. More than a simple chronological list would have done. This way, something was highlighted which I might otherwise have missed. I remember I felt that the two-dimensional jigsaw Bible was falling apart. With this new information it was as if the Bible was re-forming in three dimensions before my eyes. Now I had more than the content of the story and all its interactions. I had more than my speculation as to what Jesus or the Gospel writers were meaning by the story. Now, as well, there was the effect of the placing of the story. The stories are ‘conversing’ with each other, like the walls in a freshly painted room reflect light and colour from each other.”

“Yes,” I replied, “it did. Though, there were other moments. I knew at the back of my mind that when I accepted a new idea, it would affect other long-held ideas down the track. Those moments weren’t easy. They were shocking and traumatic. Looking back, however, those critical moments are helpful corners I turned. Round seemingly blind corners we find new landscapes. It took me a while to trust that discovery.”

“It helps to know other people have these moments, I thought I was the only one,” said Hope.

I nodded, sipping my cooling flat white. “One thing which helped me was discovering an intellectually respectable theory about stages in faith during my ministry training. When I trained as a teacher, I learned about Piaget’s 2 theory of human development which goes in stages, so I understood the idea of a ‘stage theory.’ That meant I got the idea behind James Fowler’s 3 theory of faith development. At first, the academic terms for the stages didn’t help, but at least I got the broad concept. It was a great relief to understand that my own personal spiritual life is a path which I can travel on, out of the narrow fundamentalist ‘paddock’ of my youth.”

I reached for another napkin and started drawing a series of six boxes linked together in line. “Later writers have simplified the language and the stages. M. Scott Peck 4 writes about four stages, different from Fowler’s six. Marcus Borg 5 and Thomas Moore 6 streamline it down to three though they use different names for the stages. They’re probably the easiest to follow, but I now use Fowler’s six stages.”

I drew four columns alongside the six boxes, each with names at the top: Fowler, M Scott Peck, Borg and Moore.

Hope moved her head to look at the napkin, tracing the series of boxes with her finger. “Where do you think I am?” she asked.

“Let me describe them and you can work out for yourself where you think you are at for the moment,” I replied. I pointed at the first row of boxes.

“We tend to begin our spiritual journey and our life journey in a fairy tale-fantastical kind of mode. The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and some nursery fairy tales 7 fit into this mode of thinking. Borg describes us as ‘uncritical’ about what we are thinking and reading. Moore says that we live in an ‘enchanted’ world at this stage.”

I pointed to the first three rows of the line of boxes, shading them in, grinning at Hope as I did so.

“You just have to see a little boy in a spider man costume at the supermarket, or his slightly bigger sister in a tutu and princess tiara, to know they are in an enchanted place in their heads, far removed from the reality of boring grocery shopping!”

“Exactly, you’ve got it,” I said. “There comes a day or a moment or a year when we begin to find this enchanted paradise is not what it seemed before. It might take a pandemic for us to question the omnipotence of God, or a science lesson where the theory of evolution leaves no room for the Creator God you’ve been taught about.”

“Whatever that first jolt is, Borg says that’s the moment when we begin to think critically. Moore says that’s when we become ‘disenchanted’ with the fantasy world which is so bright and sparkling when we’re young.”

I move my pen to the fourth line of boxes and write in ‘disenchantment’ and ‘critical thinking’ under the headings for Borg and Moore.

“This is a difficult time to navigate. Some call it a mid-life crisis. My panic attack over the jigsaw of the Bible was one of those moments. We eagerly learn new things in science. We travel the world, discovering other religions have similar ideas to Christianity. As we do that, we don’t always notice we’ve lost our innocence. We just begin thinking differently about the world and God and ourselves.”

“Then the shock comes. We realise how much of what we’ve previously valued doesn’t fit with new understandings.”

“This moment can come like a bombshell. A close friend might change her mind about her faith. Or a spiritual mentor might fail us. It can be devastating. If you are actively worshipping in a conventional or conservative congregation, having these thoughts can leave you feeling alone and an outcast.”

Hope nods. My pen moves back to the Fowler column of boxes and to Fowler’s name for his third stage, named ‘conventional.’

“Many conventional churches are not interested in questioning. Particularly questions which go beyond a certain line. That line is drawn differently in different congregations.”

“Alan Jamieson is a New Zealand sociologist and senior pastor. He discovered that often clergy do not want to accompany their parishioners on this questioning journey. They know it has the potential for their members to leave the church or, (worse still!), disrupt it. His A Churchless Faith has interviews with people who have left the church. He uses Fowler’s stages as a framework to analyse what was going on for them. You’d probably find his book interesting. Some interviewees reported their minister just avoided them. Other ministers actively stated, ‘you’re on your own with that kind of thinking.’”

Hope shifted in her seat. “I know my dad is pretty dismissive now of people who still think the way he used to think. He gets a little reactionary about it. That’s why I don’t think I can ask him about this kind of stuff,” she muttered.

“No. That’s the stage he’s at. People behave according to their reactions to the stage they are in. There should be no shaming about entering this period of questioning, whatever you call it. It might be Borg’s ‘critical thinking,’ Moore’s ‘disenchantment,’ Fowler’s ‘individuative/reflective’ stage, Scott Peck’s ‘sceptic/individual.’” My pen jumps across the row of columns. “Different names, but the same stage. This stage is vital if we are to grow in our faith. We need it to develop a spirituality adequate for 21st century adult life.”

“I find it helpful to think of it as an invitation to mature in thinking and so ‘grow up.’ Sometimes, people who cut free of the church at this stage act like adolescents. They revel in lying in bed on a Sunday morning instead of sitting in that hard pew. Or they might begin to do things previously forbidden by the churches they attended. It’s rather like teenagers testing their parents, only in this case the ‘parent’ is the church.”

“So, what can people do about these bombshell moments at this stage?” asked Hope. “I think I need another cup of coffee. Same again for you?”

I watched her as she went to the counter. She seemed lighter somehow than the young woman who’d come to me, brow creased and face serious. I remember how it helped me to understand there is a process broader than my own life which is known and described. It helps to realise it isn’t just my own badness, rebellion or even a mental breakdown.

Hope returned. “What can people do when they get disenchanted?” she asked again.

“First, the questioner may stop asking questions. They might repress their doubts and developing thoughts so they can remain an acceptable member of a congregation. Or they might keep quiet to remain a compliant member of the clergy. They then tend to develop a stilted, ‘fake’ spirituality which is easily picked up by others. The questioner, of course, thinks they are hiding their struggle.”

I shifted in my chair. “If they’re clergy, their sermons become dry, boring and irrelevant. If the frustrated questioner is a lay person, they may become an irregular church attender. Or, funnily enough, they may become an ardent rule follower, insisting that the ‘Right’ thing is always done. They hope that will keep their own uncomfortable question at bay.”

“The other tragic possibility, is that the person who becomes disenchanted, finds no support in their church and leaves. Alan Jamieson’s A Churchless Faith follows people like that. You probably know people who have done that?”

Hope nods quietly, her face shadowed. “My brother. My English teacher at school. He was a PK too.8 Is that the only thing that can happen?”

“There’s one other response which people like your father have followed. They don’t cut themselves off completely. They move sideways like your dad did. For him it was into academia. It does mean they are moving sideways on the faith stage road. I think of it as them kind of veering off into a siding,” I said.

“The pity is that they don’t get the chance to wrestle with the new ideas about faith and fresh interpretations of the Bible. That’s what’s needed to retain a spiritual perspective, and not just end up with a liberal, rational, logical approach. I get the feeling you don’t find that satisfying either?”

“The ideal is that both the church congregation and minister welcome such questions,” I continued. “They should recognise them as desirable even if they are disconcerting. Hopefully, they will see asking these deeper questions as another, but vital, stage of faith. In my fantasy, ideal world, a congregation will have a minister who has allowed herself to go there. She’s let herself roll with the scepticism and entertain the questions – to ‘live them.’ I think it was the German poet Rainier Maria Rilke who said that.9

It’s only possible to lead people through a stage if you’ve already been there. You have to experience the dissonance and resonance it brings to a spiritual journey to help others through it.”

Our coffees arrive and the server clears the debris from our first cups. After she leaves, Hope asks another question.

“If you can find such an ideal situation, how does the journey go from here?” Hope’s finger moves to the next box on the napkin, and she reads slowly. “Re-enchantment? Post critical thinking? What do those labels mean in real life?”

“Let’s pretend you are ‘allowed’ by others or ‘allow’ yourself to revel in asking questions and living into them. Slowly, some things will begin to reconnect. This is what Moore calls ‘re-enchantment’ and what Borg calls ‘post critical thinking.’ Fowler uses the word ‘conjunctive’ – you know, like conjunctions join parts of sentences together? M. Scott Peck’s label for this stage is complex: ‘mystical-communal.’ The more you read, the more that will make sense.”

“What you find is that the questions don’t always have definitive answers. To your surprise, you find it’s often enough simply to have questioned a previously held position or idea. For me, the questioning and re-integration stages have inter-mingled for years. In them we learn how faith operates in the human soul. We learn about what faith really is. We learn a deeper wisdom about ourselves. Of course, we always knew that wisdom takes a while to develop. That’s why it’s mostly older people who are the wise ones.”

“How does this fit with church?” asked Hope. “The conventional churches don’t seem to like questions being asked. ‘Liberal’ churches aren’t into such a free-floating kind of ‘spiritual’ approach. It’s like ‘spiritual’ becomes a dirty word in liberal circles.”

I nod. “There is a disconcerting mismatch at this in-between stage. If you’re disenchanted, rituals, customs, God-language, and worship services lose some of their comfort and attraction. Let’s say you’re attending a conventional church firmly anchored in that conventionality. By asking critical questions, you disrupt the seamlessness of belief and ritual, and challenge theory and practice. Other people, even your good friends, may not like the direction you’re taking. If you have liberal friends, they might be embarrassed you’re still taking the spiritual journey seriously.”

Hope nods slowly. I can tell she has already experienced these kinds of reactions.

“There is no map for this journey, Hope. The destination can’t be found on Google Maps. SatNav can’t give us directions. Each of us will arrive at a highly individual accommodation. We’ll find our own balance between what we think and feel and what we do. It might be quite different to what other people think and do and feel.”

“You can find, however, a cohort of other seekers. Sometimes just a phrase will tell you that the person right in front of you is questioning and seeking too. Exactly what they are questioning may be a different area of religion or ritual or devotion. You know however, they’re going through the same sifting process. Sometimes you’ll find fellow seekers in books. I can recommend a few writers – I’ve already mentioned Borg.” I write ‘Marcus Borg, Convictions’10 on the napkin.

Hope looks at her watch. “Oh! I have to go!” She picks up the napkin. “Can I take this? And can I text you to meet another time? I need to do some thinking.”

I raise my hand in a wave as she darts out the door. I’m glad she feels that discussing the stages have been helpful. I sit and reflect as I sip my rapidly cooling cup of coffee.

I remember well the emotions I experienced when I was at the same stage as Hope. It was like riding a scary rollercoaster. I felt not just vague discomfort, but real anger once my questioning got thoroughly underway. Others I met on the journey felt they had been deceived, hoodwinked or even manipulated by clergy or other church leaders. It’s never pleasant to feel you have been duped.

I mused further. I’ve come to see that most people act as best they can from where they are on the journey. For instance, a minister or pastor might permanently reside in the more black-and-white second of Fowler’s faith stages. That will be the stage they preach from. I now see there is no conspiracy holding a congregation in a certain place. Leaders speak out of their own experience (or lack of it). Usually, they genuinely feel they are doing the right thing by their congregation. They are, as yet, unaware of another way to think about belief and faith and trust. Hope’s dad was at the end of his career as a parish minister. He now preached from the liberal position he had found, outside the usual faith journey. His move into an academic pastoral theology position must have been a relief.

Ironically, some leaders I knew became even more dogmatic. As they felt questions knocking at their own door, they tried hard to keep such unwelcome visitors away. Many leaders don’t understand that letting the questions in, will, after an uncomfortable period, be better than spending all their spiritual energy barring the door against them.

My thoughts moved on to my occasional meetings with a childhood Sunday School teacher, youth leader or minister in later life. I remember sometimes being surprised, or even deeply shocked, to find that since I last interacted with them, they had moved on in their spiritual journeys.

Often, I’d been holding a conventional position because of my admiration for that person, only to find they no longer held it themselves! It takes a big internal struggle to see others move from my childhood perceptions of them. For a while I wondered resentfully why they couldn’t have done it sooner. (Of course, had they been in a different position when I was younger, I may not have been ready for their ideas at the time).

I thought of Hope on her way back to work. I hoped she’d accept the invitation to question and grow. I wanted to help her with that. I wondered if she quite realised how differently her mind-set worked compared with that of the biblical writers. They, two millennia ago and more, set down the Big Story we followed in church from a completely different mind-set. That might be a good thing to talk about over our next coffee.

1 ‘Good’ included the usual keeping of the commandments, honesty, integrity but also a fairly draconian position on no pre-marital sex.

2 Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss psychologist interested in child development. He developed a stage theory describing developmental milestones.

3 James Fowler III (1940-2015) was an American theologian. He was Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University. He published a developmental stage theory of faith in 1981.

4 Morgan Scott Peck (1936-2005) was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author who wrote the book The Road Less Traveled, in 1978. His stages of faith were included in his 1987 book The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace.

5 Marcus Joel Borg (1942-2015) was an American New Testament scholar and theologian. He was a fellow of the Jesus Seminar and a major figure in historical Jesus scholarship.

6 Thomas Moore (b. 1940) is a Jungian psychotherapist, former monk, and writer. His book Care of the Soul was published in 1992. He writes and lectures in the fields of archetypal psychology, mythology, and imagination. His work is influenced by the writings of Carl Jung and James Hillman.

7 Some fairy tales are not light pieces of childish nonsense. See Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ work.

8 PK is a shortened nickname for Preacher’s kid – the child of a clergy person.

9 Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1929). “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

https://www.columbia.edu/~ey2172/rilke.html Accessed 24 September 2021.

10 Marcus Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most (Harper One, 2014).