Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian - Faith Stage 7 (Universalizing Faith)

We are now at the 7th and final stage in our faith development, which James Fowler (Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian) calls Universalizing Faith. This will be my final post in a series on this book. The previous posts can be found here: #1 , #2 , #3 , #4 .

Universalizing faith is the stage of full maturity in a person's development. I began this series with the prayer of St. Augustine that I have prayed for many years: "Lord, the house of my soul is small; do Thou enter in and enlarge it."  I see this final stage of faith as a fulfillment of that prayer, because it is the stage when the heart is entering into the largeness of the heart of God, able to encompass all people in its love.

In the previous stage (Conjunctive faith) the person lives in the tension of opposing factors. "The polarities in its loves and loyalties can seem to cancel each other." They see the need of living in full solidarity with all people and yet their integrity keeps them in commitments to institutions and persons that are in their present life. This can lead to a feeling of "cosmic loneliness and homelessness." For some this discomfort is what moves them on to the ultimate issues of life that have to do with themselves and with everyday existence with their neighbor and it leads them to this final stage.

The movement to Universalizing faith involves a "radical decentration from self." In other words, the person's perspective on life expands to the point that his 'circle of those who count' begins to include all of humanity, not only his own family and friends or those who share similar political or religious views.

In earlier stages of faith "we become attached to causes, persons, institutions, possessions...precisely because they seem to promise to ground us in worth. Likewise, we tend to attach ourselves to certain appearances and promises of power. These sources of power, which promise to preserve our interests and values, help us deal with our fears and our insecurities as finite persons in a dangerous world of power..." Gradually with each stage of development we allow ourselves to include others who are not like us. In Universalizing faith, this process of 'decentration from self' (i.e., a healthy detachment from all sources of security that have kept us closed off from 'the other') reaches completion, because in this stage "a person decenters in the valuing process to such an extent that he/she participates in the valuing of the Creator and values other beings from a standpoint more nearly identified with the love of Creator for creatures than from the standpoint of a vulnerable, defensive, anxious creature."

Fowler concludes this topic by quoting I John 4:18 ("Perfect love casts out fear"), and says that the ability in a person to relinquish all the "perishable sources of power" is the "fruit of that person's total and pervasive response in love and trust to the radical love of God." And so in the end, it is the encounter and continuing receiving of the radical love of God that casts out the fear of fully including others unlike ourselves in our love. Jesus, of course, is the greatest example of all-inclusive love and acceptance both in the way He lived and in His nonviolent death on behalf of violent humans. He lived in the love of His Father and was therefore free from fear and could radically love all humans.

The movement to Universalizing faith is to become nonviolent, just as God in Christ is nonviolent and embraces all people.

The author adds later in the chapter that to move towards this final stage of development requires more than natural human growth; it requires help from God. Few people attain this stage of development. He suggests that rather than make this stage a goal in life, we focus (at whatever stage we find ourselves in) on opening ourselves as radically as possible to synergy with the Spirit of God in love for 'the other'.

"Lord, the house of my soul is small; do Thou enter in and enlarge it."  Amen...