hello everyone and welcome to mr. simplifies tutorials in this video we're going to look at Fowler's stages of faith development so followers stages actually relate to human psychological development much like Erickson's PJ's or Kohlberg's father was actually quite heavily influenced by all of them especially by Piaget father believed in faith and religion to be different he looked at faith to be a virtue that completes a person and provides him purpose the stages defined by faller define a person's journey from a newborn to a fully spiritual adult he believed that not everybody is able to transition to the top stages very few people actually make it to the top stages most people are actually stuck in one of the intermediate stages now let's look at these actual stages it starts off with a pre stage or a stage 0 and then the first stage is stage 1 and it goes on all the way to stage 6 now let's look at these stages individually so the priests stage a stage 0 is primal faith this stage lasts the first couple of years of an individual's life infants here realize that they are their separate separate beings from their parents they're separate they're different but they do rely completely on their parents to to meet all of their needs they have little distinction here between what's real and what's imaginary when it comes to faith and this is the stage where the seeds of faith are planted and individuals start trusting others as well now the next stage is intuitive projective fade and this typically goes on from the age of 2 to age of to the age of 6 or 7 and this is the age where language and communication develops in an individual now the ideas here of the concept of God are quite vague the quite mysterious and quite magical in nature in this stage the most basic ideas about God are are usually picked up from parents or the society the influences for the individual the next stage is mythic literal faith this takes place roughly about 7 to 12 years and in this stage they they generally accept stories told to them by the society but tend to tend to understand the stories in in very literal ways they can also understand God in a physical form conveyed to them by the society or the community that they live in entirely so the idea of a godly figure or the idea of faith comes to them as expressed to them quite literally by their community or their their parents in their circle the next stage is synthetic conventional faith this occurs during adult sense and Beyond and in this stage teenagers tend to have different social circles and they can often be exposed to different ideas or faith people in this stage start formulating their own belief systems and they can often find it hard to understand that they're actually part of a system themselves and they can also seldom look outside of their own belief systems this is therefore a stage wherein people tend to draw lines for themselves and seldom look beyond these lines fouler believe that many people can actually remain in this stage all their lives quite interestingly enough the next stage is individuated reflective fate so this stage occurs at young adulthood and Beyond and this stage this is the stage wherein people begin to critically examine their own belief systems and can often develop a sense of disbelief about their existing belief systems that they've been following all their lives they can see that they can see the box or or the mold as you'd say that they were in and realized that there are other belief systems or boxes all around them so they understand that there have been a part of the system and then there are other systems around them too the next stage is conjunctive faith and this typically takes place during early midlife and Beyond and in this stage people often need multiple interpretations of reality and the means to live life and they begin to see life as a mystery and often return to two sacred stories and symbols without getting confined within a particular belief system of their own they become a lot more accepting and expletive of various ideologies and allow for their own belief systems to be amended by outside influences so they're they're okay to change they're as they're okay to mend their own base they're okay to amend their own belief systems and they're more accepting of other belief systems and the final stage is universalizing faith now very few people actually managed to reach this level the highest level according to Fowler people who managed to reach this level starts dedicating their lives to serving others as they find this to be the true source of their happiness and the happiness of everybody around them they also think of serving others to be their moral duty or obligation people in this stage can challenge the existing order and ensure that there is justice and love for all now follow provided people like Martin Luther King jr. and Ghandi as as examples of people who have reached this stage so you can see that an extremely low number of people are actually capable of reaching this stage in this final stage so quite interesting but not without shortcomings so it seems that the stages lay a lot of emphasis and focus on age groups and in reality people tend to have unique journeys when it comes to their faith now there there are a lot of since about the final stage now farlan never interviewed Gandhi or Martin Luther King jr. to understand their ideas of faith so he also never provided any information on anyone he actually met and interviewed who might be at that final level so it is questionable to say the least now another major shot coming before the stages is that it's not universal enough subsequent research has actually suggested that the stages don't transcend very well across different cultures and may only be relevant to the people who file were actually interviewed for their development so it's not Universal it doesn't transcend across various various cultures that we have coexisting in in our society okay so these were a few shortcomings I hope this video was helpful for you I thank you very much for your attendance and as always please feel free to to to recommend any topics that you want covered on this channel please like this this video and support content on this channel for more regular updates and videos thank you very much for your attendance and take care