The Methodist minister and religious educator John Westerhoff identified stages of faith in religious identity and development (List in the graphic above!)
Christian faith, like the human body, has an expected pattern of growth and development. The different stages are usually addressed at certain ages, and can (like physical growth) be delayed, with faith development ending before the final stage is reached, or stages experienced out of order. For many of us, these stages are not linear and even if they were, we ought not assume that Owned Faith is something only possessed by the chronologically older ones among us, Searching Faith the province of our teens or younger people, and Experienced or Affiliative only what our children are doing. Let’s face it: we are, each of us and as a community, all over this map sometimes.
In his 1995 book Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, journalist Jonathan Kozol tells this story about faith formation:
The Number Six train from Manhattan to the South Bronx makes nine stops in the eighteen-minute ride between East 59th Street and Brook Avenue. When you enter the train, you are in the seventh richest Congressional district in the nation. When you leave, you are in the poorest. The 600,000 people who live here and the 450,000 people who live in Washington Heights and Harlem, across the river, make up one of the largest racially segregated concentrations of poor people in our nation.
Brook Avenue, the tenth stop, lies in the center of Mott Haven, whose 48,000 people are the poorest in the South Bronx. Walking into St. Ann’s Church in Mott Haven on a hot summer afternoon, one is immediately in the presence of small children.
A seven-year-old boy named Cliffie, whose mother has come to the church to talk with the Reverend Overall, agrees to take me for a walk around the neighborhood. Reaching up to take my hand the moment we leave the church, he starts a running commentary almost instantly, interrupting now and then to say hello to men and women on the street, dozens of whom are standing just outside the gateway to St. Ann’s, waiting for a soup kitchen to open.
As confident and grown-up as he seems in some ways, he has the round face of a baby and is scarcely more than three-and-a-half feet tall…and he has an absolutely literal religious faith. When I ask him how he pictures God, he says, “He has long hair and He can walk on the deep water.” To make sure I understand how unusual this is, he says, “Nobody else can.”
He seems to take the lessons of religion literally also. Speaking of a time his mother sent him to the store “to get a pizza” – “three slices, one for my mom, one for my dad, and one for me” – he says he saw a homeless man who told him he was hungry. “But he was too cold to move his mouth! He couldn’t talk.”
“How did you know that he was hungry if he couldn’t talk?”
“He pointed to my pizza.”
“What did you do?”
“I gave him some! “
“Were your parents mad at you?”
He looks surprised by this. “Why would they be mad?” he asks. “God told us: Share!'”
This is Westerhoff’s Owned Faith, found here in a 7 year old boy. How many of us have our faith-formed values working at such default, on the surface levels, with very little thought behind the action? This little guy experienced this faith, he imitated it, and when he was on his own in the world on an errand, this faith sprung forth with ease and clarity. This story is 30 years old, and I imagine little Cliffie went through his own period of Searching Faith, often a refining fire of something adult, something ours, something deeply real and tested. The Owned Faith on the other side of Searching Faith is deeply rooted and even more a part of actions, words, emotional responses and values than any other kind. Neither Searching or Owned Faith happens without the Experiential or the Affiliative.
For weeks now, I have been having conversations with our parents of atrium and youth group children. My biggest takeaways from these conversations is that what they want for their children is:
- The structure, scaffolding, and “container” that our atrium and rhythm of regular faith sharing and practice creates
- The moral compass – a kind of “north star” of story based values – that a faith community can offer, especially in contrast to wider culture at school and in life
- The agreements and norms of conversation and sharing that lead to a sense of belonging and acceptance among middle and high school students
- The opportunities for service and justice education for children of all ages
These are conversations about transcendence, not catechesis. Ultimately, parents are here, with their children, for transformation first and information second. The details and language of faith can come later as a commitment to our particular tradition. For right now, the faith experience and practice of faith as it becomes “dyed in the wool” is the focus, the desire, the reason to be here.
So I ask all of us, myself included, to become more aware of what we are modelling, saying and holding in our tone, our body language, and our own sense of wonder, welcome and wanting when we come to Grace. Our newer, younger families are encountering us, our youth and teens are questioning (or are just massively distracted), our little ones are watching, tracking, and imitating. We need each other – those new to Grace and those who have been here for years – in equal measure to grow in the Stages of Faith. And so I encourage us before we show up again on a Sunday, or to any gathering at Grace, to gently ask:
What in me still has the curiosity and the questions of the child?
What in me is “acting” the faith and not really understanding it?
What in me has the doubt and resistance of the teen and the young adult?
What in me has the faith and wisdom of the elder adult?
We are growing together, always. We show up for each other, as we are, and we recognize that, as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians in this Sunday’s epistle, “we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us” (2 Cor 5: 20) at all times. What do we want for our children in a world in reckless breakdown and polycrisis, a world where “everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Cor 5: 17)? What do we want for ourselves? Let us ask better questions, let us carry each other through stages – perhaps timeless spirals – of faith as a community.
See you on Sunday,
Sarah Christopher
Associate Pastor
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