Moving Beyond Stage 4

[Anonymous]

Most of you are acquainted with James Fowler’s Stages of Faith. If not, below is a link to a summary of Fowler’s six stages.

http://www.psychologycharts.com/james-fowler-stages-of-faith.html

[Anonymous]

I don’t think you are in one stage one day, then out of it and fully in the other stage the next day. More of a continuum. I think I am mostly in stage 4 and into 5 a bit. I don’t feel like my word is upside down and I know what I need to do next, but realize it will be hard and risky and I am preparing for it to minimize the pain it causes in others.

I selected stage 4

BTW – I like that chart. I am going to have to keep a copy of that to share with others.

[Anonymous]

Even though I am a PhD candidate and an academic, I think Fowler’s stages are thick to read and understand. If you mean by Stage 5, you move past your angst in the church and find peace. Then I’m in Stage 5 most of the time. Only when the church starts picking at me do I move back into Stage 4 and lose my peace.

How did I do it? These things kind of came together over time, not in any order I can remember

a) Stopped caring what the Mormon community thinks of me.

b) Decided my own conscience is a higher authority than any General Authority at any level. Decided what I think about issues that bothered me, and then lived as I thought I should live. LIberating!!!!

c) Stopped viewing the church as something special compared to other organizations. I accepted it for the temporal, religious institution it is.

d) Filled my life with other endeavors, outside the church, that provide me with spirituality, self-sacrifice, and that help replace what I lost when I reduced the church in my life.

e) learned how to talk to TBM church members all the way up to SP when they come at me with questions about my TR or willingness to fully engage with the LDS experience.

f) made a commitment to support people who are TBM and for whom the LDS gospel, as normally understood, works.

g) Found a community here at StayLDS. The other day I was wondering what I would do if this site shut down. I would feel a great sense of loss, and loss of friends, of the ability to share what I REALLY think. It would be hard on me for a while. This place really helps you stay connected to Mormonism without having to keep your mouth shut all the time.

h) Set boundaries regarding what the church can extract from me, and what I can expect from the church (nothing really, but civil treatment of my kids, and no behavior that threatens mental or physical health).

I) Reduced my involvement in church to a level that brings me peace.

Lots of steps. And it took a few years. I will have to say I am happier now than I have ever been in the last 15 years…

[Anonymous]

I agree with SD. I’m in Stage 5. It is this forum that helped me to move off of Stage 4. Thanks to everyone here.

NOTE: When you try to download this document, it will modify your tool bar on the internet software. eg Google Chrome.

It will modify it without asking permission to do it.

[Anonymous]

I live most of my life in Stage 6, mostly because I have embraced the universalist elements of Mormon theology, ironically.

There is an element of self-confidence that is counter-intuitive to a cursory reading of Fowler, but the key is that my self-confidence is not attached in any way to my beliefs being better than others’ views. I do believe, strongly, there are destructive and even evil beliefs, but there is no belief at this point in my life that makes me feel superior OR inferior to anyone else. I accept who I am and who others are and don’t expect more. I love the concept of a loving God who knows my heart and won’t judge me on anything else – and who will be more merciful to me than I am to myself – and who will be that way for everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Here is a layman’s explanation of the Five and Six phases.

Quote:

At Stage 5, I have confronted enough in life to know that my “one right way” does not always provide satisfactory answers, that there are other ways to see the world, to choose to live in the world. I am comfortable with paradox– I see that life is not black and white. I know that an individual may act in ways that promote good and later act in ways that promote evil, that even though I value the logic and rationality of science, I know there are things that cannot be explained–and rather than feel threatened by that paradox, I find it comforting and awe-inspiring. I don’t need to be in control. I don’t need to know all the answers. I have given up arrogance and discovered humility.

Coming to this understanding means that I do not have to make others wrong in order for my ideas to be right. I don’t need to live critically or judgmentally. Rather I can accept that others choose to live and think differently from me. Rather than identifying with a specific group, separating myself from others, I now see my connectedness to other groups and to my environment. At Stage 5, it is not a question of being too Christian or too Buddhist, but rather opening your heart to knowing that these are all paths to the same vision, the same way of loving the world.

Finally, at Stage 6, a few people move on to a stage where they must live lives of deep commitment. They demonstrate a selfless passion for all beings, they know that all life is interconnnected and therefore they feel the pain and the joy of all beings. They live a life of love, but they hold their life loosely, and like Jesus, Ghandi or Martin Luther King, they are ready to die for that commitment.

I’m not at Stage 6 yet. I don’t see myself dying for the kind of commitment Ghandi showed. I don’t think I have “deep commitment” at this point either. I’ve been focusing on learning to be at peace with all the warts of Mormonism and the condundrums it creates in my life. The concept of Mormon agnosticism seems to fit wellw tih Stage 5, because it acknowledges limits on our knowledge, and doesn’t acknowledge any one religion as perfectly true or right.

[Anonymous]

To be clear, I would not die for the LDS Church, in and of itself. I would die to protect people, generally speaking, but I would not do so automatically and without consideration, since I have other people depending on me in various ways.

I don’t put myself in the same narrow category as Jesus, Gandhi, MLK, Jr., etc – but I believe Fowler draws the stage too narrowly by using those examples. He makes it almost unreachable, and I don’t think it is healthy to have a stage that is, for nearly everyone, unreachable. I broaden the stage considerably and think there are more people at that stage than most people, including Fowler, realize.

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

To be clear, I would not die for the LDS Church, in and of itself. I would die to protect people, generally speaking, but I would not do so automatically and without consideration, since I have other people depending on me in various ways.

My thoughts exactly. But as my life gets older, I see its value declining in favor of the younger generation. So, I would likely give my life for my children and their posterity if there was no other way, and no one was depending on me.

I don’t see the point of going to STage 6 anyway — why is it considered a higher level of faith than Stage 5?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the replies so far. It’s good to know where some of you are right now. Categorizing where you best fit is somewhat arbitrary because it can change from one situation to another or even moment to moment.

I’m wondering if moving beyond stage 4 is related to how you move through the stages of grief. I think that everyone who enters stage 4 goes through a grieving process, although we all handle grieving differently, and this process is more intense for some than others.

The five stages of grief are:

1. Denial and isolation

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

Whether all of us go through these 5 stages in the grieving process is debatable, but it is a useful model to help understand grief, (and I think Fowler’s stage 4 too). I see myself going through a lot of these in my faith transition, but I kind of get stuck in the first four. It seems to me that the key to moving beyond Fowler’s stage 4 is to get to stage 5 (Acceptance) in the grieving process.

Maybe I’m never going to get there, but I hope I can. I really hate stage 4!

In looking at the stages of grief, I found something interesting on psychcentral.com that really seems to apply with my frustrations about not being able to move beyond Fowler’s Stage 4:

Quote:

Coping with loss is ultimately a deeply personal and singular experience — nobody can help you go through it more easily or understand all the emotions that you’re going through. But others can be there for you and help comfort you through this process. The best thing you can do is to allow yourself to feel the grief as it comes over you. Resisting it only will prolong the natural process of healing.

[Anonymous]

I do think those stages of grief can go along with the faith transition for some people, FS…especially for those who held their view of church teachings so close that to change them is like losing a safety net or close friend and confidant. You grieve that loss.

Other people don’t necessarily feel that same emotional connection, and so, don’t have that same grieving, but just anger. For some…just apathy. Or just being completely critical of all things, such as “all organized religion is corrupt”. They just have no trust in anything.

I think stage 4 is painful, and not likely a place to “land” as a way to be forever.

But stage 4 also allows for growth. Because wrestling with things, challenging ideas, re-evaluating teachings, exploring new ways to see things leads to breaking from the past that can hold you back. And it is about things that really matter…like self-identity issues.

I don’t think you can grow if you don’t have that period of effort and struggle and work to morph.

But I would not confuse stage 4 with just angst. It is more than that. We all have stress and angst in life over this or that. It comes and goes in life. Stage 4 is about faith development and underlying paradigms for our world and what matters. It is more than just if home teaching bugs me. Those kinds of stress will always be in our lives and we learn to cope with them.

There is no paradise of non-stress. I don’t even think heaven or the next life will be that.

I chose to not answer the poll question. I’m not sure.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know much about Fowler, I’m just doin’ my thang, but I wonder… are we erroneously pigeonholing being in a state of innocent bliss as stage 3, anger after that bliss is shattered as stage 4, and overcoming the resulting anger as stage 5? I think we can go through those emotions all while remaining in the same faith stage. Is it really a desire to to move from one stage to another or is it a desire to move past the angst and the anger regardless of stage?

Angst and anger can serve as a catalyst to move from one stage to another but I think anger, angst, and peace can be found at every stage, it’s the transitions that can hurt and transitions don’t necessarily have to be from one stage to another, a transition could take place entirely within one stage.

I like things in simple terms. Again, I don’t understand Fowler, I haven’t even read the book. Shooting from the hip:

Stage 3: God is defined by my community.

Stage 4: God is defined by self.

Stage 5: It almost seems like stage 5 is a combination and variant of stages 3 and 4. Rather than being the lone wolf, stage 5 reaches back out. God is found in communities but this time the world, not a single religion, becomes the community.

Using these (probably incorrect) definitions I think there’s room to be at peace by remaining in stage 4 by embracing our own moral authority. Picking apart the definition of stage 4 from the link in the OP:

Quote:

This is the tough stage, often begun in young adulthood, when people start seeing outside the box and realizing that there are other “boxes”. They begin to critically examine their beliefs on their own and often become disillusioned with their former faith.

Like others have said, the lines between the stages are blurred and the fuzzy boundaries can be crossed man times. In this definition I think there are elements of what we typically view as stage three. When I was very orthodox I could see outside the box and realize that there are other boxes, it’s just that I concluded that the other boxes were wrong. 🙂 Maybe what we’re really after is how to deal with the disillusionment, when our box is viewed as being just as wrong as we believed all the other boxes to be. My goal wasn’t “get to stage 5” it was “be happy again.” Those two goals can be on the same path but they don’t have to be. Of course the grand secret is figuring out what makes you happy after going through something like that. :think:

[Anonymous]

I don’t know a lot about Fowler’s stages. I’ve read the wikipedia, cliff’s notes version, so I have a lot to learn. I picked stage 5, because that’s how I’m feeling today. A few weeks ago I would have put stage 4. I was feeling really discouraged and was wondering how I could possibly stay in the church for another fifty years (in shallah).

I’ve followed the advice that I’ve seen here in trying try to understand where someone is coming from and why they would say something that I would consider extremely offensive or inappropriate , instead of getting upset and leaving the room. I’ve tried making up stories in my head about people in my ward. It helps to pass the time.

What’s really made me feel more at peace with various paradoxes, inconsistencies, and policies I completely disagree with is that there are a few new people in the ward around my age who are right there with me. We talk about things that I thought I would never be able to talk about at church. It has been so refreshing and has made the whole church experience better. I no longer feel like the crazy person who can’t see the emperor’s clothes.

[Anonymous]

dtrom34 wrote:

… I no longer feel like the crazy person who can’t see the emperor’s clothes.

So do you feel no longer crazy or do you now see clothes on the emperor?

[Anonymous]

dtrom34 wrote:

What’s really made me feel more at peace with various paradoxes, inconsistencies, and policies I completely disagree with is that there are a few new people in the ward around my age who are right there with me. We talk about things that I thought I would never be able to talk about at church. It has been so refreshing and has made the whole church experience better. I no longer feel like the crazy person who can’t see the emperor’s clothes.

I think I would feel a lot better if I had even one person in my ward that was “right there with me.” I do feel like that crazy person who can’t see the emperor’s clothes.

[Anonymous]

FaithfulSkeptic wrote:

I think I would feel a lot better if I had even one person in my ward that was “right there with me.” I do feel like that crazy person who can’t see the emperor’s clothes.

I assume there have been members of the church who have felt that way since the early 1800s.

It may not be new, each generation deals with variation in thoughts and beliefs, and it seems the culture ebbs and flows in being broad vs being correlated, but something tells me that is part of this life’s test. We stand up for what we believe, even when we feel alone. We become who we become by our thoughts and beliefs and the actions even when we feel alone. We stand up for our beliefs.

[Author]

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