I noticed one podcast on the FairCast called Mormon Discussion that was advertising it's own website and I started looking for it. I also noticed that the FairCast site stopped hosting Bill Reel who produces the Mormon Discussion. Mormon Discussion is a site that claims to help LDS members struggling with their faith, which is also something that FairMormon is doing as well. The motto of Mormon Discussion is "Leading With Faith" and is supposed to offer a way for people struggling with their faith to, perhaps, find a new way to look at things that will help them with their faith struggle.
One of the things they like to talk about is "Fowler's Stages of Faith" which is a concept developed by George W. Fowler who was a professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University. (He's retired now and is a Methodist minister.) The basic idea is that humans go through 6 stages of faith development. You don't have to go through all the stages, and Fowler says most people don't reach stages 4-6. The pod-cast concentrates on the transition between stages 3 and 4. Stage 3 is called Synthetic-Conventional it starts about age 12 and can last a lifetime. A young person accepts their faith uncritically and ignores any discrepancies for "fear of threat of inconsistencies." This is a stage that the pod-cast says most people stay in. Stage 4 is Individuate-Reflective and starts at 21+ and is described as "...a stage of angst and struggle. The individual takes personal responsibility for his or her beliefs and feelings. As one is able to reflect on one's own beliefs, there is an openness to a new complexity of faith, but this also increases the awareness of conflicts in one's belief."
According to the podcast people who enter into Stage 4 sometimes don't work through it and leave the faith but those who do seem to have a deeper faith. Or that is the impression that the podcast gives it to me. The only time that I really remember a struggle with my faith, other than what I did on my mission, was when I read a book called Medicine and the Mormons, by Robert T. Divett. Bob Divett was the medical librarian at the University of New Mexico, and my home teaching companion when I was a teen ager. When he published his book my mother bought it because he was a family friend that my mother respected. I attempted to read it because Bro. Divett had had a great impact on me. I started reading it and discovered that maybe Joseph Smith did not come up with the Word of Wisdom, Section 89 in the Doctrine and Covenants, sui generis. There apparently were a lot of people talking about health and the types of diets one should follow around the time of Joseph Smith, and here I'd always thought that everything Joseph came up with was unique. This was probably during my senior year in high school, a time I was not really testing Mormon orthodoxy but I was certainly testing Mormon othopraxy.
Sometime after that I started studying Mormon doctrine, or orthodoxy, and getting my life a little (okay a lot) more in line with Mormon othopraxy, and then decided, to almost everyone who knew my in Albuquerque, NM where I'd spent my teenage years, to go on a mission. I guess that after I came home from my mission I had a more nuanced view of my faith, as they say on Mormon Discussions, because I recalled my reaction with my old home teaching companions book, found it, read it and had no problem with it this time. It was pretty hard reading but I could understand it and it didn't shake my faith. I guess by that time I realized that Joseph was a product of his time as well as a prophet that the Lord could work with.
I'm still not sure if I'm a Stage 4 Mormon but as I continued listening to Mormon Discussions I realized I was a Stage 4 believer in Science. For this insight alone I'm thankful that I listened to the Mormon Discussion pod-casts.
To be continued.
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