James Flower’s 6 stages of faith are basically an organized hierarchy of the development of moral thinking of a person in terms of faith. The key word combination within Flower’s stages is “fundamental reconceptualization” of faith which occurs throughout each of the presented stages. Flowers gradation seems to be perfectly structured according to the religious cognitive growth, nevertheless it arouses contradictive feelings. Stage 6 seems to be even more magical and imaginative than stage 1, because the notions of universal compassion, justice and love are simply inapplicable in real contemporary life. People admire these qualities in their maximum development in their distant, unreachable people like saints, but went they face such people in real life they consider this type of behavior to be unjustified as it goes against their principles of living – material success. Each person subconsciously tries to achieve the Universalizing faith but the contemporary world and I would rather say survival process makes it extremely hard to do so. Flowers stages are perfect, but the role of religion nowadays had faced degradation and it seems to me that Stage 2, the Intuitive-projective faith has become the true limit of the moral growth of people.

People nowadays either question the authorities too much or do not question them at all creating terrifying contradictions. Flower accepted the “transforming experience” as the driving force of the progression over the stages; it is hard not to agree with that for it is an axiom. Still, people are closed for such transformations and have a trouble in shifting moral and faith judgments for better.

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