In a recent essay, the historical theologian John Dick draws on James W. Fowler’s Stages of Faith to explore how our faith changes and develops throughout life. Dick’s final questions seem particularly relevant to those of us interested in Church reform. Do our Church practices – liturgy, theology, doctrines and homilies – encourage faith development, or do they keep us at an earlier stage, such as Stage 2, where religious stories and symbols are understood literally and God is imagined in anthropomorphic terms?

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