Faith timeline: mapping what you trusted at each age
Draw your life as one line and mark, age by age, what you trusted to make sense of things and where that trust changed hands.
Why it works
Fowler’s definition, quoted by Mallery and Mallery (2022), describes faith as “evolved and evolving”. The Faith Development Interview has produced a rich library of individual narratives (Mallery & Mallery, 2022). A timeline makes that sequence visible, so each shift in what you trust becomes a bend in one line you can see whole, rather than a set of separate memories you judge one at a time.
How to do it
- Draw a horizontal line and mark your age from childhood to today.
- Above the line, write the one thing you trusted most to make sense of life at each stage: a person, a belief, a rule, a way of being sure.
- Below the line, mark where a trust gave way and write what, if anything, replaced it.
- Circle the bend where your sense of what makes life meaningful last changed, and write one sentence about what changed.
- Read the whole line once without judging any earlier trust, then note which bends you still feel.
Evidence
The timeline is a self-drawn exercise for reflection, not a version of the Faith Development Interview. No study has tested it, and it does not produce a stage score. (anecdotal)
Mallery and Mallery describe the stages as usually measured by a lengthy interview or by short questionnaires. A self-drawn timeline is neither, and it does not place anyone at a stage.
Sources
- Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
- Mallery, S. T., & Mallery, P. (2022). Centers of value and the quest for meaning in faith development: A measurement approach. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 975160.
Common mistake
Grading the earlier trusts as mistakes. Mallery and Mallery (2022), summarising Keller (2008), say a lower style is less mature only when it is used in a non-adaptive context. So the useful question is whether an earlier trust still fits its situation, not only whether it was right.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, Made Practical
- Centers of value: answering the four questions in writing
Write down what you give your life to, who you are committed to in life and death, what you hope for, and who you share your most sacred hopes with.
- Master stories: naming the story you were handed about how life works
Write the story you live by, and name who or what you picture holding the final say when things go wrong.
- Retelling one disagreement from the other side
Write your position on one unsettled disagreement, then write theirs well enough that they would recognise it as their own.
- Mapping the circle of people you feel close to
List the people you feel most responsible to and close to, and mark which of them hold a belief or value that differs from yours.
- Holding two frames at once without picking a winner
Name the two ways of making sense of one question that both feel partly true right now, and write what each one still gets right.
- Talking with someone about a conviction you do not share
Ask someone who holds a conviction you do not share what it protects for them, repeat their answer back until they say it is right, then say what you still hold.
- Asking whether an old frame still fits this moment
When you notice yourself reaching for a belief you were raised with, ask whether it fits the situation in front of you, and write what the situation actually needs.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Ego Development Theory: What It Is and How It Is Measured
The frame you make meaning through, how researchers measure it, and how to work with it without ranking anyone
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- The Self-Transforming Mind: Kegan’s Fifth Order, Made Practical
When your own way of seeing becomes something you can look at, question, and let be changed
- The Construct-Aware and Unitive Stages of Adult Development
Seeing the self and its stories as constructions — what it looks like, how rare it is, and what it does not promise
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
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