Spiritual Development Theorists

M.Scott Peck's stages were my first introduction to the idea of spiritual development. Click here to read about M Scott Peck's stages in very simplified form.

The next one is James Fowler, (click here to read about Fowler) probably the major contributor to this concept.

There are at least twleve other spiritual development theorists whose work on some way corresponds to Fowler's and Peck's. Each of these offers a slightly different perspective. Click on each name to read a summary of each person's work.

-Ken Wilber - a modern day philosopher. He has expounded on spiritual development most clearly in his book Integral Spirituality.

-Lawrence Kohlberg - whose work on moral development correlates somewhat with the spiritual stages.

-Paul Ricoeur - a French philosopher with an interesting perspective.

-Gordon Allport

-Walter Clark

-Larry Culliford - a UK psychiatrist adds depth to our understanding of these stages and supplies us with a very interesting example! Part 2 and Part 3

-Heinz Streib (click here) who calls them religious "styles" instead of "stages." (More "pc" I suppose)

-K. Helmut Reich (click here) - whose work centers around the development of reasoning skills and has applied that concept to religious development. Developing Horizons of the Mind

-Fritz Oser - wrote Religious Judgement*: A Developmental Approach together with Paul Gmünder. Here they outline five levels of spiritual maturity.

*this apparently is the "Continental" spelling of judgment.

-Saint Teresa of Avila

-Carolyn Myss - who speaks in terms of chakras instead of stages

-Michael Bernard Beckwith of Agape International

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