Spiritual Formation and Growth across the Lifespan

Abstract

This research paper aims to support the concept of spiritual formation and growth of human beings across their lifespan. Moreover, this paper also provides an overview of the historically significant paradigms, studies and theories for understanding spiritual development during childhood, early adulthood and middle to late adulthood.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

Introduction4

Discussion5

Spiritual Development in Childhood5

Spiritual Development in Early Adulthood6

Spiritual Development from Middle to Late Adulthood7

Conclusions8

References9

Spiritual Formation and Growth across the Lifespan

Introduction

The recent spreading out of curiosity in spirituality in the U.S. has been accompanied by intellectual attempts to present a more accurate meaning of the construct and to clear the ways in which it varies from and harmonize religiosity. As described by social researchers, the term religiosity in general refers to the attendance at church services, pointers of church membership, and/or taking part in other organized religious activities but on the other hand spirituality denotes the self's existential hunt for decisive denotation through an individualized understanding of the holy. This search tends to be comparatively independent of standardize religious traditions albeit, in practice, naturally, individuals who are religiously involved can also be engaged in spirituality. Critics disapproving the overuse of the term have altercated that spirituality is permissively raised to refer to an extensive range of peculiar personal experiences that are normally devoid of the commitments, obligations and practices that are linked with religious participation. However, in recent years, scholars have presented a more regulation oriented meaning of spirituality that elucidates the content and limitations of the construct. Hence, spiritual formation and growth calls for not only a raise in the intensity of an individual's awareness of, and quest for, spiritual denotation ultimately, but it also demands a deeper and expanded obligation to engagement in genuine spiritual practices. There has to be substantiation that the individual works at growing and nourishing his spirituality in daily life and involves in practices that guards the original experience of superiority. (Neuman, 1982).

Discussion

The question is whether or not spirituality develops across the lifespan of human. And through this research I will support the formation and development of spirituality using theoretical and empirical evidence.

Spiritual Development in Childhood

Even though many researchers and theorists propose that spiritual growth does not initiate until the young adulthood and adolescence years, few argue that such development commences in childhood. The Fowler's theory of faith development suggests that spiritual growth begins at birth, reflecting Piaget's theory of development up till the childhood years, when faith is typified by a belief in universal reciprocity, justice and anthropomorphic divinities. (Piaget, 1963) Though little experiential and empirical evidence has been presented to support Fowler's theory, it would call for an early growth of existential meaning and thinking production.

Unluckily, empirical research on spirituality in childhood is too little. During 1969 and 1977, Hardy, a British biologist gathered over four thousand reports of spiritual practices. Robinson examined the experiences that came about in childhood, analyzing that 23 percent occurred earlier than the age of five, whereas the rest taking place between the ages ...