gion or belief and challenging his readers to ask themselves what values have centering power in their lives (Fowler 4). Such an analysis would be persuasive to Fowler because it is the thesis of Stages of Faith that the values we develop throughout the different stages of our own personal growth define the nature of our faith and, thus, form the basis for our perceptions of the way life is organized.
Thus, through an analysis of Tillich's work, Fowler is able to establish his divorcing of faith from a necessarily religious basis. He then moves on to an analysis of the work of H. Richard Niebuhr, whom he argues worked out an approach to faith similar to Tillich's and thus similar to Fowler's own understanding of faith (Fowler 5). Fowler uses Niebuhr to prepare the reader for his eventual description of the developmental stages of faith. He argues that Niebuhr sees faith taking form in our earliest relationships with those who provide care for us in our infancy. This argument will be rejuvenated later in the text in Fowler's discussion of what he will call the first stage of the development of faith--Undifferentiated faith (Fowler 119).
Fowler uses Tillich and Niebuhr to illustrate the foundations of his own theory of faith. Both men argued faith to be the core of values that form our perceptions of the world separate from religion. Our faith will determine what religion we choose, rather than vice versa. Fowler will establish this argument later in his discussion of the stages of faith in Part IV of his analysis. However, at this early part of the book he establishes faith as a universal human concern according to the theories of Tillich and Niebuhr (Fowler 5). Before we can make any decisions about our religious beliefs, we must make decisions about how we order our lives and what will make life worth living for us. These decisions will be based on our faith.
Fowler then turns to the work of Wilfred Cantwell Smit...