Faith formation and Fowler's theory of faith development in the context of the Lasallian vision-mission and the Vietnamese Catholic college students

• Main Author: Nguyen, Ba Loc
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2004
• Subjects: Faith development; Educational aims and objectives; Vietnamese students; Higher Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/24
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study is an attempt to analyze in a Fowler's theory of the stages of faith in order to apply it in the context of the Lasallian vision-mission for the education in the faith of a special group, the Vietnamese catholic college students in Hochiminh City. The Fowler's theory is a highly valuable work for having been rationally based on scholarly well-known work of Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson in psychology it uses extensively the insightful philosophical and theological thinking of P. Tillich, R. Niebuhr and W. C. Smith in their conception of faith Fowler and his team made a widely scientific research over decades to produce a work well appreciated by most of religious educators and critics. Fowler understands faith from below, from human experiences as a quest for relation with the ultimate environment which is above all others and the other. He traces the growth of this faith through numerous individual stories and interviews, relates it with stages described especially by Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson. He then portrays it in a four dimensional model which shows how faith develop and mature. This portrait of faith shed many insightful lights for the Lasallian vision-mission in its endeavor to give an education in the faith to young people by the teaching their minds, touching their hearts and transforming their lives . The Vietnamese catholic college students in Hochiminh City live in a situation in which their basic cultural and religious traditions encounter challenges by the actual economic of globalization, cultural paradigm shift of postmodernism and a harsh contraction of a provocative socialist ideology still putting its expectations in materialism and communism and despairingly hinder all other spiritual claims. All these make an incalculable impact on their faith, challenges and sometimes block its development. This research tries to use Fowler's theory as well as the Lasallian vision-mission to address the problem of how to contribute with a rational theory and efficient methodology, an adequate process of faith formation which helps them to grow in faith, in "Become Adult, Becoming Christian".