On the Origins and Goals of Religious Development

Abstract

The positing of religious development, especially in the form of progressive and irreversible stages, requires the assumption of religion-specific dispositions or structures as well as of particular end-states representing the fullest realization of the inborn potential. It is difficult to say, however, of what these rarely observed end-states consist. Furthermore, the construction of these states requires the imposition of certain philosophical and theological views, thus undermining any claims for universality. Truly to comprehend religious change, we must develop new theories that more fully take into account the diversity of the world's religious traditions and the complexity of the factors that shape individual faith.