Through research and "faith-life" stories, readers are encouraged to view growing in faith as a life-long process. Addresses key questions in an adult's faith life such as doubt, stages of growth, and more.

In this statement, the bishops present a pastoral plan to help Catholics advance in their role as disciples, by awakening a renewal in the ministry of adult faith formation and helping all to grow to the full maturity of Christ.

This relatively new culture of the adult faith-seeker originated in the closing decades of the twentieth century as developmental psychology highlighted the changing nature of growth and maturity at different life-stages. Accompanied by the information explosion, adult people particularly began to ask questions for which they sought adult answers. The co-dependency of earlier times, expecting adults to simply accept what religious authorities taught, is alien to adult religious maturity. Adult faith has arrived at a new threshold, requiring novel approaches and strategies in the religious development of adult people. Diarmuid O'Murchu charts this evolutionary development, highlighting dimensions of conventional religion which no longer inspire or offer hope, along with those that nurture and mature, and sheds new light on the spiritual horizons which contemporary adults seek to embrace. The result is a path-breaking book that empowers adult faith-seekers to confidently grow in wisdom and in grace, and that enables the church to use its resources to strengthen the faith of its people at a time of great change in how people think about religion.

In this updated reissue of his 1984 classic, James Fowler applies his groundbreaking research on the development of faith to Christianity. In his revised first chapter Fowler locates his approach to the study of human and faith development in relation to the contemporary conversation about identity and selfhood in postmodernity. Fowler invites readers to explore what it means to find and claim vocation: a purpose for one's life that is part of the purposes of God. Reclaiming covenant and vocation as ideals for responsible, mature, Christian selfhood, Fowler shows how a dynamic understanding of what vocation involves can both inform and transform lives.

" ... An exciting, five-session, adult-formation resource for those seeking a richer understanding of issues in contemporary Christian practice and theology: Who was Jesus? Who is God? What is salvation? How do we practice our faith? How do we live in community?"--Container.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 540-542) and indexes.

What does a genuinely adult spirituality look like? Many adults find it difficult to answer this question because they often retain a childlike understanding of God and religion. This book explores that phenomenon, and then offers adult alternatives in the light of mysticism, depth psychology, and the evolutionary cosmology. Written for the average person and without denominational bias, this book describes how a mature faith is nourished by religious views that are open-minded rather than provincial, metaphorical rather than literal, and respectful of individuality rather than rigid and rule bound. How to Be an Adult in Faith and Spirituality offers a gentle reply to the atheism of our postmodern world by guiding readers along a path of enriching spiritual growth and by awakening them to the potential of the transcendent - the place within us and beyond us where true and lasting faith abounds. Book jacket.