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Spirituality and religion are a central part of many clients’ lives. They shape how people make meaning, cope with loss, make decisions, and find community. For social workers, understanding how faith and spirituality develop over the lifespan is part of seeing the whole person, and it’s content you may see on the ASWB exam.
This guide covers James Fowler’s Stages of Faith (the most important spiritual development theory for the exam), M. Scott Peck’s four stages of spiritual growth, how Erikson and Maslow connect to spirituality, spiritual assessment tools, and the ethical principles that guide how social workers address religion and spirituality. You’ll also find five practice questions with rationales.
Quick answer: What are the theories of spiritual development?
- Fowler’s Stages of Faith: seven stages (0–6), from primal faith in infancy through intuitive-projective, mythic-literal, synthetic-conventional, individuative-reflective, and conjunctive faith to universalizing faith, which few reach.
- Peck’s four stages: chaotic-antisocial, formal-institutional, skeptic-individual, and mystic-communal.
- Related theories: Erikson’s integrity vs. despair and Maslow’s self-actualization and self-transcendence often show up in spiritual questions.
- On the exam: identify the stage from the client’s behavior, assess the role spirituality plays for the client, treat faith as a potential strength, and never impose your own beliefs.
Jump to: Fowler’s Stages of Faith · Peck’s stages · Erikson and Maslow · Spiritual assessment · Ethics · Practice questions · FAQ
Spirituality vs. Religion
The exam may use these terms differently, so it helps to know the distinction:
- Spirituality is a broad, personal search for meaning, purpose, connection, and transcendence. It may or may not involve a belief in God or a higher power.
- Religion is an organized system of beliefs, practices, rituals, and community, usually shared by a group and tied to a tradition.
A client can be spiritual but not religious, religious in practice but not deeply spiritual, both, or neither. Fowler himself defined “faith” broadly, as the way a person makes meaning and relates to what they consider ultimate, whether or not that’s religious.
James Fowler’s Stages of Faith
James Fowler, a theologian and developmental psychologist, published Stages of Faith in 1981. He built on Piaget’s cognitive stages, Kohlberg’s moral development, and Erikson’s psychosocial stages to describe how people’s way of making meaning changes over time. As with Piaget, the stages are sequential, but the ages are approximate, and many adults never move past stage 3 or 4.
| Stage | Typical age | Key features | Exam clues |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0. Primal (undifferentiated) faith | Birth–2 | Foundations of trust, hope, and love form through relationships with caregivers. | Infant; parallels Erikson’s trust vs. mistrust |
| 1. Intuitive-projective | About 3–7 | Imaginative, fantasy-filled faith shaped by stories, images, and the examples of adults. | Young child blends fantasy and reality; vivid images of God |
| 2. Mythic-literal | About 7–12 (some adults) | Stories and beliefs are taken literally; strong sense of fairness and reciprocity. | “God rewards good people and punishes bad people” |
| 3. Synthetic-conventional | Adolescence; many adults remain here | Faith is drawn from family, peers, and community; conformity to authority; beliefs are held but not critically examined. | Beliefs come from the group; discomfort with questioning |
| 4. Individuative-reflective | Often young adulthood (mid-20s to late 30s), if at all | Critical reflection on beliefs; taking personal responsibility for one’s faith; less reliance on external authority. Often triggered by a crisis, loss, or leaving home. | Questioning childhood teachings; seeking a personal faith |
| 5. Conjunctive | Midlife and beyond (rarely before 30) | Comfort with paradox, mystery, and uncertainty; openness to other traditions; integrates opposites. | “Many paths hold truth”; embraces ambiguity |
| 6. Universalizing | Rarely reached | Selfless commitment to universal justice and love, often at great personal cost. Fowler cited figures such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa. | Lives entirely for others and universal ideals |
Exam tip: Like Piaget questions, Fowler questions reward matching the behavior to the stage, not just the age. A 40-year-old who is questioning the beliefs she was raised with is showing individuative-reflective faith, even though her age might suggest conjunctive faith. For more on stage-based reasoning, see Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory and the ASWB Exam.
M. Scott Peck’s Four Stages of Spiritual Growth
Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck described a simpler, four-stage model that roughly parallels Fowler’s:
| Stage | Description |
|---|---|
| I. Chaotic-antisocial | Lacks principles or a consistent spiritual framework; self-serving. |
| II. Formal-institutional | Relies on the structure, rules, and authority of an institution; values order and certainty. |
| III. Skeptic-individual | Questions or rejects institutional religion; values reason and evidence; may be non-religious but principled. |
| IV. Mystic-communal | Embraces mystery and interconnectedness; sees unity beneath differences. |
How Erikson and Maslow Connect to Spirituality
Erikson and Maslow aren’t spiritual development theories, but they often appear in questions about meaning, purpose, and faith.
- Erikson’s psychosocial stages: Trust vs. mistrust lays the foundation for hope, which Fowler also places at the start of faith development. Identity vs. role confusion in adolescence often includes questions about beliefs and values. Integrity vs. despair in late adulthood involves reviewing one’s life and making peace with its meaning, which is why life review and reminiscence are common interventions with older adults. Learn more in Erik Erikson and the ASWB Exam.
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Self-actualization, at the top of the pyramid, involves realizing one’s potential. Later in his career, Maslow described a level beyond it, self-transcendence: finding purpose in something greater than oneself, which is closely tied to spirituality. Maslow’s hierarchy also reminds social workers that basic needs like food, safety, and housing usually come first. Learn more in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory and the ASWB Exam.
To compare these with other theorists, see our human development theorist comparison table.
Spiritual Assessment in Social Work
A spiritual assessment explores what role, if any, spirituality and religion play in a client’s life, including as a source of strength, coping, community, or distress. It’s part of a holistic, biopsychosocial-spiritual assessment. Commonly used tools include:
- FICA (Christina Puchalski): Faith and belief, Importance and influence, Community, and Address in care.
- HOPE (Anandarajah and Hight): sources of Hope, Organized religion, Personal spirituality and practices, and Effects on care and decisions.
- Spiritual genograms, ecomaps, and lifemaps (David Hodge): visual tools that map spiritual influences across generations, current spiritual supports and stressors, or a client’s spiritual journey over time.
Spirituality can be a strength (meaning, hope, community, coping rituals) and a source of distress (guilt, conflict with a faith community, or a crisis of faith after a loss). A good assessment explores both without judgment.
Want more practice on human development and diversity topics? Agents of Change includes hundreds of practice questions with rationales, 2 live study groups each month, and full-length practice exams built for the new ASWB exam format.
Spirituality, Religion, and Social Work Ethics
On the new ASWB exam, launched August 3, 2026, spirituality questions can fall under Values & Ethics as well as Assessment & Planning and Intervention & Practice. Keep these principles in mind:
- Cultural humility and competence. The NASW Code of Ethics (Standard 1.05) includes religion among the areas of diversity social workers should understand. Learn about a client’s beliefs from the client rather than relying on assumptions about their tradition.
- Self-determination. Clients decide what role faith plays in their lives and in their care, including whether to keep, change, or leave a religious practice.
- Don’t impose your own beliefs. Sharing your religious views, encouraging or discouraging a particular practice, or proselytizing are boundary violations. If your own beliefs are affecting your work with a client, seek supervision.
- Use spirituality as a strength when the client wants to. With the client’s consent, this might include connecting them with their faith community or coordinating with clergy.
- Distinguish spiritual and religious experiences from symptoms. Practices and beliefs that are normal within a client’s culture or tradition shouldn’t be pathologized. The DSM includes a “religious or spiritual problem” code for distress that isn’t a mental disorder.
Practice Questions: Theories of Spiritual Development
Try each question before reading the answer and rationale.
Question 1
Jasmine, a 40-year-old client, tells the social worker she has begun questioning the religious teachings she grew up with. She wants a more personal, experiential spirituality rather than following the doctrines she was taught as a child, and she has started exploring meditation. According to Fowler, which stage BEST describes Jasmine’s current experience?
A) Synthetic-conventional faith
B) Individuative-reflective faith
C) Conjunctive faith
D) Universalizing faith
Answer: B. Individuative-reflective faith involves critically examining inherited beliefs and developing a more personal faith that’s less dependent on external authority. Jasmine is moving away from the conforming faith of synthetic-conventional faith (A). Conjunctive faith (C) involves embracing paradox and the truths of other traditions, and universalizing faith (D) involves selfless commitment to universal ideals. Neither is described here. Note that her age alone might suggest conjunctive faith, but her behavior points to stage 4.
Question 2
A 9-year-old tells a school social worker that his grandmother got sick “because she missed church” and that God will make her better if the family prays every night. According to Fowler, this belief is MOST characteristic of which stage?
A) Primal faith
B) Intuitive-projective faith
C) Mythic-literal faith
D) Synthetic-conventional faith
Answer: C. In mythic-literal faith (about ages 7 to 12), children take religious stories literally and understand the world in terms of fairness and reciprocity: good actions are rewarded and bad actions are punished. Primal faith (A) is infancy. Intuitive-projective faith (B) is more fantasy-based and less logically ordered. Synthetic-conventional faith (D) typically emerges in adolescence and centers on conforming to the beliefs of one’s community.
Question 3
During an intake assessment at a hospital, a patient with a new cancer diagnosis says, “My faith is what’s getting me through this.” What should the social worker do NEXT?
A) Refer the patient to the hospital chaplain.
B) Explore what the patient’s faith means to them and how it helps them cope.
C) Share that the social worker’s own faith has also helped them through hard times.
D) Move on to the medical and financial portions of the assessment.
Answer: B. The patient has identified faith as a source of strength. Exploring its meaning and role is part of a holistic spiritual assessment and helps the social worker support that coping. A referral to the chaplain (A) may be appropriate later, if the patient wants it, but it skips assessment. Sharing the social worker’s own beliefs (C) shifts the focus away from the client and risks imposing values. Moving on (D) misses an important strength.
Question 4
A social worker with strong religious beliefs is working with a client who has decided to leave the faith community she was raised in. The social worker feels uncomfortable with the client’s decision. What is the MOST appropriate action for the social worker?
A) Encourage the client to talk with her religious leader before making a final decision.
B) Respect the client’s decision and seek supervision to address the social worker’s own reactions.
C) Refer the client to another social worker who shares the client’s views.
D) Explain to the client why the social worker values faith community.
Answer: B. The client has the right to self-determination, including decisions about religion. The social worker’s discomfort is theirs to manage, and supervision is the appropriate place to do that. A and D impose the social worker’s values. Referral (C) isn’t warranted simply because of a difference in beliefs and could feel like abandonment to the client.
Question 5
A client who was recently evicted and is staying in a shelter tells the social worker that he has been wondering what the purpose of his life is. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, what should the social worker address FIRST?
A) The client’s search for meaning and purpose
B) The client’s need for stable housing and safety
C) The client’s sense of belonging in the community
D) The client’s self-esteem following the eviction
Answer: B. Maslow’s hierarchy holds that physiological and safety needs, such as stable housing, must generally be met before higher needs. That doesn’t mean ignoring the client’s questions about meaning. The social worker can acknowledge them and return to them, but securing housing and safety comes first. A, C, and D are higher-level needs.
FAQ: Spiritual Development and the ASWB Exam
What are Fowler’s stages of faith in order?
Primal (undifferentiated) faith, intuitive-projective, mythic-literal, synthetic-conventional, individuative-reflective, conjunctive, and universalizing. They are numbered 0 through 6.
Which stage of faith do most adults reach?
Fowler found that many adults remain in synthetic-conventional faith (stage 3), holding beliefs drawn from their community without critically examining them. Fewer reach individuative-reflective or conjunctive faith, and universalizing faith is rare.
Should social workers talk about religion with clients?
Yes, when it’s relevant to the client and guided by the client. Assessing the role of spirituality is part of holistic practice. What social workers should avoid is imposing their own beliefs, proselytizing, or making assumptions about a client’s faith.
What is a spiritual assessment?
An exploration of the role spirituality and religion play in a client’s life, including beliefs, practices, community, and how faith affects coping and decisions. Tools include FICA, HOPE, and Hodge’s spiritual genograms, ecomaps, and lifemaps.
How is Fowler related to other developmental theorists?
Fowler built his model on Piaget’s cognitive stages, Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, and Erikson’s psychosocial stages. Like them, his stages are sequential, and each builds on the one before it.
Bottom Line
For the ASWB exam, know Fowler’s stages and the behaviors that signal each one, recognize how Erikson’s and Maslow’s theories relate to meaning and purpose, and understand how to assess and respect a client’s spirituality. When a question involves faith, follow the client’s lead, treat spirituality as a potential strength, and keep your own beliefs out of the session.
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About the Instructor, Dr. Meagan Mitchell: Meagan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and has been providing individualized and group test prep for the ASWB for over 11 years. From all of this experience helping others pass their exams, she created the Agents of Change course to help you prepare for and pass the ASWB exam!
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