Stages and churches, cautiously
William Blake, Jacob’s Ladder or Jacob’s Dream (1799-1806)
In Integral Christianity, Paul Smith - pastor for over fifty years at Broadway Church in Kansas, Missouri, and a lifelong Southern Baptist until they kicked him (for holding progressive views) - tells the following story of his encounter with a young, conservative Christian:
Recently, my ten-year old granddaughter wanted a rip stick, which is like a skateboard but with only one wheel in front and one in back. I live near a store that sells them and we purchased one. My granddaughter and I returned there often as she talked with the young man who was the store manager and an expert in “rip sticking”. They would both take their rip sticks out on the sidewalk in front of the store where they would both rip stick for a while, expertly weaving in and out around the sidewalk.
In the process, I struck up a friendship with this young man. He was a recent convert to Christ in a conservative Christian church which was carefully watching over him and inviting him to Bible study and prayer. I was aware of how grateful I was for that traditional church, which is quite different from my church. They were able to connect with this young man about a spiritual path in a helpful way that I probably could not. Although I am quite an evangelist for my understanding of Christianity, I found myself not the least interested in challenging this young man’s newly-found traditional beliefs and practices. Rather, I encouraged him and praised him for starting to follow Jesus according to his church’s understanding. (1)
A foundational principle of the integral approach is that everyone has the right to be at the stage they are in. While consciousness is seen as developing in progressive, sequential stages, each new level builds on the previous - ‘stage 2’, for example, is wobbly and undermined if I have not completed and integrated ‘stage 1’ well enough. Another foundational principle is that humans, being culturally and psychologically diverse, will not ‘complete’ and ‘integrate’ each stage of consciousness in a similar way.
Using a personal example in terms of ‘types of consciousness’ and ‘lines of development’ (you may need to refresh on this vocab from the previous post 😫), being a strongly intuitive-feelings-based person, my leaping mind often races ahead of my more stolid, stationary limbs. Or, as an Ayurvedic doctor once said in India, looking at my tongue and feeling my pulse: “sharp mind, lazy body”. But the physical is so foundational. Sooner or later, such a tendency trips me up, tips over the apple cart, or leaves me with a much thinner presence and ‘truth’. Thus, I have learned to keep remembering and paying attention to my physical life and self as I go.
The notion that everyone has the right to be at the stage they are in is similar to other, integral ‘stages wisdom’, such as:
“Leaps in evolution usually occur in a manner of ‘transcending and including,’ not by wiping out what came before…” (2)
“The goal of spirituality is to transcend the ego, not to demolish or repress it…” (3)
“Hierarchies exist, but they don’t necessarily equal moral superiority. There are higher levels of development and complexity, people of greater skills and talents, but that does not mean they are morally superior or more complete expressions of reality...”. (4) An old man washing dishes at an ashram kitchen in Bangalore, India, for example, might be kinder and closer to the heart of God than the rishi leading the week long course course in advanced meditation (as I once discovered). (See also Matthew 11:25-30).
Everyone, in a sense, is exactly where they need to be. The young man who has just converted to Christ needs clear guidance, theology, and ‘rules’ before he can ‘let go’ and practice more subtle, pluralistic, and paradoxical ‘truth’.
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In the integral model, ‘stages of consciousness’ are similar to Fowler’s ‘stages of faith’, but are simultaneously more ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’. They are more objective in the sense that Wilber and other thinkers link stages of consciousness with stages of human history and social development. They are more subjective insofar as consciousness relates to our capacity to experience (sense, feel, hear, touch, see, think, imagine) everything inside and outside of us, including the presence and movement of the Spirit.
Different stages of consciousness can be modelled in different ways: go here for a summary of Ken Wilber’s preferred stage model. In Integral Christianity, Paul Smith uses the language and image of of “the spiral of development in consciousness and culture”, as created by Steve McIntosh (based on integral theory), which looks like this:
One of Paul Smith’s original insights and contributions is to identify each stage of consciousness with a separate theology or type of ‘church’ (‘archaic consciousness’, the consciousness of primitive animals and very young infants, is excluded from this ‘church experiment’). That is, before Smith begins to sketch out what an integral church or integral Christianity might look like, he offers us a brief sketch of what a ‘tribal church’, ‘warrior church’, ‘traditional church’, ‘modern church’, and, finally, ‘postmodern church’ - in other words, a ‘church’ in which this or that stage of consciousness tends to dominate - might look like in theology and practice. Although this is an inevitable gross simplification of actual reality, which Smith freely admits, the exercise is surprisingly worthwhile.
Smith describes the above five stages or levels of church using eight Christian theological themes: (1) the Bible, (2) God, (3) Jesus, (4) prayer, (5) sin and salvation, (6) heaven and hell, (7) the kingdom of heaven, and (8) mystical or spiritual experience. He also discusses the strengths and limitations of each stage.
In the coming posts, I will review Smith’s descriptions of each ‘church’ and their typical beliefs, applying them to my own Christian journey and self.
Although Smith leaves out archaic consciousness, I will begin by including it - by wondering what ‘church’ from our earliest, most primal level of consciousness might look like (clue: it doesn't involve beliefs).
References
(1) Paul R. Smith, Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve (2011), p.45.
(2), (3), (4) Mark Manson, “The Rise and Fall of Ken Wilber” (2025).
