The most important thing that I offer in Honest to God that I have not encountered in other books that address the crises in today’s Christianity is emphasis on the role psychosocial-spiritual development plays in those crises. While the topics of spiritual practice and growth in consciousness have recently begun to enter the conversation, the same cannot be said for serious attention to our emerging understanding of the stages of psychosocial-spiritual development. It seems to me that most people involved in the culture wars have no idea what is really going on. Because they do not understand, they resort to demonizing the other side.
This demonization threatens to tear apart, not just Christianity, but our whole society. The tensions are not confined to religion but entail human culture worldwide. They are deep issues of identity and meaning and our relationship to one another. These are spiritual issues whether or not the people involved see them as such. We can leave institutional religion, but we always carry with us the deep spiritual concerns that have given rise to religion. We are all connected in the web of spirit—what traditional Christianity calls the omnipresence of God—even if we don’t think of it in those terms. If we do not find a way to reach across our differences and embrace our connectedness, we will eventually find ourselves killing one another. It has happened often in the past. Let’s not go there!
The crisis is one of natural transition between developmental stages and the natural tensions that arise between people at those different stages. I emphasize natural! Life is change, and that change is not as random and senseless as it often seems. I invite your attention to two chapters on this topic in Honest to God. They are “A Brief Introduction to Developmental Theory” and “The Crisis and the Way Out”. I suggest there that the crisis is one of transition from what I call the prerational stage to the rational stage. These can also be labeled the prescientific and scientific stages, the traditional and post-traditional stages, the premodern and modern stages, or in various other ways.
This transition is not simply about changing a few religious ideas, not just about adjusting dogmas and theologies, but about changing the very way we use our brains in deciding what is true. Such changes come about through grappling with the understandings, sources, and thought processes that gave rise to the old understandings and that push us toward new understandings. Struggling to find better truth changes the way we think. It also requires us to deal with our feelings and instinctual tendencies. This is a transition of worldview and a matter of deep spiritual growth, and it is not easy.
The culture wars arise from fear in people on both sides of this transition. People on the traditional side are deeply threatened and confused by ideas and behaviors that are contrary to what they have been taught. This fear soon turns to anger. People on the progressive side feel threatened by the anger and resistance of the traditionalists and demean and marginalize them. That leaves two camps digging in, lobbing insults and accusations, and fighting for political dominance. Both sides need to stop demonizing the other and take a good long look at themselves. Demonization is against the best values of everyone involved, so we need to make an effort—and it will be no small effort—not to do it!
To traditional folks I say, face up to the truth. God is found in the truth! Scientists and academics are not demon-possessed monsters out to defy God and destroy your families and way of life. They are ordinary people who work diligently to uncover how reality works using their God-given capacities of reason. Evolution and climate change, for example, are real. To say otherwise is simply to lie to yourself. If accepting such truths shatters your faith, then it wasn’t much of a faith. If you feel lost and confused, take that to God in prayer and introspection instead of being defiant and belligerent. You can deal at your own pace with whatever change seems appropriate, and there are plenty of good people on the other side who will help if you let them. Many of them started where you are, and they can sympathize. It is also worth noting that few if any of them ever regret moving beyond the traditional view.
To post-traditional folks I say, you have made progress, but there is so much farther to go, and you must be careful not to lose the important values at the heart of the faith. Yes, some of the traditionalists can be hateful and hurtful, but so can progressives. If you forget that they are your brothers and sisters, if you ridicule and vilify them, if you try to marginalize and ignore them, then you will have betrayed your deepest selves, of which they are a part.
The boundary between these sides is far from a clear and sharp line. There is a lot of gray in the middle, and a lot of people are groping their way through it. Many of us are traditionalists in some things and progressives in others. The transition is not just one or two steps but a hike that can sometimes be rugged. In fact, while specific transitions may end, the journey as a whole never does. Everyone is different, and everyone’s journey unfolds in its own way. The us-versus-them mentality is simply not helpful. We are all in this together. Compassion is essential.
The big challenge is to find a way to interact with one another without having the interaction descend into defensiveness and acrimony. I hope this website can help meet that challenge. Wherever you are in your own spiritual journey, I invite you to participate here if you want to give it a sincere effort. When the conversation gets difficult, we must remember to look for our common humanity.
© Copyright 2025 John Speers
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