ABSTRACT
The individual's and family's management of emotions, mental anguish, and spiritual concerns is profoundly influenced by religious beliefs and faith systems to which these persons have been committed and by which they live. No crisis brings these into focus more clearly than with the dying and grieving. Along with the development of personality comes development of morality and faith. In moral and faith development Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg (1976), Fowler (1982, 1984), and more recently Gilligan (1982), Belenky et al. (1986) have contributed to our understandings. Following the earlier work of Freud and Piaget, attention in recent years has focused on the work of Kohlberg and Fowler.] Gilligan and colleagues2 have observed that earlier work begun by Freud and Piaget was largely based upon male perceptions of moral development and these authors have appropriately suggested that men and women approach moral decisions from different perspectives. Men and women commonly do not approach epistemology or ways of knowing and thinking in the same way. They contend that males reach decisions differently from females in the consideration of moral and/or religious dilemmas and issues. Their insights indicate how strongly male and female individual and family systems issues lend themselves to conflicts in grief-producing crises. Further understanding of the complicity of each family's difficulty in stress management, triangling, escalation, polarization, and stasis in family systems theory must not be ignored. It is necessary for pastors to keep these processes in mind as they seek to give aid. The sensitive, astute, and thoughtful pastor/theologian will take seriously the ways in which faith development takes shape and how it works for persons and families in crisis.
