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In Your Grown-Up Faith: Blending the Three Elements of Belief, Kenneth L. Parker outlines a way of reflecting on religious experience that is all at once simple and profound. Originally created by Friedrich von Hügel in his work “The Mystical Element of Religion,” the three elements of belief are known as the Child’s Way, the Youth Way, and the Adult’s Way. Through our lived experience, these elements become more understandable as they help us become aware of, and develop, a mature faith.
Parker brings these elements to life through the lived experience of John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua and other autobiographical reflections of the great nineteenth-century Anglican theologian. Parker, drawing from Newman and Hügel, emphasizes the power of these elements of belief, and the role they play in our developing faith.
In this book we will explore the meaning of the Child’s Way, the Youth’s Way, and the Adult’s Way in the life of the believer, and consider how these elements of religion—balanced in our lives—can lead to greater insight into our individual experience of the divine, and cultivate a sense of the importance of these elements in our own lived experience.
Kenneth L. Parker, PhD, grew up in the Wesleyan Church and received his master’s degree in historical theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He became a Roman Catholic during his doctoral studies in reformation history at Cambridge University. For five years, Dr. Parker was a Benedictine monk and student of nineteenth-century Catholic history at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He has been a professor of historical theology at Saint Louis University since 1992.
