One of the greatest challenges facing the religious community today is helping individuals understand the spiritual meaning of their lives as they live through various stages and crises of adulthood, Christian Life Patterns seeks to offer a fresh vision of spirituality to countless adult Catholics and Christians.
Using as their basis the pioneering work of Erik Erikson, the authors here link the passages of adult growth with the wisdom of the Christian theological tradition and the living experience of Christian liturgy and ritual. They add a religious dimension to recent studies that have pointed out that adulthood is not a static period of maturity, but of continuing growth to greater maturity. Their study covers such crises as intimacy (for the young adult), generativity (for the middle years), and renunciation (for the Christian of mature age). In every instance, the Whiteheads suggest religious responses that are both psychologically informed and thoroughly Christian.