Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion : Volume 17 (2006)

Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion Series Editor R...

Author: Ralph L. Piedmont

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Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion

Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion Series Editor RALPH L. PIEDMONT

VOLUME 17

Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion Volume 17

Edited by

Ralph L. Piedmont

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LC control number 89650738

ISSN 1046–8064 ISBN 90 04 154736 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoﬀ Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. RSSSR is indexed in Sociological Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, Religion Index Two: Multi-Author Works, Religions and Theology: Religions and Theology, Social Sciences: Comprehensive Works Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................ Acknowledgements ...................................................................... Manuscript Invitation ................................................................ An Analysis of Conversion Narratives of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Their Relationships to Stages of Religious Judgment ................................................................................ Ines W. Jindra Intolerance toward Others and Belief in an Active Satan ...... Keith M. Wilson, Jennifer L. Acord, and Ronan S. Bernas Transgression and Transformation: Spiritual Resources for Coping with a Personal Oﬀense .......................................... Kelly M. McConnell, Maria R. Gear, and Kenneth I. Pargament Religion and Ethnicity among Irish Americans in Savannah, Georgia .................................................................................... William L. Smith and Barbara Hendry

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39

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The Relationship between Parental Images and Ministerial Job Satisfaction among Anglican Clergymen in England Douglas W. Turton and Leslie J. Francis .......................... 105 Prayer, Purpose in Life, Personality and Social Attitudes Among non-Churchgoing 13- to 15-year-olds in England and Wales ................................................................................ 123 Leslie J. Francis and Mandy Robbins Biblical Interpretive Horizons and Ordinary Readers: An Empirical Study ................................................................ 157 Andrew Village

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A Factor Analysis of the Fetzer/NIA Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (MMRS) .................. 177 Ralph L. Piedmont, Anna Teresa Mapa, and Joseph E. G. Williams Variant Uses of Religious Beliefs to Justify Social Attitudes .................................................................................. 197 Mark M. Leach, Jacob J. Levy, and Lisa Denton The Role of Religiosity in Parenting Young Children .......... 221 Bonnie C. Nicholson and Leah McMorris Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames: Afterlife Beliefs of Catholic and Protestant Undergraduates .............................. 235 Julie Juola Exline and Ann Marie Yali Authors’ Biographies .................................................................. 261 Manuscript Reviewers ................................................................ 265 Index of Names .......................................................................... 267 Index of Subjects ........................................................................ 276

PREFACE It is interesting to survey the ﬁeld of religious/spiritual research. Investigators are ﬁnding many interesting and intriguing avenues for pursuing an understanding of the numinous. No longer conﬁned to analyses of simple variables, such as how frequently one prays or attends services, research has expanded to developing sophisticated, multifaceted inventories that assess a wide range of spiritual and religious qualities, and then linking these constructs to a diverse assortment of physical, psychosocial, and biological outcomes. Religion and spirituality represent not just the quality of one’s relationship with an ultimate being or merely a philosophy of life. Rather, these variables are related to practically all aspects of human endeavor. Coping ability, health status, life satisfaction, psychological maturity, attachment style, attitudes, values, and self-perceptions all seem to be inﬂuenced by numinous processes. Although the magnitude of these associations may not always be very large, the sheer diversity of associations is seemingly impressive! The social sciences have always sought for what I have called “Rosetta stone constructs”, single variables that appear to provide a complete understanding of the psyche. Over the years, much energy and activity would develop around these variables, with numerous studies emerging that link the construct to every type of behavior. However, over time, researchers would become disenchanted with the construct for a number of reasons, such as inconsistencies in the research ﬁndings and just plain ennui from over-exposure to the concept. Variables such as ﬁeld independence, Telic dominance, locus of control, and androgyny are a few of these types of variables. Yet, in the case of spirituality, the maturing research base continues to demonstrate the predictive utility of the construct. Rarely has one construct evidenced such a broad range of applicability. There is little about the person in which the numinous does not seem to play a role, whether it be in attitude formation, coping, psychological growth, sexual behavior, or health. Spirituality appears to be a central quality of human psychological functioning. As Gordon Allport noted in his classic book, Becoming, “The developed religious sentiment is a synthesis of these and many other factors, all of which form a comprehensive attitude whose function is to relate the individual meaningfully to the whole of Being” (p. 94).

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The current volume of Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion continues to provide a wide assortment of studies that extends the value of religious and spiritual constructs to understanding the human experience. The articles contained herein represent the works of an international group of both extensively published and beginning authors. Their professional appointments include sociology, several branches of psychology, mental health, ministry, pastoral counseling, and other areas of specialization. The volume also provides a crosssection of the many diﬀerent types of research methodologies that are currently in use in the ﬁeld, including qualitative analyses of personal narratives and interviews, multivariate analyses, and traditional quantitative techniques. It is also encouraging to see several of these papers attempting to integrate both qualitative and quantitative techniques into a single study. An interesting theme that emerges in several of these studies is an eﬀort to identify the causal impact of religion/spirituality on the individual. Although such a conclusion can only be based on longitudinal experimental data, it is of value to note that researchers are now becoming much more interested in understanding how the numinous aﬀects people rather than how these constructs may merely describe people. This represents an important conceptual shift in the ﬁeld that may be a result of an increasing recognition of the empirical robustness of numinous variables. Spirituality’s relatedness to so many outcomes cannot be dismissed as it being simply the common by-product of so many psychosocial processes. Quite the contrary, its relational fertility may signal it as a central contributor to these processes. Religion and spirituality may, in the words of Gordon Allport, be “master motives” that help to provide the individual with an integrated sense of purpose and direction. It is hoped that this edition of RSSSR will continue to stimulate interest and thinking in this area. The studies included here continue this series’ tradition in presenting diverse methodological approaches to studying religious issues. It can only be hoped that future research will move towards employing multi-method designs that aim to capture numinous eﬀects at diﬀerent levels of analysis simultaneously. This would promote the development of more integrated conceptual models that can chart spirituality’s multiple inﬂuences on functioning. Aside from the empirical value of these studies, ﬁndings generated here also have important applied implications as well. Clinicians can ﬁnd in these pages ways to understand how religion and spirituality shape clients’ sense of self and social identities. Such knowledge can

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help therapists empathize and understand their religiously oriented clients. These studies can also be helpful in identifying potentially new ways of intervening with clients. Religious and spiritual dimensions may oﬀer potential therapeutic pathways for facilitating change. Perhaps the value of RSSSR is best expressed in the words of Cher N. Edwards and Marcia Webb who recently reviewed RSSSR for Counseling and Values, “[RSSSR] does provide a conscientious overview of various issues that may aﬀect the spiritual and religious development of clients in a variety of settings—allowing the reader to extrapolate relevant information for use in practice and teaching. Given the breadth of expertise and experience of the contributors, this is an excellent resource for those interested in or practicing in the social sciences” (p. 237). [(2006) Counseling and Values, vol. 50, pp. 235–238].

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editorial staﬀ and I are grateful for the contributions and cooperation of a large number of people without whom publication of RSSSR would not be possible. Most obvious among them are the authors and coauthors of the published articles. A brief biographical sketch of each is provided on pp. 261–263. There were 16 researchers, scholars, and clinicians who have served as anonymous reviewers (see p. 265) of the manuscripts that were received for current publication. They not only have functioned as professional referees evaluating the appropriateness of the respective manuscripts for publication, but they also have given the authors signiﬁcant suggestions to improve the quality and scope of their future research in this area. Their eﬀorts helped to insure a high quality among those reports that are published. Catherine Hassinger has valiantly and eﬃciently served as the editorial assistant for this volume. Her experience, talent, and painstaking work has contributed immeasurably to the high standards of production. My own academic institution has provided many critical necessities for the production of this volume. Loyola College in Maryland, especially its graduate Department of Pastoral Counseling, has provided oﬃce space, funds for the editorial assistant, telephone services, computer technology, postage, access to its admirable support infrastructure, and related services. I am very grateful to both the Department’s and Graduate Administration’s support for this worthy endeavor. I am grateful, too, to Regine Reincke and the production staﬀ of Brill Academic Press who have eﬃciently published this attractive and useful volume. Brill’s marketing department (www.brill.nl or e-mail [email protected] for R.O.W. and [email protected] for North Amierica) is eager to ﬁll orders for either single volumes or on-going subscriptions to RSSSR. Please recommend RSSSR to your professional and academic colleagues. Also support its addition or continuation in your academic, religious, research, and public libraries for its rich contents are relevant to everyone, both lay and professional, who is interested in

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keeping up with the rapidly expanding frontiers of scientiﬁc knowledge about spirituality and religion. Ralph L. Piedmont, Ph.D., Editor

MANUSCRIPT INVITATION

For future volumes we welcome the submission of manuscripts that report on research contributing to the behavioral and social science understanding of religion, whether done by members of those disciplines or other professions. RSSSR is an annual interdisciplinary and international volume that publishes original reports of research, theoretical studies, and other innovative social scientiﬁc analyses of religion. (However, we do not include studies that are purely historical or theological.) Manuscripts should be original contributions (not reprints) based upon any of the quantitative or qualitative methods of research or the theoretical, conceptual, or meta-analytical analysis of research on religion in general or on any speciﬁc world religion. They should not be under consideration for publication by any other journal or publication outlet and should comply with the professional ethical standards of psychology, sociology, and other social science professions. Manuscripts may be submitted at any time during the year, although those received within the calendar year have the best chance of inclusion in the next volume. Send four copies, double spaced on standard paper to: Ralph L. Piemdont, Ph.D., Editor Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion Department of Pastoral Counseling Loyola College in Maryland 8890 McGaw Road, Suite 380 Columbia, MD 21045 USA Manuscripts that are judged by the editor as relevant to the coverage of RSSSR are reviewed anonymously for quality and then either accepted (usually along with constructive suggestions for revision) or rejected. Those accepted for publication must conform to the style guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Publication Manual, 5th edition. (Authors of accepted manuscripts who lack access to the Publication Manual may contact Dr. Piedmont for sample materials to help in the ﬁnal preparation of their papers.)

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Manuscripts relevant to our subject that are not accepted for publication also receive the beneﬁt of critiques and suggestions that can aid their improvement for submission elsewhere. RSSSR is also interested in developing “special topic sections” for inclusion in future editions. Special topic sections would include a series of papers (5–7) on a speciﬁc theme. These sections would be “guest edited” by one or two individuals who would be responsible for the solicitation of the manuscripts and their review. If you have a suggestion for a special topic section or would be interested in editing such a section, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Piedmont for details.

AN ANALYSIS OF CONVERSION NARRATIVES OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO STAGES OF RELIGIOUS JUDGMENT Ines W. Jindra* Abstract This article examines the processes of those converting to Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the eﬀects of those conversions. Based on the analysis of 9 conversion narratives using biographical interviews, I argue that conversions to Jehovah’s Witnesses are located on a continuum dependent upon the background of converts. On one side, converts originating from (mostly) Catholic backgrounds grew up in a relatively rigid Christian environment, which they regarded as largely meaningless, and their conversions were fostered by the need for a clear-cut interpretation of the Bible. On the other end of the continuum, converts reported disorganized backgrounds. I will also discuss the relationship between these conversions and Fritz Oser’s theory of religious judgment.

Why do people convert from one religion to another, and what eﬀects do those conversions have? It is noteworthy that conversions to various religious groups have been examined through a number of theories and methodologies, yet speciﬁc research on conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, with the exceptions of Beckford (1975, 1978) and Wilson (1977), is sparse. Also, virtually no literature connects religious conversions in general to the concepts of religious development and stage transformations. At the same time, theories of religious development have been criticized for neglecting social inﬂuences due to their focus on individual structural cognitive development (see Boyatzis, 2005; Fowler, Nipkow, Schweitzer, 1991, p. 88; Moseley, 1978; Streib, 2005). My research will contribute to bringing these diﬀerent areas together, because I believe that an analysis of converts’ religious judgment can shed light on the processes that are at play in conversions and vice versa (cf. Streib’s [2005] recent eﬀort to connect the two domains via narrative analysis).

* Author Note : I would like to thank Michael Jindra for valuable comments on this paper, Fritz Oser for his continual support during my thesis, and two anonymous reviewers and the editor of RSSSR for their feedback. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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In order to do this, I will explore the following questions using a narrative analysis: (a) What are the processes, reasons, and motives for conversions1 to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S. Midwest?, (b) Do diﬀerences in background contribute to diﬀerences in reasons and motives for the conversions?, (c) Do these conversions help resolve life problems?, (d) What is the relationship between conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Oser’s theory of stages of religious judgment?, and (e) Is there a speciﬁc level of religious judgment that can be observed among converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and why? This second set of questions will be addressed by using a religious dilemma developed by Oser and Gmünder (1996). This article is part of a larger (originally written in German) project in which I compare and contrast conversions to diﬀerent religions and New Religious Movements such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christianity, Islam, Unitarian Universalism, American Buddhism, and Baha’i in the American Midwest (Wenger Jindra, 2005). Defining Conversion While most social scientists deﬁne conversion as change from one belief system to another, there are many diverse approaches. Upon examining the issue more in-depth, one learns that more speciﬁc deﬁnitions are controversial (Robbins, 1988, pp. 64–67; Snow & Machalek, 1984). The one aspect present in all sociological and psychological deﬁnitions is conversion as “radical personal change” (Snow & Machalek, 1984, p. 169; Wohlrab-Sahr, Krech, & Knoblauch, 1998, p. 10), or “change in one or more components of the meaning system” (Paloutzian, 2005, pp. 335–336). Snow and Machalek (1984, p. 170), for example, view conversion as a change in the “universe of discourse”: “Viewed in this light, conversion concerns not only a change in values, beliefs, identities, but more fundamentally and signiﬁcantly, it entails the displacement of one universe of discourse by another or the ascendance of a formerly peripheral universe of discourse to the

1 Researchers in the sociology of religion commonly distinguish between “pull” and “push” factors. Pull factors signify reasons of what a speciﬁc group can oﬀer to a person, making the group attractive for him or her, while push factors mean motives (Allievi, 1999). In my analysis, I will look at the whole process by which a person converted, and therefore include both the pull (reasons) and push (motives) factors, while focusing more on the latter.

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status of a primary authority.” This transformation is accompanied by a diﬀerent view of self, leading to biographical reconstruction (Snow & Machalek, 1983, pp. 266–268). (For ﬁner distinctions on the concept of conversion see Bankston, Forsyth, & Floyd, 1981; Kilbourne & Richardson, 1988; Staples & Mauss, 1987; Straus 1979a, 1979b; Travisano, 1981; and Zinnbauer & Pargament, 1998). Another aspect of conversion is its problem-solving aspect. According to Wohlrab-Sahr (1998, pp. 126–127; 1995, p. 290; for a similar approach, see Heirich, 1977), conversion should be seen as a change in one’s system of meaning “that oﬀers a new solution to an ongoing personal problem,” leading to the transformation of personal identity. Even though the “old biographical problem” has not entirely disappeared after the conversion, one can ﬁnd a “structurally diﬀerent solution.” Thus, in contrast to constructivist views of conversion (Ulmer, 1988), Wohlrab-Sahr perceives of conversion not solely as communicative change.2 The concept of conversion can also imply that a person distances herself from her social, familial and in certain cases, even cultural background, usually while remaining in the same culture (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999a, p. 352). Here, one can theoretically think of several options: Converts had conﬂicts with parents, especially fathers (as has been shown by Ullman, 1989), experienced a severe emotional or cognitive crisis before their conversions (e.g., Rambo, 1993; Ullman, 1989), or, in light of modernization theory, searched for a way back into a traditional community with relatively strict moral codes and social norms (e.g., Köse, 1999; Wohlrab-Sahr, 1995, 1998, 1999a). On the other hand, it also may be possible to break out of strict, traditional communities in search of a diﬀerent environment.

2

One could ask if stage transformations should not be considered as conversions as well. While some authors contend that we can only speak of real conversions when stage transformations occur during a shift from one belief system to the other (Moseley, 1978), others believe that the term conversion entails something deeper than stage transformations (e.g., Loder, 1980, pp. 187–188) or, on the other hand, that conversion experiences do not go deep enough to change the structures of one’s personality (Ryan, 2000). Schweitzer (1990) speaks of a “correlative relationship” between conversions and stage transformations. In this study, religious stage development and religious conversion shall be kept separate, precisely because I am interested in the intersection between them. Also, conversion as deﬁned here entails a change in one’s belief system, which does not have to occur in a transformation of religious judgment. Stage transformations happen during a person’s development and are not always conscious changes in beliefs, unlike conversions (Conn, 1986, p. 36).

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Before I describe my research methods and elaborate my ﬁndings, I will ﬁrst summarize the existing literature on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, discuss the connections between religious development and conversions, and illustrate Oser’s theory of religious judgment. I will also brieﬂy outline the ﬁndings of my larger project on conversion and stages of religious judgment (Wenger Jindra, 2005). Background The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a growing sectarian organization founded by Charles T. Russell (1852–1916), who formed the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. His students were known as “Bible students.” After Russell’s death, Judge J. F. Rutherford became the head of this organization, and it changed tremendously under his inﬂuence (Melton, 1987, p. 447). Formally, the organization adopted the name Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931. Today, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (WTBTS) represents, other than on “its highest levels,” an organization led by laity, and people are expected to be actively involved in meetings and the distribution of Watchtower literature (Stark & Iannaccone, 1997, pp. 134–136). In contrast to Christian denominations, the Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the Trinity, even though they accept Jesus as God’s son. They also deny the concept of hell and of the immortal soul. Up to the year 1942, end time prophecies were common, but due to unfulﬁlled prophecies, this practice has since changed. Still, the focus of Jehovah’s Witnesses is on Armageddon, the return of Jehovah, who is believed to destroy the wicked and resurrect all that believe in him, and who will then “ ‘clean up the earth’ and restore it to paradisal conditions” (Bergman, 1984, p. xxix; Stark & Iannaccone, 1997, pp. 135–136). While there has been a considerable amount of literature on conversions to Islam (e.g., Allievi, 1999; Köse, 1999; Wohlrab-Sahr, 1998, 1999a), Christianity (Stromberg, 1993; Gordon, 1974), and New Religious Movements such as Hare Krishna, Baha’i (Ullman, 1982, 1988), New Age religions (Heelas, 1996), and the Uniﬁcation Church (Barker, 1984), scholarly works speciﬁcally on conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses are rare. In fact, according to Stark and Iannaccone (1997, p. 133), even though they are growing in numbers, the Jehovah’s Witnesses in general “are conspicuously absent from our journals” (for an attempt to remedy this situation, see Wah, 2001a). Existing research

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consists mostly of an overview of the Witnesses, their history, doctrine, organization, and organizational changes, written from a sociological and/or theological perspective (Alfs, 1991; Countess, 1982; Hébert, 1960; Penton, 1985; Rogerson, 1969; Zygmunt, 1977), or based on personal experiences (Dencher, 1966; Schnell, 1956; for a book that weaves the personal together with the historical, see Harrison, 1978). Other authors focus on failed prophesies (cf. Social Compass, 1977, no. 1; Schmalz, 1994; Weddle, 2000), the situation of members in diﬀerent countries both now and in the past (Bergman, 1996; Besier & Besier, 2001; Dirksen, 2002; Jubber, 1977; Ochs, 2002; Yonan, 1999; Wilson, 1973, 1977), or legal and health related issues (Côté & Richardson, 2001; Letsoalo, 1998; Sarteschi, 2004; Smith, 2001; Wah, 2001b). Speciﬁc research on conversion to Jehovah’s Witnesses is limited to Beckford’s (1975, 1978), Penton’s (1985, pp. 253–261), and Wilson’s (1977) studies. Beckford (1975) describes reasons for prospective converts to be inﬂuenced by the Watchtower Society. For example, converts came predominantly from isolated social backgrounds, had relatively strong family ties, and later on noticed a discrepancy between the moral rules they had been taught by their families and the attitudes and behaviors of the world (religious groups included) surrounding them (Beckford, 1975, pp. 161–174). Also, the Jehovah’s Witnesses could exert inﬂuence on prospective members because of their lack of involvement in social institutions and because of existing ties to members of the Watchtower movement (Beckford, 1975, pp. 183–184). However, following the constructivist approach, Beckford concluded in a later, well-known article (1978) that conversion accounts given by Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot inform us about the original motivations for conversion, since their conversion stories should be seen as inﬂuenced by “the knowledge which members of the Watchtower movement acquire in the course of their religious socialization and practice” (Beckford, 1978, p. 251). Hence, rather than seeking to understand the true motives of converts, he attempts to describe aﬃnities between conversion narratives and the guidelines of the Watchtower Society, their governing body.3 Wilson (1977) examined 3 Other authors argue similarly for a constructivist approach. Advocates of this approach focus on conversions as “reconstructive communicative actions,” and study

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Jehovah’s Witnesses’ success in Japan, and argued that in a society characterized by a lot of uncertainty on issues such as marriage, children, etc., as well as a lack of authority, the clarity and authority the Witnesses provide is welcomed by many. While taking Beckford’s (1978) claims into account, I shall argue that it is indeed possible to understand motives and reasons for conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses by applying a qualitative, deep-structured interview method. Thus, the ﬁrst series of questions this paper seeks to address are the following: (a) What are the processes, reasons, and motives for conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S. Midwest?, (b) Do diﬀerences in their background contribute to diﬀerences in reasons and motives for the conversions?, and (c) Do these conversions help resolve life problems?4 Studies Relating Religious Judgment to Conversions With the exception of a few studies (Moseley, 1978; Streib, 1998, 1999), little research has been done on the relationship between conversion and Fowler’s faith development theory or Oser’s (1984, 1996) stage theory of religious judgment (Fowler, 1981, pp. 285–286; Schweitzer, 1990, p. 304; Streib, 1991, pp. 53–57). Oser’s theory is similar to Fowler’s theory of faith development, but has a stronger focus on the “structure and logic of the narrative” instead of trying to understand the original motives leading up to a conversion (Dawson, 1995; Knoblauch, Wohlrab-Sahr, & Krech, 1998, pp. 16–18; Ulmer, 1988; Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999b, pp. 489–490). A related issue here is the distinction between “original motives” and “accounts”; in contrast to original motives, accounts are justiﬁcations for a speciﬁc behavior (e.g., a conversion) (Dawson, 1995; Mills, 1940). However, I have illustrated above that narrative interviews go beyond giving accounts, since the interviewee reveals very deep, personal experiences and goals while talking about his or her life story. 4 One further note concerning my focus in this paper: Rambo’s model (1989, 1993) reveals a process of conversions occurring in the stages’ “context” (the total environment in which converting happens), “crisis,” “quest,” “encounter” (with a representative of the religion one later on converts to), “interaction” (with the new belief system and the religious community), “commitment,” and “consequences.” In contrast to this generalist approach, I am not primarily interested in the general process of conversion, but in the question of why people convert to the Jehovah’s Witnesses versus converting to another religious group. What in their background and in the teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses makes this religion seem so plausible to them? This also means that existing contacts to a Jehovah’s Witness alone generally do not explain why someone converts, even though they can be a contributing factor. This focus is already implied in the deﬁnition of conversion as used by Wohlrab-Sahr (see above), according to which conversions to speciﬁc religions provide an answer to a certain structural problem in one’s biography.

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how people deﬁne their relationship to God in concrete situations than on faith in general, and is based on Jean Piaget’s and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theories of cognitive and moral development. In it, the development of religious judgment is universal and occurs in stages dependent on age. Each stage represents an integration of the stages below and a qualitative and quantitative diﬀerent way to think about religious questions. Religious development usually happens due to a confrontation with a problem, which cannot be solved suﬃciently with the individual’s current process of religious judgment (Oser & Brachel, 1984). It is important to note that this development happens independent from the content of a speciﬁc religion. Oser (1984, 1996) posits ﬁve stages of religious judgment: In Stage 1, we ﬁnd an orientation of “religious heteronomy.” The Ultimate is understood as an active agent that intervenes continuously in the world, whereas the human being is seen as merely reacting to its inﬂuence. People need to follow the wishes of the Ultimate, otherwise the relationship is destroyed (Oser, 1984, pp. 10–11). Stage 2 is characterized by an orientation of “give so that you may receive” (Oser, 1984, pp. 10–11). Even though the Ultimate is still seen as fully in power, the human being can have an inﬂuence on the Ultimate Being, “by good deeds, promises and vows” (Oser, 1984, p. 10). Stage 3 can be called an orientation of “ego autonomy and one-sided selfresponsibility,” a stage in which the inﬂuence of the Ultimate Being is very much diminished, and the Ultimate Being “has its own domain of hidden responsibility” (a deistic orientation) (Oser, 1984, p. 10). Stage 3 can manifest itself in three diﬀerent forms: (3a) a strict and extensive “separation between the human and the sphere of the Ultimate” (Oser & Gmünder, 1996, p. 107; author’s translation); (3b) a focus on human responsibility alone, to the detriment of the Ultimate; and ﬁnally (3c) “religious extremism,” where the focus is on the Ultimate and its doings alone (Oser & Gmünder, 1996, p. 107). People in Stage 4 perceive the Ultimate Being as “the bearing ground of the world and of each individual’s existence. Now an indirect, mediated relationship with God emerges” (Oser, 1984, p. 12). The Ultimate Being is seen as allowing human freedom in the ﬁrst place. Finally, Stage 5 represents an orientation of “religious intersubjectivity and autonomy.” Here, “religion is more a working model than a security concept” (Oser, 1984, p. 11), and the human being is intimately tied to the Ultimate and thrives on the unconditional acceptance that he or she receives. Generally, one can say that the higher

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the stage a subject is, the more autonomous is the subject, and the more friendship-like is his or her relationship to the Ultimate. These religious stages are deﬁned by a number of bipolar dimensions such as “transcendence versus immanence, holy versus profane, trust versus absurdity, freedom versus dependence, timelessness (eternity) versus timerelatedness” (Oser, 1984, p. 7). People at lower stages generally can only see one dimension; only at the higher stages of religious judgment can they connect the two sides. “At higher stages, the holy and eternity are seen in the most profane and ephemeral events or actions” (Oser, 1984, p. 8). Of course, there are criticisms of Oser’s theory, such as the charge that it neglects the emotional aspects of religiosity and the unconscious (Oser, 1991), and social inﬂuences in general (Streib, 2002). Some argue that content and structure get confused because the theory is heavily inﬂuenced by modern conceptions of autonomy (Nipkow, 1991), and therefore stigmatizes religious groups that focus more on tradition and group codes. The most important critique in my mind is the above mentioned charge that the theory neglects social inﬂuences on the development of religious judgment. I addressed the connection between religious judgment and various conversion experiences in a larger project based upon 39 narrative interviews with converts to several religious groups, utilizing Ulrich Beck’s concepts of “individualization” and “risk society.” In that study, similarities and diﬀerences between the conversions were found. A majority of the converts (64%) reported an emotionally or physically absent father and a superﬁcially religious home of origin (69%), and almost all of the converts talked about crisis experiences prior to the conversion. The diﬀerences between them, however, can be illustrated in seven preliminary Types of religious transformation, grouped into three categories, as shown in Figure 1 below. The ﬁrst category consists of biographies of those converting to a relatively strict theological and moral religious system (Type 1: conversions to Jehovah’s Witnesses; Type 2: conversions to Islam and to Jehovah’s Witnesses; and Type 3: conversions to Christianity). The second category of converts (Type 4: Unitarian Universalists; Type 5: American Buddhists; and Type 6: Baha’i) moves in the opposite direction, experiencing apostasy and joining a more liberal and socially open religious group. The third category consists of those who feel at home in their milieu of origin and thus did not distance themselves from the religion they had been brought up in but accepted it (Type 7).

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Figure 1. The seven types of religious transformation (Wenger Jindra, 2005). Jehovah’s Witnesses (Type 1) Islamic groups and Jehovah’s Witnesses (Type 2) Christian groups (Type 3)

religious dimension

Unitarian Universalists (Type 4)

cultural/social/family dimension

Baha’i (Type 6)

relationship dimension

American Buddhism (Type 5)

at home in milieu of origin (Type 7) “enclosed ” conditions

“wide” (open) conditions

Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 belong to the ﬁrst category since these three types are characterized by conversions to religious systems that were experienced as relatively closed, favoring strict behavioral patterns and clear religious contents. But whereas the converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Type 1 who originated from an enclosed religious (most often Catholic) background experienced it as empty, meaningless, and hypocritical, but still converted to a religious group that was experienced as relatively “narrow,” Type 2 (converts to Islam and to the Jehovah’s Witnesses) moved from conditions that were experienced as “too wide” or disoriented into closed ones. While the analysis of converts to Jehovah’s Witnesses generally indicated “extremist religious judgments” (Stage 3c), among Type 2 converts, some, focusing on their autonomy, reasoned on stages of the middle range (Stage 3), while others reasoned on lower stages (on Stage 1 or between Stages 2 and 3). Problems with relationships played a role among converts to Christianity (Type 3). The conversion and the relationship to the Christian God provided the converts with answers to relationship problems and feelings of not being loved. As was the case for Type 2, there were diﬀerences in relation to the interviewee’s religious judgment; whereas some reasoned on relatively low stages (on Stage 1 or between Stages 2 and 3) and reported a direct relationship to the Ultimate, with others the religious dilemmas (i.e., Paul dilemmas) revealed higher stages (between Stages 3 and 4) and a mediated understanding of the Ultimate. Examples of those leaving conditions

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that were experienced as closed (2nd category) include people joining the Unitarians (Type 4), the Buddhists (Type 5), and the Baha’i (Type 6). Whereas the Unitarians left an enclosed religiousness that they experienced as oppressive, the life stories of most of the Buddhists revealed conﬂicts with a parent of the same sex and problems arising from it, together with a search for openness and tolerance. The interviews with those joining the Baha’i revealed an original environment that was experienced as culturally too restricting, so converting represented a movement towards more diversity. All of these individuals in Type 4, 5, and 6 reported a certain degree of autonomy already before joining their present groups, which in some cases increased after conversion. All but one of them reasoned between Stages 3 and 4, and related their religious judgment back to their apostasy experience. Type 7 (converts within Christianity, category 3) can be contrasted against all the other types, since the narratives revealed that the converts had felt at home in their family and milieu of origin, and also did not feel the need to distance themselves from their religion of origin. Their religious judgment was found to be on relatively low stages (between Stages 2 and 3) of Oser’s theory. As Figure 1 below illustrates, the sphere the interviewees focused on the most in their narratives was the same for converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Unitarians (religious dimension), for converts to Islam and to some Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Baha’i (cultural, social, or familial dimension), and for converts to Christianity and American Buddhists (relationship dimension). Sociologically, one can tie the above ﬁndings in with literature on “late modernity,” and more speciﬁcally, on “risk society” and “individualization” (Beck, 1986/1992; Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994). In his fascinating book, Risk Society (1992), Beck illustrates the change from an industrial society into a “risk society” due to continuing modernization. In this process, people experienced an “unprecedented release from traditional class structures and familial boundaries and were forced to rely on their own labor force fate with all its risks, chances and contradictions” (Beck, 1986, p. 116, author’s translation). Individualization as deﬁned by Beck (1992, p. 128) illustrates both the “removal from historically prescribed social forms and commitments in the sense of traditional contexts of dominance and support” as well as the “loss of traditional security” they entail, while at the same time representing the standardization of modern society and its eﬀects on people. Since people have to start relying on themselves because

analysis of conversion narratives

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family, gender, class, and religion cannot provide them with a sense of identity anymore, it becomes imperative that they construct their own biographies, albeit always in connection with the demands of the labor force and the educational system. How do Beck’s (1992) insights ﬁt in with the ﬁndings presented in this study? Since individualization can be described as both a liberation and a loss of traditional stability, it can lead to insecurities, loneliness, and a loss of meaning (Berger, Berger, & Keller, 1974), the sense that one feels increasingly responsible for one’s own fate (and is perceived by others that way), and has to “prove” oneself (Oevermann, 1995, for example, speaks of increasing “problems of probation” due to ongoing secularization). If one cannot rely upon family, cultural belonging, class, or religion, one either has to ﬁnd one’s sense of worth in oneself or has to seek compensation for what was lost. It seems that those belonging to Type 1, 2, or 3 look for such compensation and a way to escape risks so common in late modernity, and therefore adopt a strict religious system, whereas Types 4, 5, and 6 agree with the conditions of modernity and feel at home in it. In this paper, I am interested primarily in the interrelationship between conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and stages of religious judgment, but the ﬁndings of the larger study described above can at times be used to compare converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses to converts to other groups. Thus, this paper also seeks to address the following questions: (d) Is there a speciﬁc stage of religious judgment that can be observed among converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses? and (e) Are there aﬃnities between stages of religious judgment and converts’ backgrounds or is that not the case? Methods Qualitative research is better suited than quantitative research for this topic, since qualitative methods allow us to delve deeper into the subject’s biographical trajectories than quantitative methods. Since one starts with the experiences of the subjects themselves, one gets a deeper and fuller understanding than in quantitative research, where one starts with a certain set of variables of interest (Lincoln & Guba, 1993, pp. 40–44; Yamane, 2000). Also, the goal of qualitative research methods generally is not generalizability, but an exploratory analysis, leading to the development of ﬁrst insights, which can then be further evaluated using quantitative methods (Crowson, 1993).

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ines w. jindra Participants

In this study, nine converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses (four women and ﬁve men) were interviewed. The converts were between 27 and 79 years old, with a mean age of 45 years, and their conversions happened between the ages of 11 and 45 years. Seven of the nine interviewees were European Americans, one was African American, and one originated from Puerto Rico. As shown in Table 1 below, their educational and professional backgrounds were relatively low (most had no more than a high school degree, with two having some college), and they mostly worked in low-prestige positions. There is not much diversity related to educational and professional background in the group as a whole because the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that worldly success interferes with service to God (Beckford, 1975). The interviewees were selected according to Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) strategy of “theoretical sampling.” This sampling strategy is not a random but a purposeful one, allowing the researcher to ﬁnd the necessary variables to ﬁll in his or her theory. A researcher working with the theoretical sampling method is not selecting speciﬁc groups of people, but searches for attributes or characteristics of people that prove to be of importance for the “emerging theory” (Conrad, 1993, p. 281; Strauss, 1994, pp. 70–71). For example, one attempts to ﬁnd people that share the conversion experiences to the religious groups being studied but diﬀer on other variables, such as gender, ethnic background, age, area of origin, and course of conversion. Following guidelines for theoretical sampling, the selection of the interviewees was accidental at the beginning, and, once a preliminary typology of conversion processes had been developed, selective (Strauss, 1994, pp. 63–64, pp. 70–71). This means that towards the end of the interviews, I searched for converts from non-Catholic backgrounds, since at the early stages I had interviewed mostly ex-Catholics. Procedure In order to describe the process of conversions, including motives and reasons for conversions as well as their eﬀects, nine interviews with converts to Jehovah’s Witnesses were analyzed with a qualitative, deep-structured method: the narrative biographical interview, as developed by Schütze (1983; for an overview of this method, see Glinka, 1998; Haupert, 1991), and religious dilemmas according to Oser, in order to grasp the subject’s stage of religious judgment.

27 years

Mrs. Haley, 43 years

22 years

31 years

45 years

22 years

21 years

11 years

Mr. Jones, 53 years

Mr. Carlson, 35 years

Mr. Walker, 47 years

Mrs. Smith, 28 years

Mr. Smith, 27 years

Mr. Taylor, 56 years

Mrs. Fletcher, 20 years 40 years

25 years

Mrs. Miller, 79 years

Disorganized and violent neighborhood

Familial disorganization

Rejection of a narrow, as meaningless experienced Catholic milieu Narrow social milieu, Mormon and Methodist background Rejection of a narrow, as meaningless experienced Catholic milieu Rejection of a narrow, as meaningless experienced Catholic milieu, some degree of familial disorganization Rejection of a narrow as meaningless experienced Catholic milieu, familial disorganization Rejection of a narrow Catholic environment, familial disorganization Familial disorganization

Age at Relationship time of to milieu conversion of origin

Conversion to JWs current age

High school degree High school degree

Some college

Takes college classes at the moment High school degree

High school degree

Some college, postsecondary degree Postsecondary Degree

8th grade

Level of education

Table 1.

Yes, physical and emotional abuse

Yes, physically absent father after parental divorce

Yes (emotionally absent father)

Yes (emotionally absent father)

No

No

Physically or emotionally absent or violent father

Telemarketer, Yes, physically day care worker absent for a time Forklift operator Yes, physically absent for a time Fireﬁghter Yes, physically absent after parental divorce

Printing equipment operator

Works as store clerk besides going to college

Assembler, Tester

Nurse

Nurse

Laundry worker

Professional status reached

Strict, but relatively superﬁcial faith

Yes

Yes

Strict, but relatively superﬁcial faith Mother active, father nominal

Superﬁcially religious home

No

Yes, emotionally absent mother Lack of supervision

Father is active member of Jehovah’s Witnesses Father is active member of Jehovah’s Witnesses Mother is active, father nominal

Yes, physical Yes and emotional abuse

No

Somewhat estranged relationship

No

No

No

Conﬂicts with mother

Characteristics of converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses

Stage 3c (with aspects of 3a)

Stage 3(2) (between stage 2 and 3)

Stage 3a (with aspects of 3c)

Stage 3c (with aspects of 3a)

Current stage of religious judgment

No

Yes, drug and alcohol abuse

Yes, drug and alcohol abuse

Yes, drug and alcohol abuse

Stage 3c (with aspects of 3a)

Stage 3c (with aspects of 3a)

Stage 3c (with aspects of 3a)

Stage 3(2) (between stage 2 and 3)

Yes, drug abuse Stage 3c

Yes (he was smoking)

No

No

Not clear

Problems with drugs or alcohol prior to conversion

analysis of conversion narratives 13

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Members were contacted through two congregations (kingdom halls), one in Michigan, and the other in Minnesota. The interviewees were met either at a public place (e.g., coﬀee shop or restaurant), in their homes, or mine. After the interviews were completed, participants ﬁlled out a short questionnaire requesting important biographical information (e.g., age, education, occupation, marital status, and racial/ethnic background). All the interviews were taped and transcribed. All the names have been changed. The ﬁrst interview (see Mrs. Miller’s narrative below) was analyzed together with a research group in Oldenburg, Germany. Other than that, the analysis of the narrative interviews and of the religious dilemmas was done by myself, but guided and closely supervised by advisers at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. The narrative biographical interview is useful when complex processes “can be told as stories” (Glinka, 1998, p. 25, author’s translation). At the center of this method is the narration of biographical experiences, where the interviewer allows the interviewee to tell her story without interruption, which prompts the interviewee to go to a deeper level of meaning (Schütze, 1983). This process goes beyond the self-presentation usually found in everyday communication. While engaging in this hours-long process, the person also starts to reﬂect on her life and in the process makes a coherent meaning out of it, reliving the experiences and feelings that led her to convert in the ﬁrst place. But there are also parts that she represses or does not want to acknowledge, and this can be found in the analysis as well (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999b, p. 486). Thus, narrative biographical interviews allow researchers to delve deeper than any form of regular content analysis, to go beyond subjective self-presentation, and therefore to circumvent the limitations of the constructivist paradigm (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999a, 1999b), as pointed out by Beckford (1978) or Ulmer (1988), for instance. During the time consuming analysis, researchers look very carefully at each sequence, at ﬁrst summarizing and contextualizing what the person said, and reconstructing the biography of the person. In doing so, the following questions are highlighted: Which events/turning points are critical in terms of the person’s development? Does the person understand what is happening? Is she in control of what is happening or is she the passive receiver? Once all the interviews have been interpreted, one compares and contrasts them, trying to ﬁnd common patterns, such as examining which faith journeys are similar or diﬀerent in which sense and why (Schütze, 1983; for the interview questions, see the appendix).

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A religious dilemma (e.g., the Paul-Dilemma, see the appendix) confronts the subjects with a religious task or problem, to which they are asked to come up with solutions. Oser & Gmünder (1996, pp. 112–117) contend that a person’s idea of the relationship between God and himself (“deep structures of religious reasoning”) become activated through these dilemmas, also because they are strongly applicable to real life situations. At its center are the seven opposing dimensions mentioned above. In this study, the Paul-Dilemma created by Oser and his team (Oser & Gmünder, 1996, p. 118) was used because it is one of the dilemmas most commonly applied and is well validated.5 Results Reasons and Motives for Conversions to Jehovah’s Witnesses As highlighted in Beckford (1978, pp. 257–258), conversion accounts in my sample displayed some of the following characteristics: converts highlighted the need for “correct knowledge” and “appropriate actions,” and described their conversions as slow, rational processes. The conversions were not described as initiated by Jehovah God; the people regarded themselves as responsible for them. Converts also emphasized the lack of ethical rules in their environment, holding negative views of a secularized, individualized society and the dissolution of moral norms. The characteristics of converts’ stories reﬂect (at least partially) their socialization in the Watchtower Society. Biographical data, however, can give us hints as to why and how a conversion took place. During the analysis, a continuum of conversion types to the Jehovah’s Witnesses emerged, with the two poles as follows: (a) largely meaningless, enclosed religious (mostly Catholic) background, or (b) disorganized familial background (Catholic or non-Catholic). Figure 2 displays this continuum. Three conversion stories fulﬁlled both criteria. Both sides of the continuum could be characterized as “moral conversions” (Gillespie, 1991, p. 58). 5 It consists of a story about Paul, a young doctor, who, after ﬁnishing his medical studies, is rewarded for this achievement with a trip by his parents. Unfortunately, the plane has to do a crash landing due to a mechanical failure. Before it crashes, Paul prays to God, promising to use his medical skills as a doctor in the Third World if he is saved. After surviving the crash, he does not know if he needs to keep his promise or not. The interview consists of eight questions following up on that ﬁrst issue (for a more complete description of the Paul-Dilemma, see the Appendix).

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Figure 2. A continuum of backgrounds of converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Enclosed religious (mostly Catholic) and social background

Enclosed religious (Catholic) backgrounds and experiences with familial disorganization and/or abuse

Experiences with familial disorganization and/or abuse

Experiences with enclosed religious (Catholic) and social backgrounds (left on the continuum) The converts presented on this side of the continuum originated, with one exception, from Catholic backgrounds. Converts described here experienced a rigid, but (in their view) relatively meaningless religious (most often Catholic) socialization, sometimes combined with an enclosed social environment. Often in conjunction with this, the interviews revealed experiences with social problems prior to the conversions. Converts predominantly came from (often superﬁcial) religious backgrounds, regarded the relatively rigid environment they grew up in as alienating, and felt they did not understand it. Jehovah’s Witnesses provided the converts with a belief system that also was rigid, but one they could understand, because it provided answers for most of their questions. In short, converts moved from relatively enclosed belief systems and traditional backgrounds into equally enclosed belief systems. This ﬁnding mostly conﬁrms Beckford’s (1975) argument, although he focuses on the lack of relationships to secondary institutions that make people vulnerable to the Witnesses’ inﬂuence, while the analysis presented here points towards the aﬃnity between a relatively strict background and their present religion. Also, converts did not see much meaning in their earlier religious socialization, in contrast to Beckford’s subjects. Interestingly, even though they had not experienced family disorganization, as other converts describe below, two of the women had negative personal experiences with some of the “social problems” of modern life, such as sex and pregnancy before marriage, and another was married to an alcoholic man prior to converting. However, they did not like to acknowledge experiences with these problems in the interview, either because of the requirements of the Watchtower Society or because they felt ashamed of them. I came to this conclusion because they abruptly stopped talking at certain points or changed the topic (for a theoretical elaboration on this point, see also Glinka, 1998, p. 107).

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In the following section, the biography of one person reﬂecting these experiences shall be illustrated and analyzed in detail, while others are just brieﬂy mentioned. The biography of Mrs. Miller, a 76-year-old woman who converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses at the age of 25, illustrates both of the characteristics mentioned above. I met with her over coﬀee in her home where she told me her life history. Mrs. Miller grew up on the outskirts of a small Midwestern city in a farmhouse and describes her family as close-knit and her relations to her parents and eight siblings as relatively warm (though somewhat superﬁcial). The environment was especially close because the family did not own a car, so the family members could not leave the parental farm very often. Mrs. Miller went to a Catholic school up to 8th grade, worked in a laundry afterwards until getting married at the age of 24, and converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses a year afterwards. Today, she is a widow and lives in the same small city as she grew up in, and is still an active member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. With a narrative interview technique, the ﬁrst few sentences are considered very important, since they reveal the subject’s deep biographical structure. Mrs. Miller started her life story with the following sentences: We were, ah, we were Catholics, and, ah, I was brought up Catholic, I went to a Catholic school for eight years. But, ah, I sang in the choir and we sang in Latin, didn’t understand anything.

This passage shows the relatively enclosed and all-encompassing (preVatican II) Catholic environment, in which lay people had much less inﬂuence on the church than today and the language used was Latin—illustrated by her using the word “Catholic” three times in the ﬁrst sentence. She didn’t go to high school, so the Catholic schooling was all she had. Because she grew up in the 30s, her relatively low level of education and professional development (especially as a woman) is not surprising. She sang in the choir, which also illustrates her strong involvement in her church. The singing took place in Latin, a foreign language to her, and in her case, amplifying the lack of meaning that religion had for her. Consequently, she mentioned right after the ﬁrst two sentences, “didn’t understand anything,” and the word “but” signiﬁes her distancing or alienation from the environment. I concluded then that she experienced Catholicism as an all-encompassing, ever-present, but meaningless belief system.

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In combination with this, she grew up in a relatively enclosed social context, where she did not have much contact with the outside world, and experienced much social control, as is common for relatively traditional settings. One could expect that an unhappy person in an enclosed and strict environment would try to break free, abandoning the religious community and converting to a more liberal belief system. Instead, by converting to Jehovah’s Witnesses, she embraced a similarly enclosed belief system. How can this be explained? While she felt she did not understand Catholicism, she could understand the doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses, because it was simple, clear-cut, and provided an answer for everything. I concluded this from a passage from the same interview: Well, we didn’t even own one [a Bible], and then when we had talked with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, ah, they used the Bible, so we went and bought a Bible, and then we, ah, started, ah, reading the Bible and studying the Bible, and that’s what made sense to me. I wanted to worship God in a the proper way, so then I . . . we, ah, studied the Bible, and I thought, well, I’ll go to church and I’ll study the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses, one of them has got to be the truth, but it didn’t take long before I realized what was the truth.

Here, it is noteworthy to point out the phrases, “that’s what made sense to me” and her strong desire to “worship God in the proper way”, pointing to a desire for clarity and strict rules. I concluded from the interview analysis that even though this woman had a stronger sense of security after her conversion experience, it did not seem to lead to more self-reﬂection and/or a diﬀerent relationship to herself and to God. She uses expressions like, “use the Bible,” “study the Bible,” and “realizing what was the truth,” without explaining what they mean for her. Here we can see the aﬃnity between the experience of her former religion and her current faith. However, to conclude that the focus on clarity is due only to her socialization in the Watchtower Society does not seem to go far enough. I also hypothesize that this woman’s low level of formal education is a factor in her embracement of an enclosed belief system. Another factor in her conversion was likely a personal experience with social problems, and is closely related to her relationship with her husband (who also played a role in her conversion). Interestingly, however, as with the other converts on this side of the continuum, she avoided talking about personal problems prior to the conversion. For example, I (together with the research team in Oldenburg, Germany)

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concluded from the analysis that she probably had a premarital sexual relationship with the man who later became her husband (her ﬁrst child was born seven months after the wedding), and that it was he who eventually led her to Jehovah’s Witnesses, both of which made her family shun him for a while. It is interesting that she pauses when it comes to the actual conversion experience, since it reveals a gap in the ﬂow of her story: And then, when it came to, ah, ah . . . I realized the Bible was God’s word, and I wanted to know about the Bible. Well, we didn’t even own one, and then when we had talked with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, ah, they used the Bible, so we went and bought a Bible, and then we, ah, started, ah, reading the Bible and studying the Bible, and that’s what made sense to me.

Why would she all of a sudden want to know about the Bible, and realize it was God’s Word, before even meeting the Jehovah’s Witnesses? Even though this desire to know about the Bible could have been a factor, the experience that led her to this insight is missing here, and it must have been her future husband (who had negative war experiences during the Second World War in the Philippines) that guided her to Jehovah’s Witnesses since the sentence, “we went and bought a Bible,” does not refer to her parental family. According to her biography, she was pregnant before being married, which was probably not well received by her family. This embarrassing experience, then, is turned around by proclaiming the stark morality of Jehovah’s Witnesses, as can be seen in the following passage: But then, of course, when we started, we did study the Bible, and, ah, we see, what was the proper way. And we have many people that do, ah, study the Bible, and they study with us for a while, but, ah, it’s a life that, ah, I wouldn’t say it’s diﬃcult, but it’s a clean life, and today, well even you, you know the wickedness of the world . . . All the things that go on, and, of course, we don’t have a part in that . . . Yeah, I mean, we don’t commit adultery, or like abortion, homosexuality, none of these things are . . . and so you can ﬁnd . . . oh, and way of living, such as going out, drinking and . . . We have the belief in having parties and things and, ah, enjoying ourselves, but, ah, it’s a clean type of . . .

Other converts with the same background had similar conversion processes. Originating also from a nominal Catholic family, Mrs. Fletcher grew up on a farm and perceived their parents’ faith as constricting but empty as well. She also had some experiences with social problems; Mrs. Fletcher was married to an alcoholic man and stayed married

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to him for several years even after her conversion. Eventually she came in contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, joined this group, and eventually, after her divorce to her ﬁrst husband, married a man who also recently converted. Mrs. Haley’s life history resembles those of Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Fletcher, although she did not speak of experiences with social problems. What is similar, however, is her socially and religiously enclosed background. Like Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Fletcher, she grew up on a farm and did not have much contact with the outside world. Of this group, she was the only one not raised in the Catholic Church; her mother belonged to the Latter Day Saints and her father was nominally Methodist. Her conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses was inﬂuenced by her friendship with one of their members, and even though she did not agree with certain parts of the teachings at ﬁrst, she eventually converted. Besides this friendship, however, I think that the isolation of her social background and her search for clarity (like Mr. Jones, she mentioned a turning point when she learned that God had a name) aligned itself well with the structure and belief system of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.6 Experiences with rigid Catholicism and familial disorganization (middle on the continuum) While experiences with some pre-conversion social problems played a part in the converts’ narratives described above, in some cases, actual experiences with disorganization in the family were present. It is signiﬁcant that all of the converts from disorganized familial backgrounds overall (whether Catholic or non-Catholic) spoke of either physically or emotionally absent or even abusive fathers. All but two also reported problems with their mothers. 6 In comparison with other religious groups, many of those falling away from traditional Christianity and joining the Unitarians had early life experiences similar to the converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses originating from Catholic backgrounds. In contrast to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, the Unitarians distanced themselves from traditional organized religion and emphasized freedom in their (religious and social) lives, as well as self-realization. For example, Mrs. Colby, a professor at a state university, grew up in a more or less nominal Catholic home, went to Catholic school, and married a chaplain right after college. As a housewife and mother, though, she started feeling lonely and bored, and went back to school to earn her Masters degree and eventual her Ph.D., which led to her becoming more independent, and to think critically about the Catholic Church. She also criticized the Catholic Church because she felt, based on her mother’s trajectory, that it discriminated against women. Eventually she left the Catholic Church and became a Unitarian, where she felt at home, because critical thinking and independence were encouraged.

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In this section, I will describe the stories of the three converts experiencing both a relatively rigid religious (Catholic) upbringing and a disorganized family background due to parental divorce, parental absence (such as a workaholic father), or abuse and neglect, which often led to feelings of depression, drug or alcohol abuse, and problems in relationships. The belief system of the Jehovah’s Witnesses attracted them because of its clear moral structure, thus providing a sense of security absent from their former lives. This ﬁnding of family disorganization constitutes the main diﬀerence to Beckford’s results (1975), since family disorganization among his interviewees was mostly absent. The experiences of these converts can be related to Zinn and Esser’s (2003, pp. 52–53) concept of “tradierung” (falling back on traditions), a strategy that people use to bring forth security in an age characterized by risk and insecurity. In this case, religion serves as an instrument to create order out of chaos, to provide ultimate meaning in a situation where people feel disoriented. The life experiences of Mr. Walker, also from a Catholic background, reﬂect experiences of familial disorganization. His conversion story lies therefore in the middle of the continuum presented above. As was the case in Mrs. Miller’s childhood, his Catholic education was fairly rigid; he described having a hard time following rules in Catholic school and at home as a child, but that he ﬁnally found “God’s rules” among the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the age of 45. The following quote illustrates his view of his Catholic upbringing: I was very independent. We were raised Catholic and . . . my earliest experiences in religion class were not good because I had questions and I wanted to know and so they basically said that I was evil. They said that I was bad. They didn’t like me. They didn’t like me at all. They were actually quite cruel. They were quite cruel—the nuns. The priests not so much. I don’t remember them being cruel, but the nuns were mean. They were bitter. They were a bitter lot. They weren’t happy and it was easy to see, so I think in the third grade I got kicked out of Catholic schools and then went to public schools for a couple of years, and then went back to Catholic schools. I always enjoyed the better education in a Catholic school, but boy, I sure didn’t, I had a hard time. They would tell me to do stuﬀ without giving me reasonable explanation. So I didn’t do well with that. Plus I always kind of lived, as a result of all that, I kind of was on the, I was on the edge of society. Know what I mean?

But, in contrast to Mrs. Miller, he openly rebelled against this Catholic upbringing even at an early age. He was also physically and emotionally

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abused by his parents. As a result of these experiences, he became dependent on drugs in his teenage years, and consequently got arrested several times. Because of these experiences, his childhood was extremely harsh and disorganized. When asked about his experiences with his parents, he answered: I would say. I love my parents dearly. I love them dearly. But I really got the feeling when I was growing up that they hated my guts. I was [a] signiﬁcant burden to them and they said it. They said stuﬀ to me like, ‘I don’t know what we did to God to deserve you. Can’t you do anything right? You’ll never amount to anything.’ I had forgotten those words and one day I got really, really, really quiet when I was sober, and my bottom lip would quiver. You know because there was some, great duress in my life at that point.

Mr. Carlson, a young man who had recently moved from New York to the Midwest, also came from a relatively rigid (but superﬁcial) Catholic background. His parents were divorced when he was in high school. Because of this and his father’s subsequent absence, he experimented with drugs and alcohol during his high school years. The conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses gave him a way to deal with and make sense of those problems and, most importantly, this faith made sense to him in a way that the Catholic faith never did. Finally, Mr. Jones went to Catholic schools all his life, serving as an altar boy in the Catholic Church and confessing regularly. Notably, he also starts his story describing his Catholic background, which he experienced as relatively rigid and meaningless. As for the other man, he reported some problems in his family of origin; his father worked for the military and was largely absent from family life, and his mother did not seem interested in her sons’ lives, so that he described himself as an alienated and lonely youth. Experiences with familial or social disorganization (converts from non-Catholic backgrounds, right on the continuum) In contrast to those converts with Catholic backgrounds, the background of the converts on the right side of the continuum was not a religiously rigid one, but they experienced strong feelings of disorientation in their childhood and youth due to the brokenness of their familial relationships and, in one case, neighborhood disorganization. (As we have seen above, three men fulﬁlled these conditions, while simultaneously coming from a rigid Catholic background). The three converts described in this section grew up among the Jehovah’s

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Witnesses, with two falling away from them, but later reconverting. To highlight this pattern, the biographical experiences of a woman called Mrs. Smith will be illustrated in detail, followed by other brieﬂy presented life stories. Mrs. Smith is a woman in her late twenties, now married and a housewife. She experienced a relatively rough childhood due to her parents’ separation and her life in diﬀerent foster families. Her background was not Catholic, since her parents belonged to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her mother left the group a few years after Mrs. Smith was born, and rejoined them only much later, while her father stayed a Jehovah’s Witness throughout his life. Because of her experiences with abandonment, her life was marked by uncertainties in the moral sphere, as well as by mistrust and anger. She began her conversion story with the following sequence: Well, my parents were married when they, my mom, was pregnant with me. They were together for a few years and they started having problems, but they were looking for counseling, some help or something like that. And they had gone to a few churches and they hadn’t really helped them, and they kept going . . . a little bit, and my dad came in contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses where he worked. Then somebody also, a diﬀerent person, contacted them at their house, just by coincidence, so they got help that way. So when I was real little, my parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses. But they had just started to become Witnesses when I was a baby. Their marriage only lasted about seven years, so my mom left him when I was about 4–5, maybe 6 years old. There was a custody battle, and I ended up in foster care. I was there for probably about ﬁve years. I was just supposed to be there for two weeks, but I got lost in the system, as they say, but I developed a real hatred for Jehovah’s Witnesses, not just them in particular but anybody that had anything to do with . . . I didn’t want to hear about. I told my mom I didn’t want Jehovah’s Witnesses in my house. I didn’t want her to talk to me about it. I was real adamant because I was so young. I blamed, basically Jehovah’s people, Jehovah’s Witnesses and him for everything that happened, you know, because I didn’t understand that it wasn’t me. It wasn’t God. It wasn’t the people. It was my parents—they’re the ones that had a problem. Children don’t really get that.

Unlike those converts originating from enclosed religious (Catholic) backgrounds, Mrs. Smith does not begin with the lack of meaning religion had for her as a child, but with a moral issue: her parents getting married when her mom was pregnant. As mentioned above, her childhood and adolescence were very chaotic and disorganized, and she resented her parents for splitting up and abandoning her

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to the foster care system. This history was directly related to her negative childhood views of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. After her parents’ divorce and her experience in diﬀerent foster families, she lived with a well-liked foster family. But at the same time she struggled with alcohol and drug abuse and did poorly in school, due to her deep-seated feelings of abandonment and loss. Once she drove home drunk, together with friends, and they were afraid that they killed someone (which proved untrue). The passage below reveals an increasing tension and negative turn of the events: Because I was kind of at a point where I was in college that we were partying a lot, just doing a lot of drugs and things were just getting really bad. We thought we killed somebody; we thought we ran them over one night. We were too scared to go back and too drunk to really worry about it. We watched the news for days but nobody ever showed up, so we ﬁgured it was somebody’s dog or something, maybe a deer, one of those things. I just wanted something better, anything better. It didn’t matter really.

The turning point came when she visited a meeting of the Jehovah’s Witnesses because of a man that she found attractive. Consequently, she got interested in this organization; as she says in the quote, it made sense for her and she also agreed with the loving view of God presented in the meetings, and joined at the age of 24. It should be noted that she did not develop a long-term relationship with the man mentioned above—he could not have played a signiﬁcant role in her becoming a Jehovah’s Witness other than introducing her to the group. She describes the process of getting involved in the Watchtower movement as follows: So I started going to the meetings before the young man got back from vacation and I started reading Watchtower and the Awake, and the things were just really making sense for me as far as . . . because I had been to diﬀerent churches with my friends. I’d gone to nondenominational with my foster family. I had been to the Church of the Nazarene. I had been to diﬀerent things like that and by far, this made the most sense to me because I’m thinking of God as somebody loving. I could never go along with hellﬁre, you know. That didn’t sound to me like something a loving parent would do, torture someone forever for something they did once. I mean even my parents only grounded me once. They never did it forever, you know. So it made more sense to me, so I started going and I started actually studying the Watchtower.

Soon after she got involved in the Watchtower movement, her life changed completely. She stopped drinking and consuming alcohol, and

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did not get involved in relationships with diﬀerent men as she did before. Also, contact with her father improved signiﬁcantly. The only negative consequences of her conversion were conﬂicts with her foster family (previously quite close to her), due to her refusal to celebrate the holidays, as is common among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Because of these conﬂicts she ended up moving out of their house and living with her dad until she got married. Most importantly, after her conversion, she felt much more secure in general, and in relationships to men in particular. The conversion helped solve her relationship problems with men (which stem from her lack of deep relations to her parents and possibly also from observing their failed relationship), since her new faith provided directions and thus security. One could also argue that Jehovah’s Witnesses’ guidelines concerning gender roles work against the eﬀects of modernization, since gender roles ﬂuctuate in modern society, thus increasing the potential for insecurity (as illustrated by Beck, 1992; or Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994, for example). The following paragraph illustrates this point: Everything has changed a lot, how I view men, with my husband. Now before my attitude towards, like a man that I was in a relationship was, well, if I don’t like you, you can go, you know. I had no problem. If they frightened me, like they made me think they were going to hurt me, I had no hesitation to hit them ﬁrst. I was very angry, you know, with everybody and now, I think that’s the reason why we have a marriage because I know that once you enter that type of relationship, I know how God feels about it and what He expects of you. He expects you to work it out. You vow to do that. You promise Him that you would do that as well as your mate, you know. Now I know. It can be confusing when you don’t know what position you’re supposed to have. Now that I know what a good wife is supposed to be like, the way that I feel about him just as a man is a lot diﬀerent than it would have been. It’s very, very diﬀerent. I don’t always agree with everything that he does, but I don’t have a problem going and following his word as the last word. You know what I mean? Like if a thing comes up and it has to be discussed or talked about, a decision has to be made, if he decides, if he’s listened to all my thoughts and feelings on it (which he usually does), and decides that that’s not a good course, well, that’s what I have to do. It’s not like it was before, ‘Well, you can go.’ Because I want him to stay. Everything is that way.

Mr. Smith’s (an African American male, age 27, and Mrs. Smith’s husband) life history is very similar to his wife’s. As was the case with Mrs. Smith, his parents were divorced, and he grew up with his mother

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until the age of 14, when he started shuttling between the homes of his parents. Because of these experiences, he felt lost and disoriented, which led to the abuse of drugs and alcohol at the age of 18. His situation worsened until he started reading a booklet by the Jehovah’s Witnesses given to him by his father (who was an active member) at the age of 21, after which he became interested in the organization. This faith made sense to him because he could understand its teachings (he had a relatively low level of education), but most importantly, it gave him a structure, a moral compass, and more self-respect. Consequently, he stopped abusing drugs and alcohol shortly afterwards and joined the organization about a year after the initial experience. Finally, Mr. Taylor’s conversion at age 11 can be attributed to the disorganized neighborhood he lived in after his parents divorced, and the pressure from gangs to join them. His mother had become a Jehovah’s Witness and served as his role model, and Jehovah God became his protector against these gangs.7 The relationships between conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and stages of religious judgment To summarize, converts’ religious judgment was higher than Stage 2, but did not go beyond Stage 3c (albeit with aspects of Stage 3a). Two converts reasoned between Stages 2 and 3, ﬁve on Stage 3c (most often with aspects of Stage 3a), and one on Stage 3a. Thus, current interviewee answers to the Paul-Dilemma mostly indicated an “extremist religious judgment” and a strict adherence to the doctrine of the Watchtower Society, in contrast to Stage 3b (in which the human sphere is highlighted to the detriment of the Ultimate). In general, converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses followed a relatively close, literal interpretation of the Bible, but without a visible fear of God, as is often the case when people reason on Stage 1. Stage 3c is apparent in that the seven polar dimensions illustrated above are not mediated, but stay separate; for example, dependence upon Jehovah God was

7 Converts on this side of the continuum had similar life histories as those converting to Islam, who generally also had disorienting life experiences prior to conversion (e.g., one African American woman who later converted to Islam moved from a predominantly African American area, where she felt at home, to an almost all white, rural neighborhood, where she was lonely and out of touch with her cultural heritage.) However, converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses focused mostly on the family while telling about their feelings of disorientation, while converts to Islam focused on the cultural or societal sphere.

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valued more than independence, transcendence more than immanence. But certain answers (especially the answer to the question if God would directly punish Paul for not keeping his promise) also reﬂected Stage 3a, characterized by a separation of the human sphere from the inﬂuence of the Ultimate Being. In the converts’ life stories we can see not only an aﬃnity between their current faith and their religious judgment, but also between the latter and an enclosed religious background (at least in the cases of those originating from Catholic backgrounds). Both their background and their current faith were relatively enclosed and strict, and the Ultimate was not experienced as a personal being. The aﬃnity between someone’s background and their current religious judgment can clearly be seen in Mrs. Miller’s answers to the PaulDilemma. Mrs. Miller’s statements reﬂected Stage 3c (with aspects of Stage 3a), since they revealed a literal interpretation of the Bible. She focuses on the Ultimate sphere to the detriment of the human sphere. Her answer to the question if Paul would need to keep his promise to go to the Third World reﬂects this stage: Well, if it was . . . was made, and if I would have made a promise like that, I would keep it. It would be just like we, ah, ah, devote our life to God in preaching, and that’s what we would do.

Answering the question if God or people were more important in the world, she said: What’s more important? Well, Jehovah God is the most important, because He created mankind and, ah, mankind owes their lives to Him. And He also gave up His son, Jesus Christ, He sacriﬁced his life so that we could gain life back.

One can also recognize Stage 3c in her answer to the question regarding God’s intervention in the world. It is interesting that Mrs. Miller was convinced that Jehovah would intervene in Armageddon, but not in daily life. In her view, the Ultimate has its own sphere: Ah, He has control over things, but, ah, like the Bible brings out, that the God of this system of things is Satan, the devil, and God is going to intervene . . . in the, ah, world eventually, and, ah, Armageddon. Armageddon . . . they talk about Armageddon in . . . in . . . ah, the governments today, but the Armageddon in the Bible is God’s one, no man is gonna take any part in it, and God is going to destroy all the wicked. No, I don’t think He intervenes in our daily life, like, ah, we live our lives as we choose, but He doesn’t arrange things so we have to do a thing a certain way.

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Mr. Taylor, who comes from a background similar to Mrs. Miller, also reasoned on Stage 3c (with aspects of Stage 3a). He also believed in the ultimate importance of promises, and one can see a literal interpretation of the Bible, or religious extremism: Ahm, the Bible says let your [‘yes’] stay ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Simple as that . . . I only tell you I am gonna do something if I can do it . . . unforeseeable circumstances are gonna be falling on all of us, the Bible says, so . . . He could have died just as well as he lived, but he made that promise hoping that God would protect him . . . Yes . . . If I tell my heavenly father I’m gonna do something, I should keep it to the best of my ability.

When asked if Jehovah would punish Paul for not keeping his promise, however, he clearly reasoned on Stage 3a (as did most of the others in regard to this question), since he did not believe in direct punishment for not following through with a promise, just in a person slowly falling away and “losing the Holy Spirit.” Mrs. Haley’s overall reasoning was located on Stage 3a, meaning that she articulated a stronger separation between Jehovah’s sphere and the human sphere than the others. For example, she answered the question if it was God’s will that Paul would go to the Third World in the following way: Ah. God’s will. I . . . uh, I don’t think that we have pre-determined . . . I don’t know. I think as humans we were created with a free will, and he can use his free will however he chooses to use his free will.

In contrast to most interviewees, her narrative revealed a socially enclosed upbringing, but no experiences with “social problems,” and no family disorganization, as did the narratives of many of the other interviewees. She also had gone to college in order to get a nursing degree, which might have aﬀected her religious judgment. While it could be assumed that all these factors play a role in her reasoning on Stage 3a (in contrast to Stage 3c) in that she is less dependent upon strict norms and therefore focuses more on people’s freedom, future research would be needed. Another observation in relation to converts’ backgrounds stood out. Converts from disorganized familial backgrounds (without concurrent rigid religious socialization) reasoned slightly diﬀerently than those growing up in enclosed Catholic settings; their answers to the PaulDilemma described a more personal relationship to God, and there was a slightly stronger tendency towards a separation between the sphere

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of the Ultimate and the human sphere in their answers (Stage 3a). At the same time, they seemed to have “worked through” their issues more than those originating from only narrow Catholic backgrounds, which showed itself in the fact that they did not seem to shy away from talking about negative experiences. For example, Mrs. Smith’s religious judgment revealed elements of both Stages 3c and 3a, and, compared to Mrs. Miller, her answers generally show a more liberal or open interpretation of what Paul’s promise to God means, as illustrated in her view that there was more than one way for Paul to fulﬁll his promise. A promise is a promise, and I think he should try to keep his promise. I know that God would understand, and that He understands everything, and He knows that Paul is in an extreme situation and people say a lot of things out of fear, but I really think he should try . . . and if we follow or try to do our best to follow His example, then I think that’s the best that we can do, was to give it the best shot that we could, to try to fulﬁll that to the best of our ability, but I think that there is more than one way to do that.

Table 1 illustrates basic data on the converts and their stages of religious judgment. The converts are listed along the continuum described above; those who primarily experienced an enclosed Catholic background are described ﬁrst, followed by those experiencing both an enclosed Catholic background and familial disorganization and ﬁnally by those only experiencing familial or social disorganization. Conclusion When comparing conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses with those to other religious groups, there were two sometimes overlapping trends. First, converts came from religiously and socially enclosed backgrounds, growing up with a religion that did not have much meaning for them (with some at the same time having experiences with common social problems). Second, they grew up in dysfunctional family situations, which left them feeling lonely and depressed, sometimes leading to drug and alcohol abuse. Their conversion to Jehovah’s Witnesses can be seen as an attempt to make sense of religion and of life and/or to deal with disorganization in their past. In relation to the former, most interviewees stressed that they wanted to “learn or know the truth,” and that this was inﬂuential

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in their conversion. This ﬁts Beckford’s (1978) ﬁndings that Jehovah’s Witnesses characterized their conversions as rational and gradual processes, not initiated by a divine being, a view shaped by the Watchtower Society. However, it also seems that the converts’ nominal and nevertheless enclosed Catholic background as well as their relatively low level of education and low level of professional status, predispose them to accept a doctrine that stresses rules, rationality, and an impersonal relationship to God. They distanced themselves from Catholicism, which seemed rigid and meaningless to them, but by following a faith that was also experienced as relatively rigid. With the latter reason, Beckford (1978) states that moral guidelines play a major role in conversion stories of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and that this is inﬂuenced by the Watchtower Society as well. While I think this is important, I also think that life experiences of members with social problems as well as chaotic, disorganized family backgrounds and their resulting need for moral guidelines are crucial reasons for their conversions. Beck’s concept of “risk society” can be applied to both sides of the continuum, since it seems that converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not favor social change, but are scared by it and therefore convert to a relatively strict religious group. The enclosed religious system that people converted to was reﬂected in the “religiously extremist” stage of religious judgment (Stage 3c). In a sense, there are strong similarities between converts’ life histories, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their doctrine, and Stage 3c of religious judgment, since it is characterized by a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible. However, one should also take the criticisms of Oser’s approach (mentioned above) into account. Are Jehovah’s Witnesses’ religious judgments on lower stages just because they hold more traditional worldviews and favor autonomy less than most of U.S. society? The negative view of secularized, modern society is a hallmark of “generic fundamentalist groups” (Wacker, 2003).8 Broadly conceived, fundamentalism represents a movement against modernity, seeking to recover aspects of the past (Antoun, 2001; Marty & Appleby, 1992; Wacker, 2003). Other authors perceive the reliance on sacred texts that cannot be criticized and the belief in dispensational pre-

8 Wacker (2003) distinguishes between “generic” and “historic” fundamentalism. Historic fundamentalism diﬀers from generic fundamentalism in the sense that it was concerned with the American religious situation in the late 1800s (see also Ammerman, 1987; Marsden, 1991), whereas generic fundamentalism applies to various settings.

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millenialism (among Christians) as important characteristics of fundamentalist groups (Ammerman, 1987, p. 5). Although none of the authors mentioned above explicitly connects Jehovah’s Witnesses to fundamentalism (perhaps because many consider them outside of Christian orthodoxy), this group seems to have strong commonalities with fundamentalist groups. They have strong guidelines of appropriate behavior, a negative stance towards secularized society, a belief in the ultimate truth of scripture and a future Armageddon, as well as in an ultimate authority, the Watchtower Society (sometimes translating into an extremist religious judgment). However, these tendencies are not only found among the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are most likely also found among fundamentalist Christian or Islamic groups. It is also likely that Christian fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists would report similar conversion processes and reason on the same or similar stages of religious judgment as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Limitations of the Study and Future Research Because of the paucity of work done in this area, this article is meant to lay a foundation for future research that tests the preliminary analyses and conclusions contained here. My intention here, therefore, is not to present data that can be generalized, but preliminary insights that then can be further evaluated. Debate over the interpretations and conclusions made here is certainly welcome. One possible limitation is the reconstructive layout of the study: Is it possible to realistically describe a process that has been told in retrospect, or are these narratives ﬂawed in that everything a person says is aﬀected by the present? Constructivist conversion research poses these problems, arguing that questions about reasons and motives for conversions can never be adequately answered, that conversion narratives should instead be perceived as “reconstructive communicative actions” (Beckford, 1978; Dawson, 1995; Ulmer, 1988). However, as mentioned above, according to some researchers (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999a, 1999b), it is possible for research employing the narrative biographical interview technique to go deeper than analyzing conversions from a purely communicative standpoint. Another limitation is the lack of generalizability of the ﬁndings due to a relatively small number of interviewees and the “theoretical sampling” method. Even though diﬀerences in various aspects of life are a goal of a study conducted with the “theoretical sampling method,” one area in which there

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was not much diversity was the background of the converts: six came from Catholic homes, one grew up with a Mormon mother and a nominally Methodist dad, two were raised in the faith of the Witnesses, but distanced themselves from it early on, and one adopted his mother’s faith. But as we have seen, it is likely that the respective background variables (especially religious background) inﬂuenced subjects’ conversion trajectory and thus could be important variables. Future research should attempt to include additional converts and a more diverse sample (e.g., by adding converts from diﬀerent religious/denominational and sociocultural backgrounds to the sample) to verify or falsify the preliminary results presented here, as well as include other coders to increase reliability. It would be interesting to see if there are other background variables that inﬂuence motives, reasons, and processes for conversions. In conclusion, the study of conversions to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, beyond the understanding of background variables leading up to the conversion (which in itself is a necessary and fascinating endeavor), invites connections to stage theories of religious development and work on risk society, individualization, and fundamentalism. At the same time, much more work needs to be done. References Alfs, M. (1991). The evocative religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses: An analysis of a present-day phenomenon. Minneapolis, MN: Old Theology Book House. Allievi, S. (1999). Pour une sociologie des conversions: Lorsque des Européens deviennent musulmans. [For a sociology of conversions: Europeans becoming Muslims]. Social Compass, 46, 283–300. Ammerman, N. T. (1987). Bible believers: Fundamentalists in the modern world. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Antoun, R. T. (2001). Understanding fundamentalism: Christian, Jewish and Islam movements. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Bankston, W. B., Forsyth, C. J., & Floyd, H. H. (1981). Toward a general model of the process of radical conversion: An interactionist perspective on the transformation of self-identity. Qualitative Sociology, 4, 279–297. Barker, E. (1984). The making of a Moonie: Choice or brainwashing? Oxford: Blackwell. Beck, U. (1986/1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage Publications. Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1994). Reﬂexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Beckford, J. (1975). The trumpet of prophecy: A sociological study of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. New York: Halsted Press. —— (1978). Accounting for conversion. British Journal of Sociology, 29, 249–262. Berger, P., Berger, B., & Keller, H. (1974). The homeless mind: Modernization and consciousness. New York: Vintage Books.

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Bergman, J. (1984). Jehovah’s Witnesses and kindred groups: A historical compendium and bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing. —— (1996). The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ experience in the Nazi concentration camps: A history of their conﬂicts with the Nazi State. Journal of Church and State, 38, 87–113. Besier, G., & Besier, R. M. (2001). Jehovah’s Witnesses’ request for recognition as a corporation under public law in Germany: Background, current status, and empirical aspects. Journal of Church and State, 43, 35–48. Boyatzis, C. J. (2005). Religious and spiritual development in childhood. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 123–143). New York: The Guilford Press. Conrad, C. F. (1993). Grounded theory: An alternative approach to research in higher education. In C. Conrad, A. Neumann, J. G. Haworth, & P. Scott (Eds.), Qualitative research in higher education; experiencing alternative perspectives and approaches (pp. 167–208). Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press. Conn, W. (1986). Christian conversion: A developmental interpretation of autonomy and surrender. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Côté, P., & Richardson, J. T. (2001). Disciplined litigation, vigilant litigation, and deformation: Dramatic organization change in Jehovah’s Witnesses. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 40, 11–25. Countess, R. H. (1982). The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New Testament: A critical analysis of the New World Translation of the Christian Greek scriptures. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing. Crowson, R. L. (1993). Qualitative research methods in higher education. In C. Conrad, A. Neumann, J. G. Haworth, & P. Scott (Eds.), Qualitative research in higher education: experiencing alternative perspectives and approaches (pp. 167–208). Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press. Dawson, L. L. (1995). Accounting for accounts: How should sociologists treat conversion stories? International Journal of Comparative Religion and Philosophy, 1, 51–68. Dencher, T. (1966). Why I left Jehovah’s Witnesses. Lakeland: Marshall, Morgan & Scott. Dirksen, H. (2002). Jehovah’s Witnesses under communist regimes. Religion, State and Society, 30, 229–238. Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Fowler, J. W., Nipkow, K. E., & Schweitzer, F. (1991). Stages of faith and religious development: Implications for church, education, and society. New York: Crossroad Publishing. Gillespie, V. B. (1991). The dynamics of religious conversion. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. Glinka, H. J. (1998). Das narrative Interview: Eine Einführung für Sozialpädagogen. [The narrative interview: An introduction for social educators]. Weinheim und München: Edition Soziale Arbeit. Juventa Verlag. Gordon, D. F. (1974). The Jesus people: An identity synthesis. Urban Life and Culture, 3, 159–178. Harrison, B. G. (1978). Visions of glory: A history and a memory of Jehovah’s Witnesses. New York: Simon & Schuster. Haupert, B. (1991). Vom narrativen interview zur biographischen Typenbildung. [From the narrative interview to a biographical typology]. In D. Garz & K. Kraimer (Eds.), Qualitativ-empirische Sozialforschung (pp. 214–254). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Hébert, G. (1960). Les témoins the Jéhovah: Essai critique d’histoire et de doctrine. [The Jehovah’s Witnesses: A critical essay of their history and doctrine]. Montréal: Les Éditions Bellarmin.

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Appendix A. Narrative part 1. Can you tell me your life history related to your conversion? 2. What happened after your conversion? 3. Can you describe your relationship to your parents a bit more extensively? B. Religious dilemma: Paul-Dilemma (according to Oser & Gmünder, 1996) First, interviewees read the following story: Paul, a young doctor, has just successfully passed his medical boards. He has a girlfriend, whom he promised to marry. But before he was going to marry her, his parents, as a reward for his success, gave him a trip to England. Paul is starting his trip. As soon as the plane is up in the air, the pilot lets the passengers know that one engine is defective and that the other one does not completely function anymore either. The plane falls down. All measures of security are taken, oxygen masks, life jackets, and so on are distributed. First the passengers cried, then it is very quiet. The plane drops down to earth quickly. Paul thinks about his whole life. He knows that his life will come to an end. In this situation, he thinks of God and starts praying. He promises to completely devote his life to the people of the Third World and not to marry his girlfriend, unless she is willing to accompany him. He promises to renounce a high income and social prestige. The plane crashed severely, but in a miracle, Paul is saved. Returning home, he is oﬀered a very good job at a private clinic. He has been chosen out of 90 applicants because of his skills. Paul, however, remembers the promise he has given to God. He does not know how to decide. Then, the interviewer asks the following questions:

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1. Shall Paul keep his promise? Why or why not? a. Do humans need to keep promises made to God? Why or why not? b. Do you believe a person needs to do something for God? Why or why not? 2. How would you reply to the following sentence: It is God’s will that Paul goes to the Third World (that he keeps his promise)? 3. We ﬁnd two opposing factors in this story: on the one side is Paul’s girlfriend and the job at the clinic, and, on the other side, God (and the promise). a. Which of these two factors is more important? b. What is more important in this world, anyway: the human being or God? 4. Imagine that Paul, after a lot of sleepless nights, doesn’t keep his promise and enters his appealing job in the private clinic. Do you think that this decision has consequences for Paul’s life? Why or why not? 5. A short time afterwards Paul gets into an accident, for which he is himself responsible. a. Is this accident related to the fact that Paul did not keep his promise towards God? Why or why not? b. Do you think God would punish Paul for the fact that he did not keep his promise? Why or why not? c. If yes, will God intervene in the world in any case? If no, does God show himself in the world at all, and how? 6. Imagine that Paul enters his good job at the private clinic and decides to give away a tenth of his salary each month. Do you think that Paul lives up to his promise by doing so? 7. Have you ever experienced a religious dilemma? Can you tell me about it? Which factors were involved? 8a. How would you have answered the questions pertaining to the religious dilemma earlier? (e.g., the ﬁrst question) 8b. Can you tell me of any events that had an inﬂuence on the changes of your thinking?

INTOLERANCE TOWARD OTHERS AND BELIEF IN AN ACTIVE SATAN Keith M. Wilson, Ph.D., Jennifer L. Acord, M.A., and Ronan S. Bernas, Ph.D.* Abstract The study examined if belief in an active Satan is directly related to intolerance towards African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, and communists. Over 100 Midwestern university and community college students completed measures of belief in an active Satan, religious fundamentalism, right-wing authoritarianism, and intolerance toward speciﬁc minorities. Results show that belief in an active Satan was positively related to intolerance toward gay men and lesbians and inversely related to intolerance toward African Americans. However, after controlling for religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism, the correlation between belief in an active Satan and intolerance of gay men and lesbians was no longer signiﬁcant, while the inverse relation between belief in an active Satan and intolerance of African Americans remained signiﬁcant. The often observed direct relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance toward others may at times be an artifact of the authoritarian and fundamentalist beliefs that accompany belief in an active Satan. In fact, belief in an active Satan may, in some instances, be directly related to increased tolerance toward some groups.

In her book, The Origin of Satan (1995), a social history of Satan, the noted Princeton theologian Elaine Pagels addressed the conundrum of Christian intolerance. As has often been noted, those who express the ideal of universal love often evidence its opposite. For Pagels, understanding the role of a belief in an active Satan, a Satan that actively opposes and thwarts God’s will on heaven and earth, is the key to understanding this perplexing relationship. Pagels argues that for some Christians, Satan ontologically exists. For such Christians, some of life’s most onerous obstacles are created by Satan. For example, according to Pagels, a hundred years after the gospels were written Christians adapted to the circumstances of pagan persecution by identifying themselves as allies of God acting against Roman magistrates and pagan mobs whom they saw as agents of Satan. At the same time, church leaders troubled by dissidents discerned the presence * Author Note : Dr. Wilson can be contacted at Psychology Dept., Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, 61920 or via phone at (217) 581–6411 or email at [email protected]. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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of Satan inﬁltrating the hearts and minds of other Christians, socalled heretics. By joining with Christ in his struggles and ﬁnal victory over Satan, these believers were themselves ensured of ﬁnal victory over their enemies. This belief in an active Satan provided solace and meaning to the persecutions suﬀered and justiﬁed the harm and ruin visited on their enemies. Pagels pointed out that these and other notable periods of Christian intolerance were commensurate with widespread belief in an active Satan, a Satan who actively opposed God’s will in heaven and on earth, and argued that much of Christianity’s modern day intolerance is similarly related to belief in an active Satan. Noting the surprising lack of empirical research on the eﬀect of beliefs in evil on social behavior and attitudes in the psychology of religion, Wilson and Huﬀ (2001) did an empirical investigation of Pagels’ hypothesis. In an investigation with undergraduates at a mid-size Midestern university, Wilson and Huﬀ found the Belief in an Active Satan Scale (BIASS) to be positively related to intolerance toward gay men and lesbians (as measured by the Attitudes Toward Homosexuals Scale; Altemeyer, 1988) and intolerance toward ethnic minorities (as measured by the Manitoba Prejudice Scale; Altemeyer, 1988). Although this demonstrated a possible relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance toward some groups, it bears replication. The study, moreover, did not rule out the possibility that the relationship was an artifact of other variables such as religious fundamentalism (as represented by beliefs such as the inerrancy of the Bible and the importance of keeping the true teachings of God’s word) or authoritarianism (i.e., authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism). Both have been linked to intolerance and to each other. For example, Altemeyer and Hunsberger (1992) found signiﬁcant positive relationships between right-wing authoritarianism and intolerance of minorities and gay men and lesbians. Similarly research has found religious fundamentalism to be positively correlated with intolerance toward minorities and gay men and lesbians (e.g., McFarland, 1989; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). Many religious fundamentalists endorse a belief in an active Satan. In fact, one commonly used measure of religious fundamentalism, Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s (1992) Religious Fundamentalism Scale, contains belief in an active Satan related items. It is possible that the hypothesized and previously reported relations between intolerance and belief in an active Satan are artifacts of authoritarian and fundamentalist beliefs.

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The current study re-examined the relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance of various minority groups, utilizing additional measures of intolerance toward others, including intolerance toward African Americans, women, and those with socially proscribed political beliefs. The present study also explored the role of possible mediators. In particular, religious fundamentalism and right wing authoritarianism were considered as possible mediators. The study aimed at testing if intolerance of others and belief in an active Satan are directly related or rather the previously reported relationship is an artifact of fundamentalist and authoritarian beliefs. Method Participants One hundred and eighteen college students from a Midwestern university (N = 60) or community college (N = 58) participated in the study. Fifty-eight of the participants were men and 60 were women. The mean age of the participants was 22 with a standard deviation of 7. Approximately 90% were nonhispanic White and 5% were African American. Materials and Procedures The participants were provided with a demographics sheet and six questionnaires (two of which are not reported here). Participants completed a revised Belief in an Active Satan Scale (BIASS; Wilson & Huﬀ, 2001). The revised BIASS, containing ten items, was used to measure belief in an active Satan (items 8, 9, and 10 were not relevant to the present study and were not used in the analyses; see the Appendix). Constructed in part from items in the Threat of Satan to U.S. scale by Wilcox, Linzey, and Jelen (1991) and an item from Altemeyer (1988), the previous scale was expanded by converting one complex item into three separate items and revising the wording of item three so as to include an explicit reference to Satan. Scores for the new seven-item scale ranged from 7 to 35. The previous version of the BIASS yielded an alpha coeﬃcient of .81, and the new revised BIASS yielded an alpha of .91. As reported in Wilson and Huﬀ (2001), a principal components factor analysis of the original BIASS produced a one-factor solution (eigenvalue = 2.84). A principal components factor analysis of the present data with the revised BIASS

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similarly produced a one-factor solution (eigenvalue = 4.87) accounting for 70% of the variance. All items loaded in the range from .55 to .94. The 30-item Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA; Altemeyer, 1988) was used to measure authoritarian beliefs, such as obedience to authority. Sample items are “Obedience is the most important virtue children should learn” and “What our country really needs, instead of more ‘civil rights’ is a good stiﬀ dose of law and order.” The alpha coeﬃcient is .91 (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). Scores for the RWA scale ranged from 30 to 270. Participants also completed McFarland’s six-item Fundamentalism Scale (RF; McFarland, 1989) which measures typical fundamentalist beliefs, such as the inerrancy of the Bible and the acceptance of God’s word, but with no reference to beliefs in Satan or evil (as is the case with other commonly used measures of fundamentalism, such as Altemeyer & Hunsberger’s, 1992, Religious Fundamentalism Scale). Possible scores ranged from 6 to 30. McFarland reported an alpha coeﬃcient of .88. Sample items are “I am sure the Bible contains no errors or contradictions” and “Christians should not let themselves be inﬂuenced by worldly ideas.” Participants also completed a 31-item intolerance scale (McFarland, 1989; Kirkpatrick, 1993) which contained items related to intolerance toward gay men and lesbians (six items, scores ranged from 6 to 30), women (10 items, scores ranged from 10 to 50), African Americans (10 items, scores ranged from 10 to 50), and communists (ﬁve items, scores ranged from 5 to 25). Sample items include, “Homosexuals should not be allowed to teach school,” “Women should worry less about their rights and more about becoming good wives ad mothers,” “On average, blacks aren’t as good leaders as whites,” and “Communists can’t be trusted.” With the exception of the RWA, all items were answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The RWA items were answered on a 9-point Likert-type scale from 1 (very strongly disagree) to 9 (very strongly agree). All scales with the exception of the BIASS and the RF scale contained items that were reversed scored. Nevertheless, low summary scores on each scale indicated a weak belief in the construct and a high score indicated strong belief.

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43

Results Table 1 contains the descriptive statistics for the various experimental measures. Approximately half of the participants evidenced some belief in an active Satan (i.e., the average score on the BIASS, 22, was equivalent to a 3 on the 5-point Likert-type scale) and, in fact, means for the various measures tended to be in the mid-range of possible scores with one notable exception. On the measure of intolerance toward women the average score, 18, was equivalent to less than a 2 on the 5-point Likert-type scale, indicating a decided tendency towards tolerance of women. Table 2 displays the intercorrelations amongst the experimental measures. Replicating previous results, belief in an active Satan was positively related to intolerance toward gay men and lesbians, r (116) = .22, p < .05. However, the BIASS was inversely related to intolerance toward African Americans, r(116) = –.32, p < .01. The BIASS was unrelated to intolerance toward women, r (116) = .01, p = .30, and intolerance toward communists, r (116) = .15, p = .10. Intolerance toward gay men and lesbians was directly related to RWA and RF, although the correlation with RF was not statistically signiﬁcant according to common convention, r (116) = .17, p = .05. Intolerance toward African Americans was inversely related to RF, r (116) = –.19, p < .05, but was not signiﬁcantly related to RWA. The BIASS was positively and highly correlated with both RF and RWA, r (116) = .76, p < .01 and r (116) = .57, p < .01, respectively. Furthermore, the RF and Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for the Belief in an Active Satan Scale, the Intolerance Scales, the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale and the Fundamentalism Scale (N = 118) Scale

Lo-Hi

M

SD

Belief in an Active Satan Intolerance Gay Men/Lesbians Intolerance Communists Intolerance Women Intolerance African Americans Right-Wing Authoritarianism Fundamentalism

7–35 6–30 5–25 10–49 10–38 64–225 6–29

21.60 15.42 14.33 18.15 22.96 145.83 19.73

8.23 6.46 4.93 6.68 5.78 33.68 6.65

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44

Table 2. Correlations between the Belief in an Active Satan Scale (BIASS), the Intolerance scales, the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale (RWA) and the Fundamentalism Scale (N = 118) Scale

1

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

— .22** —

BIASS Int. Gay Men/Lesbians Int. Communists Int. Women Int. African Americans RWA Fundamentalism

2

3 .15 .16 —

4

5

.10 –.32** .38*** .36*** .23** .06 — .33*** —

6

7

.57*** .43*** .38*** .13 .03 —

.76*** .17* .18** .08 –.19** .63*** —

* p = .054 (two-tailed), **p < .05 (two-tailed), ***p < .01 (two-tailed).

Table 3. Correlations Between the Belief in an Active Satan and the Intolerance Scales Controlling for Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Fundamentalism Intolerance of Gay Men/Lesbians Intolerance of Communists Intolerance of Women Intolerance of African Americans

r .07 –.04 .03 –.32 ****

**** p < .001 (two tailed).

RWA measures were signiﬁcantly and positively correlated, r (116) = .63, p < .01. Table 3 depicts a series of partial correlational analyses. After controlling for RWA and RF, the correlation between belief in an active Satan and intolerance of gay men and lesbians was no longer signiﬁcant, r (114) = .07, p = .45. However, the signiﬁcant inverse relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance of African Americans remained, r (114) = –.32, p < .001. Discussion The present study aimed at testing whether intolerance of others is indeed positively related to belief in an active Satan or rather this apparent relationship is better explained by fundamentalist beliefs and an authoritarian belief system. Contrary to previous ﬁndings these results do not support the hypothesis that belief in an active Satan

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directly promotes intolerance of others. Overall, the results suggest that in the case of gay men and lesbians the apparent positive relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance toward others is the result of the inﬂuences of right-wing authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism. In the case of intolerance toward African Americans, belief in an active Satan appears to be inversely related even after controlling for the religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism. There was replication of Wilson and Huﬀ ’s previous ﬁndings relating belief in an active Satan to intolerance toward gay men and lesbians. However, partial correlations controlling for fundamentalist beliefs and right-wing authoritarianism negated these relations. Rather than support Pagels’ (1995) hypothesis that Christians’ intolerance of others was directly related to belief in an active Satan, these analyses suggest that the apparent relationship between religiosity and intolerance toward others, at least in the case of intolerance toward gay men and lesbians, can best be understood as being predicated on authoritarian or fundamentalist beliefs. A previous investigation (Wilson & Huﬀ, 2001) using a measure assessing intolerance toward a variety of ethnic minorities, the Manitoba Prejudice Scale, had found a positive relationship between intolerance and a belief in an active Satan. Interestingly, the present investigation, which assessed intolerance toward only African Americans, found an inverse rather than a positive relationship, that is to say those who endorsed greater belief in an active Satan expressed less intolerance toward African Americans. Analyses with partial correlations showed that the robust relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance toward African Americans remained even after controlling for fundamentalism and authoritarian beliefs. Thus in contrast to the ﬁndings for intolerance toward gay men and lesbians, these results with African Americans suggest that the independent contribution of belief in an active Satan is to decrease intolerance toward African Americans rather than increase it as has been hypothesized. It is diﬃcult to compare the present results regarding belief in an active Satan and intolerance toward minorities with previous investigations as diﬀerent samples and measures were used. Wilson and Huﬀ (1998) found no relationship between the BIASS and the Manitoba, which measures intolerance toward a variety of minority groups, while Wilson and Huﬀ (2001) found a statistically signiﬁcant but modest direct relationship between the BIASS and the Manitoba,

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r = .12. The present investigation utilized a measure that focused on the largest minority group in the United States, namely African Americans, and found a robust inverse relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance. It may be that the relationship between belief in an active Satan and minorities may vary from one minority group to another. Future research utilizing separate scales for diﬀerent minority groups such as Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans may help shed light on this. The present study utilized a more diverse sample, which included students from a community college, colleges which tend to have both older and less economically advantaged students than a traditional university. Indeed the mean age of participants in the previous study was 19 with a standard deviation of 3, while the mean age in the present investigation was 22 with a standard deviation of 7. Thus the present ﬁndings may have greater generality than those of Wilson and Huﬀ (1998). Rather than encourage intolerance toward others, belief in an active Satan, at least with regard to intolerance toward African Americans, may lead to greater tolerance. Why this would be the case is unclear. Very little is known about the relationship between beliefs in evil and social attitudes. It may be that those who believe in an active Satan are especially sensitive to violations of religious edicts, such as Jesus’ “second Commandment,” “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” However, this would not seem to explain why increased tolerance is evidenced toward African Americans but not gays and lesbians. It may be that they feel it is proscribed to discriminate against those whose identity is based upon an internal and stable characteristic, such as race, but countenanced when it is putatively based on behavior. Additionally, some have alluded to the United States’ founding fathers’ accommodation to slavery being an oﬀense to God and the nation’s original sin, for example, Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address (DelBanco, 1992). Aware of this history, Americans with a belief in an active Satan may be diligent in abjuring their fathers’ sins. Finally, much of Pagels’ work cited previous, historical relations between belief in an active Satan and intolerance toward others as evidence of this relationship. It may be that at least with respect to African Americans the surprising inverse relationship between belief in an active Satan and intolerance may be a recent phenomenon. In addition to the inverse relationship between belief in an active

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Satan and intolerance toward African Americans, a similar relationship between religious fundamentalism and intolerance toward African Americans was revealed in this investigation. Many, but not all, previous investigations had yielded a positive relationship between religious fundamentalism and intolerance toward others. Diﬀerences in measures of fundamentalism and intolerance used impair meaningful comparison in most instances. However, the present study and McFarland (1989) used identical measures of intolerance and fundamentalism. Nonetheless, McFarland found a positive relation and the present investigation found an inverse one. There may be important diﬀerences in the two samples. For example, McFarland’s 1980’s sample and the present sample involve generational and regional diﬀerences. Certainly many pronouncements in the popular media extol a greater tolerance of minorities in young adults. It may be that changing attitudes toward some minority groups may be aﬀecting the nexus of relations between a variety of attitudes and intolerance toward others. The inconsistent ﬁndings regarding the relationship between religious fundamentalism and intolerance toward minorities bear further investigation. Importantly, Laythe, Finkel, and Kirkpatrick (2001) recently found there to be a negative correlation between religious fundamentalism and racial intolerance when statistically controlling for right-wing authoritarianism. Similar to the present results, Laythe et al. (2001) found that religious fundamentalism remained positively correlated with intolerance toward gay men and lesbians even when controlling for right-wing authoritarianism. Overall, the present ﬁndings fail to conﬁrm Pagels’ hypothesis that belief in an active Satan directly promotes intolerance toward others and do not extend the previous ﬁndings by Wilson and Huﬀ supporting that hypothesis. With respect to intolerance toward individuals with deviant political beliefs and intolerance toward gay men and lesbians, the apparent positive relation between intolerance and belief in an active Satan appears to be an artifact of authoritarian or fundamentalist belief systems. Interestingly, in the case of intolerance toward African Americans belief in an active Satan appears to be inversely related to intolerance. In other words, contrary to Pagels’ hypothesis, belief in an active Satan appears to foster tolerance, not intolerance, toward this minority group.

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Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(2), 113–133. DelBanco, A. (Ed.). (1992). The portable Abraham Lincoln. New York: Viking Press. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1993). Fundamentalism, Christian orthodoxy, and intrinsic religious orientation as predictors of discriminatory attitudes. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 32, 256–268. Laythe, B., Finkel, D., and Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2001). Predicting prejudice from religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism: A multiple-regression approach. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 40, 1–10. McFarland, S. G. (1989). Religious orientation and the targets of discrimination. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 28, 256–268. Pagels, E. (1995). The origin of Satan. New York: Random House. Wilcox, C., Linzey, S., & Jelen, T. G. (1991). Reluctant warriors: Premillenialism and politics in the moral majority. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 30, 245–258. Wilson, K. M., & Huﬀ, J. L. (2001). Scaling Satan. The Journal of Psychology, 135, 292–300.

Appendix Belief in an Active Satan Scale 1. The Devil actually exists. 2. The attack on private schools is an attack by Satan. 3. In the last 20 years Satan has caused society to grow more wicked. 4. If America doesn’t turn back to God soon, it will collapse. 5. Satan (the Devil) actively ﬁghts God’s will. 6. The Devil (Satan) tries to lead humans away from righteousness. 7. Satan (the Devil) tempts us to sin. 8. I have considered worshipping Satan. 9. I worship the Devil. 10. I would be willing to carry out Satan’s will. Note: Items 8, 9, and 10 were not relevant for the present study and were not included in the analyses.

TRANSGRESSION AND TRANSFORMATION: SPIRITUAL RESOURCES FOR COPING WITH A PERSONAL OFFENSE Kelly M. McConnell, Maria R. Gear, and Kenneth I. Pargament* Abstract This paper explores the outcomes associated with spirituality following a personal transgression. Personal transgressions diﬀer from externally caused stressful events in various ways. However, the appraisals of and outcomes associated with personal transgressions indicate that such events are often stressful experiences. Many world religions provide their adherents with spiritual methods for addressing their transgressions. Therefore, transgressors may place their transgressions in a spiritual context. This paper describes four spiritual resources available to individuals struggling with personal transgressions: confession, forgiveness, meaning-making, and conversion. The purposes of these resources are to reduce or eliminate distress and stimulate change or transformation. The paper concludes with clinical implications of these spiritual resources illustrated with case vignettes.

Historically, the ﬁelds of psychology and psychiatry have focused on the negative outcomes and maladaptive behaviors associated with stressful events. However, in the mid-1980s researchers began to consider positive outcomes of stressful experiences. Speciﬁcally, researchers examined the impact of variables such as social support and sociodemographic characteristics on posttraumatic growth (Schaefer & Moos, 1998). Although religiousness and spirituality were overlooked in this initial research, the picture has begun to change and a number of studies have shown that individuals use spiritual resources to cope with stressful events. A recent review indicated that various dimensions of religiousness and spirituality, such as religious participation and religious coping, are linked to growth following crises (Shaw, Joseph, & Linley, 2005). However, research on the outcomes associated with spirituality has centered on one particular class of stressful events, those caused by a source external to the individual, such as death and natural disaster (Schaefer & Moos, 1998).

* Author Note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Kelly M. McConnell, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, 43403 or via email to [email protected]. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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The purpose of this paper is to explore the outcomes associated with spirituality following a diﬀerent type of stressful event, personal transgressions. We deﬁne personal transgressions as actions or inactions of an individual that are perceived by the individual to be wrong. The transgression is a violation of either a sacred standard, as examined in research on spiritual confession (Murray-Swank, McConnell, & Pargament, 2005), or of a nonspiritual standard or moral. The standard violated by the transgression is a personal standard, not one deﬁned by a group or society at large. Therefore, any speciﬁc action could be viewed as acceptable or as a transgression, depending on the individual. We will argue that, as with externally caused traumas, spiritual resources can help individuals cope with and grow from personal transgressions. However, we will see that these two types of negative events diﬀer in important ways and, as a result, the spiritual resources that are relevant to personal transgressions are not identical to those most pertinent to coping with externally caused stressful events. Finally, we will describe spiritual resources therapists can draw upon to aid clients who have committed personal transgressions and will discuss the clinical implications of these resources. Spirituality as a Coping Resource for Stressful Events Many people use their spirituality to cope with stressful experiences. For example, three to ﬁve days after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, 75% of surveyed adults indicated that they used religion “a medium amount” or “a lot” to cope with the attacks (Schuster et al., 2001). Individuals in medical settings also use religious coping strategies. For example, renal transplant patients and their signiﬁcant others averaged 3.48 on a measure of religious coping with transplantrelated stressors (1 = not at all to 5 = very much) (Tix & Frazier, 1998). Spirituality has also been identiﬁed as a common coping strategy among African Americans caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease (Dungee-Anderson & Beckett, 1992). Similar results have emerged in research on women diagnosed with breast cancer. In a qualitative study of spiritual factors associated with adjustment to breast cancer, 79% of women reported that they turned to God for support and guidance following their diagnosis (Gall & Cornblat, 2002). One woman wrote, “through chemotherapy and adjustment to my new condition I did and have continued to look to my faith [in God]

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for new insight into coping” (Gall & Cornblat, 2002, p. 532). Ninety percent of the women reported engaging in other forms of religious and spiritual activities, such as prayer, church attendance, and scripture reading, to cope with their disease (Gall & Cornblat, 2002). Research suggests that these spiritual coping strategies are associated with beneﬁcial outcomes, such as growth. A bereaved caregiver of an AIDS victim spoke to this point directly: I’ve deﬁnitely grown spiritually. Not in a religious sense. Not in a sense of things that one learns in the church. I just have a greater awareness about myself and who I am and where I belong and where others belong around me in this world. It’s been a very big spiritual growth. (Richards, Acree, & Folkman, 1999, p. 115)

Quantitative research also indicates that spirituality is associated with growth following a stressful event. For example, in one study of undergraduate college students, higher levels of intrinsic religiousness predicted growth following a stressful life event (Park, Cohen, & Murch, 1996). In addition, research on a community sample found that positive religious coping partially mediated the relationship between experiencing the loss of something sacred and growth. Speciﬁcally, positive religious coping was associated with increases in growth in individuals dealing with a sacred loss (Pargament, Magyar, Benore, & Mahoney, 2005). Spirituality also predicted posttraumatic growth in a sample of HIV/AIDS caregivers (Cadell, Regehr, & Hemsworth, 2003). This body of research has focused on events caused by external forces, such as disease and natural disaster. A variety of spiritual variables, including positive religious coping, a relationship with God, and prayer, have been linked with growth following these kinds of events. In this paper, we propose that personal transgressions represent another important but diﬀerent type of stressful event and that spiritual resources may facilitate positive outcomes following these experiences. Transgressions as Stressful Events Appraisals According to stress and coping researchers, the stressfulness of an event is inﬂuenced by individuals’ appraisals or understanding of the signiﬁcance of the event for their well-being (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Pargament, 1997). Events are considered stressful when they impact objects, persons, values, and beliefs that are signiﬁcant and important

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to the individual (Pargament, 1997). Researchers have identiﬁed two types of appraisals: primary and secondary appraisals. Particularly relevant to this discussion are primary appraisals. Primary appraisals are evaluations of the implications of the event for the individual’s well-being. An event is appraised as stressful if it is viewed as a harm or loss, threat, or challenge to signiﬁcant aspects of the individual’s life and well-being (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). An event evaluated as a harm or loss has damaged the individual’s well-being. A threat is an event that may cause harm or loss in the future. Finally, a challenge appraisal focuses on the potential for growth or self-improvement as the result of the event. Transgressions could be appraised as stressful events in various ways. First, a transgression could be viewed as harmful to the values and beliefs of the individual. For example, a transgression may damage transgressors’ views of themselves as moral and righteous people. Following the transgression, transgressors may consider themselves weak, moral failures, or “bad.” The transgression may also cause transgressors to question their commitment to their values and beliefs. They may doubt the strength of their dedication to their beliefs. In these ways, transgressions may damage or weaken signiﬁcant beliefs of the transgressor and, therefore, be experienced as stressful events. Transgressions may also be appraised as a loss of objects of signiﬁcance. For example, transgressors may experience the loss of relationships and social support from friends and family hurt by their transgression. In addition, they may abandon the values and beliefs violated by their transgression due to the perception that they are unable to uphold those beliefs. A transgression could also be understood as a challenge with the potential for growth. The transgressor could view the act as an opportunity for self-improvement through identiﬁcation of personal weaknesses and strategies for overcoming those weaknesses. With each of these appraisals, the transgression is experienced as a stressful event because it shakes the transgressor’s values and beliefs. Outcomes Research on the emotional, social, and spiritual outcomes of transgressions also suggests that transgressions can be stressful events. Although researchers have debated the relationship between cognitions and emotions (Lazarus, 1999), a large body of research suggests that individuals’ appraisals of an event are often directly related to their emotional reaction (Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Accord-

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ing to Lazarus (1991), actions that are viewed as relevant to and incongruent with individuals’ signiﬁcant values lead to anger, anxiety, guilt, and disgust. In other words, actions viewed as transgressions that harm or violate signiﬁcant values lead to negative emotions, such as guilt. This theory is supported by research on confession. Individuals who participate in religious confession report that personal transgressions result in feelings of guilt, sorrow, regret, and an “uneasy conscience” (Butler, 1990, p. 9; Wise, 1996). In addition, 58% of individuals who participate in confession do so in order to relieve the distress caused by their transgressions (Kettunen, 2002). The negative emotions that follow transgressions indicate that transgressions can be stressful events. Theories and research on transgressions suggest that the psychological distress associated with these actions can extend beyond guilt. Jung stated that transgressions that are not confessed create an “impenetrable wall [that] shuts [the transgressor] oﬀ from the vital feeling that he is a man among other men” ( Jung, 1954, p. 58). In other words, the individual who transgresses feels isolated from others. Transgressions can also lead to feelings of isolation from God. In qualitative research on the motivations for engaging in confession behavior, participants indicated that they felt their personal transgressions harmed and obstructed their relationship with God (Butler, 1990; Kettunen, 2002). In addition to emotional and social eﬀects, transgressions may negatively impact the spirituality of transgressors in distinct ways. Transgressors may fear punishment from God for their transgression, including fears of eternal damnation. They may feel rejected by God for disobeying God’s laws and failing to meet His expectations. Transgressors may also feel alienated from members of their spiritual community as a result of disapproval from others or feelings of personal inadequacy. In addition, perceiving that they have violated their own personal spiritual standards, transgressors may experience alienation from their own spiritual identity. These negative eﬀects suggest that transgressions can be stressful experiences for transgressors. Transgressions versus Externally Caused Stressful Events The outcomes of personal transgressions and stressful events caused by external sources are often similar. For example, both types of stressful event can lead to feelings of isolation from others ( Jung, 1954;

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Weinberg & Williams, 1974) and psychological distress (Butler, 1990; Hourani, Yuan, & Bray, 2003; Schuster et al., 2001), including guilt and embarrassment (Kubany et al., 1996; Lindsay-Hartz, 1984; Wise, 1996). However, these events diﬀer on important dimensions that are relevant to the experience and treatment of these outcomes. First, the locus of responsibility for externally caused events diﬀers from that of personal transgressions. Blame for an externally caused event is placed on an inanimate object or person outside the victim of the event. However, in the case of transgressions, the transgressor is the recipient of the blame. The personal responsibility associated with transgressions creates challenges that do not emerge with events caused by external forces. For example, transgressors may experience a loss of social support from friends and family hurt by their transgression. They may also struggle with fear of personal or legal retribution for their transgression. Second, the function of the guilt and embarrassment that can follow these events is diﬀerent. Guilt following a transgression has been associated with reparative action and empathy for others (see Tangney, 2002, for a review). Guilt-proneness has also been associated with greater tendency to avoid immoral behavior (Tangney, 1994). Therefore, guilt following a transgression can be functional and may lead to beneﬁts for the transgressor and the victim of the transgression. However, guilt following externally caused events is often due to faulty thinking in which individuals distort their role in the event, their level of responsibility, the degree to which they violated moral standards, and the justiﬁed nature of their actions (Kubany, 1998). Due to these distortions, this guilt has little rational basis. In addition, this guilt is dysfunctional because the absence of personal responsibility makes atonement impossible. Finally, guilt for an externally caused event has negative psychological consequences for the individual including depression, suicidal ideation, and PTSD symptoms (Kubany, 1998). Additional diﬀerences between transgressions and externally caused stressful events may emerge, depending on the context and individuals involved. Together, these diﬀerences suggest that personal transgressions are qualitatively distinct from externally caused stressful events and may pose unique emotional, social, and spiritual challenges. It follows that the spiritual resources that are helpful to people coping with externally caused events may not be fully applicable to personal transgressions. The unique qualities of personal transgressions may call

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for unique spiritual resources to help people cope with these events. In fact, there are distinctive spiritual resources that people can draw upon to deal with and potentially grow from transgressions. Transgressions in the Context of World Religions For thousands of years, the religions of the world have been very much concerned with personal transgressions. “To turn away or against the religious design is not to be confused with a simple mistake or error; to many religious minds it becomes a sin” (Pargament, 1997, p. 217). Virtually every religion provides its members with moral standards that deﬁne certain actions as transgressions. For example, Jews and Christians use the Ten Commandments to help distinguish between acceptable behaviors and transgressions (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997; Hollinger, 2002). Furthermore, the world’s religions provide their adherents with spiritual methods for addressing their transgressions. Within Roman Catholicism, contrite believers formally confess their transgressions privately to a priest in the sacrament of penance. The priest then recites an invocation to God through which the penitent is believed to receive God’s forgiveness (Barton, 1961; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997). Protestant denominations of Christianity also provide believers with contexts in which to confront their transgressions. Believers can confess privately to a minister or other believers or they can confess their transgressions directly to God (Rowell, 1990). These forms of confession are believed to result in God’s forgiveness (McMinn, 1996). Pargament and Rye (1998) recognize the religious component of forgiveness. “. . . Forgiveness is more than a method. It is a value, and, for many, a religious value . . . Forgiveness should be understood within its religious context” (p. 72). These authors were referring to forgiveness granted by the victim of a transgression. However, the religious context is also important to forgiveness received by a transgressor. Similar to Protestant denominations, Jews believe that penitents can confess directly to God who hears the confessed sins and forgives the contrite sinner (Hymer, 1995). However, one day of the year, Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement, is dedicated to confession and the cleansing of the individual within the context of the community. The

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Yom Kippur ritual includes praying the Kol Nidre, confession and atonement for various types of sins, and a request for God’s forgiveness. Through praying the Kol Nidre and confessing their sins, Jews believe they receive pardon and forgiveness from God for their transgressions (Hymer, 1995). In this way, personal transgressions are linked to spirituality in Judaism. Spiritual Resources for the Transgressor The earlier discussion of appraisals focused on primary appraisals of a transgression as a harm, loss, and challenge and the emotional outcomes of these appraisals. However, secondary appraisals also inﬂuence the perceived stressfulness of an event. Secondary appraisals consist of evaluations of the resources available to cope with an event (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). If an individual is able to identify coping resources, the stressfulness of the event is reduced. However, if the individual feels helpless or unable to cope, the event is experienced as more stressful. The coping resources utilized by the individual depend on the availability and compelling nature of these resources relative to other options (Pargament, 1997). Each individual has an orienting system or general way of viewing the world that includes resources and burdens for coping. Resources that are a larger part of the orienting system are more available when stressful events occur and are more likely to be selected and utilized. In addition to availability, individuals are more likely to use coping resources that are compelling solutions to their problems. Compelling resources are those the individual believes will maximize their attainment of signiﬁcant objects and values with minimal cost. Based on the relative availability and compelling nature of their resources, individuals select and apply the coping resource they feel will maximize attainment of signiﬁcance in their lives. The relationship between spirituality and transgressions in various world religions suggests that individuals struggling with personal transgressions may place their transgressions in a spiritual context. This spiritual perspective may increase the availability and compelling nature of spiritual resources, making them viable resources for coping with personal transgressions. However, mental health practitioners have not identiﬁed spiritual coping resources that may beneﬁt

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transgressors. The spiritual methods for addressing personal transgressions provided by world religions oﬀer a starting point for identiﬁcation of spiritual resources available to therapists working with transgressors. Based on these methods, we will propose spiritual resources that may help transgressors cope with and grow from their transgressions. As with all spiritual interventions, therapists should assess the client’s personal spiritual beliefs and openness to discussion of those beliefs in therapy before utilizing a spiritual intervention. In addition, each spiritual intervention should be modiﬁed to ﬁt and incorporate the beliefs of the individual client. In cases where the therapist lacks suﬃcient background in addressing religious constructs in therapy, referral to a qualiﬁed clinician with expertise in spiritually-integrated treatment is advisable. Transgression-oriented spiritual resources are designed to achieve two interrelated goals. The ﬁrst goal is to reduce or eliminate the distress associated with transgressions. The second goal is to stimulate change or transformation in transgressors that will allow them to live in greater accordance with their values and beliefs. While mental health providers tend to focus on the ﬁrst goal, religious traditions value both reductions in distress and improvements in religious wellbeing. For example, genuine sorrow for a transgression and intentions to change are necessary to receive absolution in the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997). In this way, Catholicism encourages believers to transform their actions in a way that will bring them closer to God. However, this sacrament is also designed to lead to a “peace and serenity of conscience” that represents reductions in distress (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997, p. 369). Therefore, both goals are operative within this spiritual resource. The relative importance of these goals for an individual client depends on the perspective of the client and therapist. However, in many cases, these goals may be inseparable in the experience of the transgressor. We discuss how each of these goals can be met with the resources described below. Confession Confession is one spiritual resource speciﬁcally geared to assisting individuals struggling with a personal transgression. Confession is the act of admitting a personal transgression (Todd, 1985) for which an individual feels responsible, accepts blame, and is sorry for having

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committed (Weiner, Graham, Peter, Zmuidinas, 1991). As previously discussed, confession is a spiritual resource provided by many religious traditions to individuals struggling with a personal transgression. However, confession can also occur in secular contexts. Individuals can confess to the victims of their transgressions or to other individuals. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on spiritual confessions, deﬁned as confessions made to a religious leader (e.g., priest or minister) or congregation or to God. Confession provides transgressors with the opportunity to describe their oﬀenses and their feelings regarding those oﬀenses in a spiritual context. There is evidence to suggest that this type of disclosure beneﬁts transgressors in three important ways. First, spiritual confessions decrease feelings of isolation by reconnecting the transgressor with humanity and God (Hymer, 1995). As noted earlier, transgressions can lead to feelings of isolation from God and others (Todd, 1985). In a qualitative study on the motivations for engaging in confession, 23% of participants who responded to questions regarding their experience of confession indicated that they confessed because their transgressions were separating them from God (Kettunen, 2002). Participants also indicated that a beneﬁt of confession was the restoration of their relationship with God. A second beneﬁt of confession is a reduction in guilt caused by the transgression. Individuals often describe transgressions as burdens. As one college student described the burden of his transgression: “This whole situation is ripping me apart and is what I think of more than anything” (McConnell, 2004, p. 50). Spiritual confession allows individuals to confront their guilt in the context of their relationship with God and to experience a resolution of that guilt through their experience of God’s mercy and forgiveness (Kettunen, 2002; Wise, 1996). In a quantitative study on the sacrament of Penance, researchers compared the perceived guilt of individuals participating in the sacrament of penance to individuals who engaged in a casual conversation unrelated to confession. Individuals who engaged in the sacrament of penance exhibited lower perceived guilt than individuals in the casual conversation, after controlling for baseline levels of guilt (Otterbacher & Munz, 1973). Third, confession provides transgressors with the opportunity to confront their mistakes and commit to change. Confession in many religions involves a commitment to change and avoid future transgressions. The purpose of confession in these religious traditions is not exclusively to reduce distress or restore relationships. Instead, indi-

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viduals are expected to attempt to transform their behavior by avoiding the confessed actions. Quantitative research on confession has not assessed change following spiritual confession. However, theories of confession and qualitative research suggest that confession of a transgression facilitates transformation and growth in transgressors. According to Hymer (1995), confession provides transgressors with the opportunity to describe their transgressions in words. This verbalization of the transgression helps individuals make sense of their actions, which may lead to self-improvement and growth. “Confessions can be redemptive. Freed from the shackles of our secrets, we can move beyond our limitations toward our ideal selves” (Hymer, 1995, p. 43). In addition, spiritual confessions made by alcoholics participating in Alcohol Anonymous are believed to result in growth of the individual. “Through confession to another human being and God . . . the alcoholic can move beyond shame and fear” ( Jensen, 2000, p. 108). Although quantitative research has not assessed growth following confession, these qualitative reports and the function of confession in religious traditions point to the potential for transformation following spiritual confession. Forgiveness Forgiveness is another spiritual resource available to individuals dealing with personal transgressions. Forgiveness can take various forms (e.g., forgiveness of others and God, self-forgiveness, and forgiveness from others and God). For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on the spiritual varieties of forgiveness, forgiveness from God and forgiveness of God. Forgiveness from God is described in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. In the Hebrew Bible, forgiveness from God involves the cleansing or canceling of a transgression and is dependent on genuine repentance of the transgressor (Kaminer, Stein, Mbanga, & Zungu-Dirwayi, 2000). In the New Testament, forgiveness from God involves the remission of divine punishment, pardon, and the restoration of the relationship between God and the transgressor (Kaminer, Stein, Mbanga, & Zungu-Dirwayi, 2000). Prerequisites for forgiveness from God in the New Testament are genuine repentance and acceptance of Christ’s death as a sacriﬁce for humanity’s transgressions. These Biblical deﬁnitions provide clear explanations of forgiveness from God. However, researchers cannot objectively determine whether God has forgiven a transgressor. Transgressors’ perceptions of God’s

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forgiveness are the only way to assess this type of forgiveness and so are the focus of research and clinical work on forgiveness from God. Receiving forgiveness from God can beneﬁt a transgressor in various ways. In one study, feeling forgiven by God was associated with greater life satisfaction and fewer symptoms of depressed aﬀect in individuals 66 years of age or older (Krause & Ellison, 2003). In addition, individuals who felt forgiven by God were approximately two and a half times more likely to believe that transgressors should be forgiven unconditionally than participants who did not feel forgiven by God. Feeling forgiven by God was also positively associated with the likelihood of forgiving a transgressor immediately (Krause & Ellison, 2003). Conversely, the failure to feel forgiven by God has been associated with negative outcomes. For example, in a study of elderly medical inpatients, people who felt punished or abandoned by God had a greater risk of mortality over the following two years than patients who did not feel punished or abandoned by God (Pargament, Koenig, Tarakeshwar, & Hahn, 2001). The other form of spiritual forgiveness is forgiveness of God. Forgiveness of God may not seem relevant to a discussion of personal transgressions. However, preliminary research suggests that individuals forgive God for their own transgressions and that this forgiveness is associated with positive religious and emotional outcomes (McConnell, Pargament, Gordon, & Mahoney, 2004). The mechanism that connects personal transgressions to forgiveness of God is currently unknown. One possible explanation is that transgressors seek God’s help with their transgressions and become angry with God when they feel He has not met their needs. In the process of overcoming their transgressions, however, they may overcome that anger and forgive God for abandoning and alienating them during a diﬃcult time. The eﬀects of forgiving God have not been extensively studied. However, preliminary research suggests that forgiving God is beneﬁcial. Exline, Yali, and Lobel (1999) found that people who had more diﬃculty forgiving God reported more anxiety, depressed mood, anger, and problems forgiving the self and others. Diﬃculty forgiving God was also associated with greater feelings of alienation from God, less salience of religious beliefs, and less frequent participation in religious activities. In addition, among Catholic church attenders who had experienced a recent negative event, anger at God was related to lower self-esteem, fewer problem-solving skills, greater anxiety, more negative aﬀect, and negative resolution of the event (Pargament et al.,

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1998). Anger at God also predicted poor recovery in inpatients of a medical rehabilitation facility (Fitchett, Rybarczyk, DeMarco, & Nicholas, 1999). To the extent that anger toward God is resolved by forgiveness of the divine, these results suggest that forgiving God may have beneﬁcial emotional, psychological, and physical health outcomes. Finally, qualitative research and theories of forgiveness suggest that spiritual forgiveness may be associated with transformation of the transgressor. Forgiveness of others has been described as a positive transformation in which the victim shifts his or her focus from pain, anger, hurt, and injustice to a focus on peace and relinquishment of resentment (Pargament, 1997). This conceptualization of forgiveness may also apply to forgiveness from and of God. In addition, in a study on private confessions to a priest, Anglican priests expressed hope that parishioners would experience spiritual growth through divine forgiveness for a transgression (Butler, 1990). Wahking (1992) describes the growth following forgiveness from God as a transformation from living in despair to living in God’s grace. Regarding forgiving God, Novottni and Petersen (2001) write that forgiving God “moves you forward” (p. 143) and allows people to “see beyond (them)selves” (p. 151) to recognize the situation and the perspectives of others. In addition, forgiving God allows people to begin a new relationship with God that has “new expectations, new guidelines, and new habits” (Novottni & Petersen, 2001, p. 143). Forgiving God does not reinstate an individual’s previous relationship with God but creates a new relationship that is improved by the experience of forgiving God. Empirical research has not investigated the transformative potential of spiritual forgiveness. However, these anecdotal and qualitative reports indicate that spiritual forgiveness for a transgression may be associated with a transformation of transgressors’ perspectives and relationships with God. Meaning-Making Following stressful events, people often engage in eﬀorts to understand the event, themselves, and ways the event ﬁts into the larger context of their lives. This process is called meaning-making and has been identiﬁed as a critical determinant in successful adjustment to stressful events (Park & Folkman, 1997). Researchers have examined meaning-making as it relates to externally caused stressful events. However,

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the diﬀerences between externally caused events and personal transgressions suggest that the respective meaning-making processes may diﬀer in various ways. Meaning-making as comprehensibility Meaning-making can occur at two levels. The ﬁrst level is meaning as comprehensibility, deﬁned as attempts to make sense of an event in the context of the individual’s worldview ( Janoﬀ-Bulman & McPherson Frantz, 1997). Meaning as comprehensibility is derived from adverse events when individuals are able to assimilate the event into their existing worldviews. An event that is consistent with an individual’s assumptions or beliefs about the world and the self has meaning. For a transgressor, meaning-making as comprehensibility may include appraisals and questions about the self in relation to the individual’s beliefs, assumptions, and values regarding appropriate behavior. Religiousness and spirituality have been shown to be part of the meaning-making process of numerous negative life events, including the loss of a child (McIntosh, Silver, & Wortman, 1993) and partner loss among older adults (Golsworthy & Coyle, 1999). A longitudinal study of parents who had lost a child through suicide, homicide, or accident found that religious coping was the second most common inﬂuence in the meaning-making process ﬁve years after the death of the child (Murphy, Johnson, Wu, Fan, & Lohan, 2003). In addition, events that violate or threaten an individual’s sense of control and self-esteem have been shown to increase the use of religious appraisals (Pargament, 1997; Spilka, 1989). Transgressions can threaten an individual’s sense of control and self-esteem. Therefore, transgressors may be likely to use religious appraisals to make meaning of their wrong-doing. Yet, researchers have not explored meaning-making as comprehensibility as it relates to personal transgressions. Religious appraisals used in the meaning-making process can take many forms. “Events can be evaluated as a reward from a loving God, a lesson from a teaching God, a punishment from an angry God, as unintended by a kind and non-intervening God, or as the will of a mysterious God” (Pargament, 1990, p. 202). From the JudeoChristian perspective, God is slow to anger and repeatedly returns to save His people in spite of their misbehaviors. Grace is seen by Christians as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Despite human failings, betrayals, and shortcomings, God is said to love people immeasurably.

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These religious perspectives may help transgressors make meaning of their wrongdoings. Research suggests that meaning-making that incorporates religiousness is associated with beneﬁcial outcomes. In a study of primary caregivers of terminally ill hospice patients, religious and secular appraisals of the caregiving situation were analyzed in relation to depression, anxiety, purpose in life, and general and religious outcomes (Mickley, Pargament, Brant, & Hipp, 1998). The results indicated that religious appraisals provided signiﬁcant and unique contributions to the prediction of positive outcomes over and above nonreligious appraisals. Meaning-making as signiﬁcance At a second level, meaning-making can be understood as a process of determining the larger signiﬁcance of an event ( Janoﬀ-Bulman & McPherson Frantz, 1997). The search for meaning as signiﬁcance is related to an individual’s sense of coherence, purpose, and order in life and in the world. This type of meaning-making occurs when people search for the signiﬁcance of an event that does not ﬁt easily within their orienting system. Meaning is created by altering basic goals, strivings, and values to create congruence between the event and the individual’s orienting system. Personal transgressions may trigger a search for new sources of signiﬁcance and value. For example, a person who kills someone in an automobile accident as a result of driving drunk may ﬁnd meaning by turning away from old selfcentered strivings and becoming a strong advocate of communitybased alcohol awareness and treatment programs. Research indicates that religiousness is relevant to the search for meaning as signiﬁcance. Among college students who experienced a recent stressful event, religious beliefs were important in providing a framework within which to assimilate the stressful event (Overcash, Calhoun, Cann, & Tedeschi, 1996). Janoﬀ-Bulman and McPherson Frantz (1997) cite “newfound devotion to God, or their commitment to particular religious practices, often within the context of a larger community” (p. 99) as common ways that survivors of stressful events attempt to make meaning of their diﬃcult experiences. The ability to ﬁnd meaning as signiﬁcance in a stressful event has been associated with beneﬁcial outcomes. For example, individuals who are able to ﬁnd meaning in events such as a cancer diagnosis (Taylor, Lichtman, & Wood, 1984) appear to cope better after the event “presumably because positive assumptions about the world and

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the self have been restored” (Thompson & Janigian, 1988, p. 261). In a study of individuals with symptomatic HIV and AIDS, ﬁnding meaning predicted well-being, over and above coping style and social support (Farber, Mirsalimi, Williams, & McDaniel, 2003). While research clearly suggests that successful meaning-making is tied to decreases in psychological distress, studies of meaning-making and posttraumatic growth indicate that meaning-making is also tied to change and transformation. For example, the meaning-making process has been linked to several aspects of posttraumatic growth following externally caused stressful events, such as new appreciation of life, spiritual change, and improved relations with others ( JanoﬀBulman & Yopyk, 2004). In addition, in a study of negative life events among a community sample, individuals who appraised the event as a sacred loss reported posttraumatic growth and positive spiritual outcomes. However, individuals who perceived the event to be a violation of the sacred (i.e., desecration) did not experience growth (Pargament, Magyar, Benore, & Mahoney, 2005). The reasons for the diﬀerence between perceptions of sacred loss and desecration and growth are unclear. However, this study suggests that spiritual meaning-making in the form of sacred loss may facilitate transformation following a transgression. In addition, viewing stressful events as desecrations may inhibit change in a transgressor. Future research should explore various types of meaning-making as they apply to personal transgressions. Conversion Spiritual or religious conversion is another resource available to individuals dealing with transgressions. Spiritual conversion has been deﬁned as a life transformation that involves a change of the self in ways related to the sacred (Pargament, 1997). Such conversions can be of several types, including changes of religious denomination within a major tradition (e.g., conversion from Methodist to Baptist), changes of religious tradition (e.g., conversion from Christianity to Islam), intensiﬁcation of religious or spiritual practices within a previous religion, and repudiation of a religion or its beliefs (Rambo, 1993). Conversions are unique from the other spiritual resources discussed in this paper in that transformation deﬁnes the conversion process. According to Pargament (1997), conversion consists of a “dramatic change of the self, a change in which the self becomes identiﬁed

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with the sacred” (p. 248). More speciﬁcally, this transformation occurs in two dimensions: (a) as changes in goals, priorities, and values (i.e., destinations of signiﬁcance), and (b) as bringing diﬀerent resources and a new perspective to what we hold as ultimately signiﬁcant (i.e., pathways to signiﬁcance). Change may occur in both dimensions; for instance, changes in pathways are often necessary to maintain changes in destinations. With spiritual conversions, the principle focus of the individual changes from the secular to the sacred and reﬂects a process of transformation that is life altering. For example, an alcoholic undergoing a spiritual conversion may replace alcohol as his destination of signiﬁcance with his relationship with God. In addition, he may achieve and uphold this change by attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and participating in church activities instead of spending time at the bar. In this example, both his goals and the resources he uses to achieve those goals become focused on the sacred rather than on secular values and objects. Research indicates that conversion is generally preceded by a crisis. A study of denomination converts found that 80% of participants experienced extreme emotional distress in the two years prior to conversion (Ullman, 1989). In addition, sudden conversions appear to occur as a result of aversive emotional states (Strickland, 1924) more often than gradual conversions. The guilt, shame, and embarrassment that follow personal transgressions may be suﬃciently aversive to trigger such conversions. Carl Jung, in a letter to Bill W., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, wrote that “alcoholism is too deeply seated to be cured by psychological means alone, and that Bill W.’s hopes lay in a spiritual conversion” (as cited in Borysenko, 1990, p. 21). Extreme dissatisfaction with the self is believed by some to be the core impetus of the conversion process. This self-dissatisfaction is apparent in the experience of a transgressor who feels inadequate, powerless in the face of temptation or addiction, and unworthy. Kaufman’s (1985) description of the feelings associated with shame reveals this dissatisfaction with the self: Contained in the experience of shame is the piercing awareness of ourselves as fundamentally deﬁcient in some vital way as a human being. To live with shame is to experience the very essence or heart of the self as wanting. Shame is an impotence-making experience because it feels as though there is no way to relieve the matter, no way to restore the balance of things. One has simply failed as a human being. (p. 8)

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According to Pargament’s (1997) explanation of the conversion process, these feelings of the limitations of personal power can lead to selfsurrender or “giving up.” Spiritual conversion occurs when that surrender is to the sacred. Spiritual surrender entails acknowledgement of a greater good or higher meaning in an adverse situation (Cole & Pargament, 1999), such as a transgression. The experience of selftranscendence occurs when the individual moves from self-absorption and control to a relationship with the sacred. By altering the focus of one’s life to encompass and pursue sacred realities, one’s life is transformed. This surrender of the self can result in feelings of wellbeing, gratitude, contentment, and a deeper satisfaction with life, as well as greater clarity of thinking and the ability to better adapt to the vicissitudes of life. Ullman’s (1989) study of converts suggests that conversions are associated with beneﬁcial outcomes following a stressful event. Approximately 80% of participants reported stability and peace of mind as a principle consequence of their conversion. Clinical Implications The spiritual resources described above can be applied in therapy to help clients work through the negative outcomes often associated with personal transgressions to achieve personal growth. The issue of personal transgressions frequently arises in psychotherapy for a few important reasons. First, personal transgressions are a universal phenomenon. Even though the deﬁnition of a transgression may diﬀer depending on religious orientation, culture, and personal moral standards, everyone transgresses. Second, research indicates that transgressions often cause emotional, interpersonal, and spiritual distress (Kettunen, 2002; Wise, 1996). In short, transgressions are prevalent and potent. Therefore, clinicians should be prepared to address them and their impact on clients. Given the association between transgressions and spirituality, clinicians should also be prepared to address transgressions from a spiritual perspective. The following sections illustrate various ways the spiritual resources discussed above can be applied to therapy with a transgressor. Confession Spiritual confession may be a valuable therapeutic intervention for individuals struggling with personal transgressions. The value of spir-

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itual confession has long been recognized by and integrated into Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a 12-step spiritually oriented intervention for alcoholism. Step Five speciﬁcally emphasizes the beneﬁts of confessing to God ( Jensen, 2000). The experience of Dick, a recovering alcoholic working through the stages of AA, illustrates the therapeutic value of spiritual confession. Dick completed Step Four of the AA program by making a “searching and fearless moral inventory” ( Jensen, 2000, p. 54) of himself. As a result of this search, he created a list of his transgressions and felt ready to begin Step Five with a confession to God. Toward this end, he arranged a meeting with his pastor. I went down there. And I carried that list that I had and laid it on his desk . . . And I sat down and started talking. I let him have it. I guess I talked to him about an hour and a half. So when I got through, I stood up. And he said, “Are you through?” And I said, “Yea.” . . . He said, “You want this piece of paper?” I said, “Na.” He tore it up. Threw it in the trashcan. Now, then something came over me. I started walkin’ on air. And I felt a sense of freedom that I never felt before in my life. ( Jensen, 2000, p. 55)

This case example illustrates the transformation that can occur following confession and the potential beneﬁts of incorporating spiritual confession into a treatment program. Therapists can incorporate spiritual confession into the therapy process in a variety of ways that may beneﬁt the transgressor. First, therapists can present spiritual confession to the transgressor as an available resource. Transgressors may not be aware of the potential beneﬁts of confession and may not consider spiritual confession as a resource to address their feelings. Second, research suggests that individuals experience signiﬁcant anxiety as they consider and pursue spiritual confession in a church setting (Kettunen, 2002). This anxiety may make it diﬃcult for individuals to utilize confession. Therapists can address this anxiety in therapy by identifying and processing the source of the individual’s discomfort. For example, therapists can use cognitive therapy techniques to help clients identify their worst fears about confession and examine whether these fears are realistic (see Freeman, Pretzer, Fleming, & Simon, 1990). In addition, therapists can help clients identify and challenge cognitive distortions or irrational thinking regarding the process and outcomes of confession. By reducing clients’ anxiety regarding confession, therapists can facilitate the use of this spiritual resource.

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k. m. mcconnell, m. r. gear and k. i. pargament Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a spiritual resource that may or may not be used during the therapy session to facilitate change in a transgressor. As with confession, the role of the therapist may be to present spiritual forgiveness to the client as an available resource and discuss the utility of this resource for the client. Once clients are aware of spiritual forgiveness as a resource, they may wish to pursue it outside of the therapy session using techniques such as prayer, worship, or meditation on sacred texts (Exline & Martin, 2005). However, clients can experience forgiveness from God in a clinical setting. For example, Jones (1991) described a female client, Sylvia, who experienced God’s forgiveness in therapy through a change in her image of God. Sylvia began therapy feeling guilty for past transgressions and isolated from her family and from God. She viewed God as judgmental and impatient. As therapy progressed, her views of God and her relationship with God began to change. Slowly, she began to view God as accepting and caring. By the end of therapy, Sylvia was able to see God as forgiving and to experience that forgiveness. “ ‘I see,’ Sylvia said, ‘that God’s love is greater than my mistakes’ ” ( Jones, 1991, p. 73). Imagery is one technique that can be used to facilitate spiritual forgiveness in therapy. According to Propst (1988), religious images are a useful therapeutic tool because they can produce intense emotions, facilitate a continuous focus on emotionally intense topics, and can be eﬀective motivators of behavioral change. Speciﬁc images that may beneﬁt Christian transgressors include imagining Christ’s reaction to them, Christ helping them during this diﬃcult time, and Christ dwelling within them (Propst, 1988). These images can be based on Biblical stories involving transgressors, such as Jesus’ forgiveness of the woman caught in adultery ( John 7:53). Incorporating Biblical stories can create a context for the imagery and provide a foundation for belief in God’s love and acceptance of transgressors (Propst, 1988). Initial research suggests that imagining receiving God’s love and acceptance is associated with reductions in anger at God (Exline, 2004). To the degree that anger at God impedes forgiveness of God, such imagery may promote forgiveness of God. In addition, imagining receiving forgiveness from God may facilitate true experience of that forgiveness. Therapy may also provide clients with a context in which to explore their beliefs about spiritual forgiveness. For example, Griﬃth

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and Griﬃth (2002) describe the case of Allison and her parents who were participating in family therapy to address Allison’s failure to comply with her diabetic regimen. In the course of therapy, Allison expressed her belief that she could not approach God until she corrected her behavior. “I know right from wrong and I am still doing wrong. I can’t go to God when I know I am doing wrong. I have to get right ﬁrst” (Griﬃth & Griﬃth, 2002, p. 153). Through discussions with her parents during therapy, Allison was able to identify her father, not God, as the source of this belief. In addition, she and her father were able to recognize that God would welcome a relationship with them, even if they were still transgressing. Spiritual forgiveness did not occur during the therapy session in this example. However, therapy helped Allison and her father transform their beliefs so that receiving forgiveness from God was possible. Meaning-Making Therapists can also help their clients make meaning of their personal transgressions. Several factors should be kept in mind in this process. First, individuals whose transgressions have highlighted vulnerabilities in their sense of self may attempt to transform some integral aspect of their identity or realign their life priorities and goals (Taylor, Lichtman, & Wood, 1984). The individual may be struggling with questions such as: “Why did I do this? How could I have done this? Am I really the person I thought I was?” These questions represent common themes that arise in therapy. By helping clients work through these questions, the therapist can facilitate the meaning-making process. Second, this examination and evaluation of fundamental issues of value and self may involve individuals’ conception of God and the role that religion and spirituality play in the context and fabric of their lives. Many psychotherapeutic approaches lack a conceptual framework that addresses religious and spiritual issues. However, asking clients whether religion or spirituality plays a role in their eﬀorts to derive meaning from an event can broaden the conceptualization of that event for both the client and the therapist. In addition, religious coping may promote meaning-making and transformation following a transgression. Relevant religious coping strategies include a belief in God as loving and just, seeing one’s relationship with God as intimate and supportive, religious rituals such as prayer, reading the Bible, and attendance at religious services, and viewing one’s reli-

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gion as a central motivating force (Pargament et al., 1990). Therapists can explore transgressors’ religious coping strategies to identify strategies that may help the client re-integrate the self and ﬁnd meaning in the transgression. The role of these religious coping strategies in the meaning-making process is best illustrated through case examples. Consider the signiﬁcant role of God image in the meaning-making process of an avowed atheist: When Peter caught herpes as a result of an extra-marital aﬀair, his reasonable healthy guilt was overshadowed by unreasonable religious guilt. Even though Peter had long declared himself an atheist, he soon found he wasn’t. His image of an angry, punitive God had been tucked away, not disposed of; and now he was sure that the herpes was a punishment for his sins . . . He needed both psychotherapy and spiritual redirection to explore and correct the strong religious guilt that had been repressed for so many years. I referred Peter to a pastoral counselor who could serve as a psycho-spiritual guide in correcting two cases of mistaken identity: Peter’s identiﬁcation of himself as a hopeless sinner and his identiﬁcation of God as an unforgiving, punitive destroyer. (Borysenko, 1990, p. 124)

A transgressor’s image of God can also be incorporated into the meaning-making process to facilitate transformation and growth. For example, Milton, a man in his early sixties struggling to overcome alcoholism, used a Biblical story describing Jesus’ relationship with a transgressor to make meaning of his own transgression. “[I] took a lot of comfort in the New Testament, particularly the stories of Mary Magdalene, whose great longing for forgiveness awakened her legendary love for Christ” (Borysenko, 1990, pp. 175–176). Through this Biblical depiction of a transgressor, Milton was able to make sense of his transgression and move toward recovery through participation in Alcoholics Anonymous. Conversion Spiritual conversion is not normally encountered by therapists in the course of psychotherapy. However, therapists do help clients make signiﬁcant and fundamental changes in themselves and their lives. For many clients, spiritual issues are an important aspect of these changes. An awareness and understanding of spiritual and religious aspects of such transformations by the therapist may facilitate the re-integration

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and revaluation of pathways and destinations of signiﬁcance and foster personal growth in the client. In addition, therapists’ knowledge of spiritual resources that can be called upon to facilitate the conversion process may further enhance the probability of successful outcomes. Transgressors who attempt to reconcile their actions with their identity and are unsuccessful in these attempts may turn to spiritual conversion as a way to connect with the sacred. Starbuck (1899) describes this as “the ‘ego’ is lifted up into new signiﬁcance . . . into the life of God.” Candler (1951) described his conversion in terms of turning himself over to God: I was unusually troubled in my soul. Suddenly I heard a voice, just as clearly as I have ever heard anyone . . . The voice said to me, “You must get rid of your self; you must renounce your self; you must reject your self.” These were surprising words. I should not have been surprised if the voice had commanded me to stop drinking. But this was not the message at all. It was my self that I was commanded to give up. My self was my trouble—my love of myself, my fear of anything that might frustrate my wishes. My will had always been the central interest in my life. False pride had erected a barrier between my soul and God. (pp. 55–56)

Such radical changes in identity by clients may raise concerns related to coercion, deception, or brainwashing for psychotherapists. While this is one possibility, this view may also reﬂect the bias that mental health workers have against religion. Therefore, it is important to understand that those seeking conversion are actively searching for more meaningful and satisfying lives, and in most cases are not passive victims. Straus (1979), a sociologist who has studied cults closely, describes potential cult members as “seekers” who, in their search for a new identity, actively experiment with aspects of their lifestyle. Religious conversions may also occur unexpectedly, as was the case for this man in prison: I am at the age of 54 ﬁnancially ruined, in jail. At the beginning of this incarceration (8 months ago) everything looked hopeless and irrevocably lost in chaos that I could never hope to understand, much less to solve. Endless months passed. Then, one day I had a visit by a court psychiatrist to whom I took an immense liking, right from the start, as he introduced himself with a very pleasant smile and a handshake, like I would be still “somebody,” or at least a human being. Something deep and unexplainable happened to me from there on. I found myself

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k. m. mcconnell, m. r. gear and k. i. pargament reliving my life. That night, in the stillness of my small cell, I experienced a most unusual religious feeling which I never had before; I was able to pray, and with utmost sincerity, I accepted a Higher Will to which I have surrendered the pain and sorrow as meaningful and ultimate, not needing explanation. From here on I have undergone a tremendous recovery. (Frankl, 1997, pp. 15–16)

Clients such as this may experience religious or spiritual conversions quite unexpectedly. Therapists who address and explore these feelings with such clients may facilitate personal growth and other positive outcomes that commonly arise with conversions. Therapists should also be aware of resources available outside the therapeutic relationship to transgressors undergoing the conversion process. For example, therapists who feel uncomfortable or unable to address spiritual conversion in therapy can refer clients to qualiﬁed clergy, pastoral counselors, or holistic practitioners for this aspect of the change process. In addition, many self-help and mutual support groups include a conversion component. For example, the ﬁrst three steps of the twelve step program, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), are based on conversion: 1. Admit we are powerless over alcohol—that our lives have become unmanageable. 2. Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. 3. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him. These resources may help a transgressor work through the conversion process and may increase the likelihood that this process will result in growth. Therapists must be aware of resources available both in and outside the therapeutic relationship. Implementation of these resources may facilitate transformation in transgressors undergoing the conversion process. Future Directions Research on stressful events has focused on externally caused events and has identiﬁed a variety of ways individuals cope with these events. Transgressions are similar to externally caused stressful events in the isolation and psychological distress they often elicit. However, these events diﬀer in important respects that lead to distinctive challenges

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for transgressors. In this paper, we have described four spiritual resources relevant to the experience of transgressors. Preliminary research on these resources indicates that they may help to alleviate distress and facilitate transformation and growth following a personal transgression. However, current research is limited and largely qualitative. Further research is necessary to identify all the spiritual resources available to transgressors, the speciﬁc characteristics of these resources, and their eﬀectiveness. In addition, researchers could explore the function of the violated standard and the relevance of this quality for clinical treatment. The deﬁnition of transgression proposed in this paper is based on individual deﬁnitions of moral standards and does not assume that the violated standard is realistic or functional. For example, an individual with obsessive compulsive disorder may feel that failure to check the locks on the doors a speciﬁc number of times violates a personal moral standard and is a transgression. This individual may require a diﬀerent set of spiritual resources than an individual who feels he violated his marriage through inﬁdelity. Future research should explore the function of individuals’ moral standards and the implications of this function for treatment. Finally, researchers should identify potential moderators of the outcomes of spiritual interventions for transgressors. For example, conversion may be more beneﬁcial for younger clients who are still exploring and developing their self-identity. Other client characteristics that may moderate the eﬀectiveness of these spiritual interventions include religious denomination, strength of religious aﬃliation, and gender. Research on these moderators will help therapists identify the intervention best suited for each individual client. Research on the nature and outcomes of transgressions could take a variety of forms. First, the universality of transgressions indicates that transgressions can be studied in all populations. Therefore, researchers could investigate the impact of transgressions in community samples, clinical populations, or populations with speciﬁc transgressions, such as people who have committed criminal oﬀenses. Second, various methodologies are applicable to the study of transgressions. For example, researchers could utilize retrospective designs in which they ask participants to reﬂect on a salient transgression in the past and report on the experience and impact of that transgression. Researchers could also track individuals over time and assess the impact of transgressions as they occur. By comparing pre-transgression well-being to

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post-transgression well-being, researchers could answer important questions about the impact of the transgression, the eﬀectiveness of any intervention, and the occurrence of transformation and growth. Prevalent and potent, transgressions are likely to arise in psychotherapy. Therefore, therapists should be prepared to address transgressions in therapy. In addition, transgressors may place their transgressions in a spiritual context that is important to the therapy process. We have identiﬁed four spiritual resources available to therapists working with transgressors. However, research on these resources is limited. Further research on the experience of transgressions and the eﬀectiveness of these resources will provide insight into the nature of transgressions and the ways in which therapists can help their clients following transgressions. In addition, this research will broaden the scope of knowledge of stressful events to include a universally experienced, yet overlooked, class of events. References Barton, J. M. T. (1961). Penance and absolution. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc. Borysenko, J. (1990). Guilt is the teacher, love is the lesson. New York: Warner Books. Butler, P. (1990). Introduction: Confession today. In M. Dudley & G. Powell (Eds.), Confession and absolution (pp. 1–12). London: Speck. Cadell, S., Regehr, C., & Hemsworth, D. (2003). Factors contributing to posttraumatic growth: A proposed structural equation model. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 73, 279–287. Candler, A. G. (1951). Self-surrender. In D. W. Soper (Ed.), These found the way: Thirteen converts to Protestant Christianity (pp. 51–62). Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd ed.). (1997). Washington DC: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Clark, E. T. (1929). The psychology of religious awakening. New York: Macmillan. Cole, B. S., & Pargament, K. I. (1999). Spiritual surrender: A paradoxical path to control. In W. R. Miller (Ed.), Integrating spirituality into treatment: Resources for practitioners (pp. 179–198). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Dungee-Anderson, D., & Beckett, J. O. (1992). Alzheimer’s disease in AfricanAmerican and White families: A clinical analysis. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 62, 155–168. Exline, J. J. (2004, March). Anger toward God: A brief overview. In E. L. Worthington, Jr. (Chair), Current basic and applied research on forgiveness. Symposium presented at the annual meeting of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, St. Petersburg, FL. Exline, J. J., & Martin, A. (2005). Anger toward God: A new frontier in forgiveness research. In E. L. Worthington, Jr. (Ed.), Handbook of forgiveness. New York: Guilford Press. Exline, J. J., Yali, A. M., & Lobel, M. (1999). When God disappoints: Diﬃculty forgiving God and its role in negative emotion. Journal of Health Psychology, 4, 365–379. Farber, E. W., Mirsalimi, H., Williams, K. A., & McDaniel, J. S. (2003). Meaning of illness and psychological adjustment to HIV/AIDS. Psychosomatics: Journal of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry, 44, 485–491.

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RELIGION AND ETHNICITY AMONG IRISH AMERICANS IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA William L. Smith and Barbara Hendry * Abstract This paper focuses on the interrelationships between religion and ethnicity among members of Irish organizations in Savannah, Georgia. The scholarly literature is mixed regarding the impact these concepts have on each other. The link between religion and ethnicity is variable depending on a variety of situational factors. Our research found that white Catholics in Savannah were often considered to be Irish, even if they were not Irish, and if they were Irish they were considered Catholic, even if they were not Catholic. While we found that the frequency of attendance of religious services and the importance of religion in forming/maintaining ethnic identity are signiﬁcantly related to the strength of one’s ethnic identity, the importance of family and membership in ethnic organizations are even more strongly related to the strength of one’s ethnic identity.

This discussion is part of a larger study of Savannah’s Irish community and partially a response to the recommendation of Alba (1990, p. 304) for further study of the complex relationship between religion and ethnicity. This paper will answer the following question: What is the relationship between religion and the ethnic identity among members of Irish organizations in Savannah, Georgia? The following quote captures the essence of a rich and growing body of scholarly literature on the relationship between religion and ethnicity, and it is appropriate to begin this discussion with it since Savannah is credited with having one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day parades in the United States. Whether it is religion or ethnicity that is celebrated during the St. Patrick’s Day parade is anyone’s guess, but I think we can say, with some degree of safety, that it is both, and that the nature of the relationships and of the mix between the relationships is likely to vary from individual to individual. (Greeley, 1971, p. 47)

* Author Note : The authors are grateful for the assistance provided by Miranda D. Scott, Lindsay Ferrara, and Nathan W. Pino. William Smith may be reached at (912) 681–0255 or via email at [email protected]. Barbara Hendry may be reached at (912) 681–5362 or via email at [email protected]. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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This paper is not about the St. Patrick’s Day parade but for many people, Irish American or not, the parade exempliﬁes an ethnic or a religious event or both. For some people it is neither an ethnic nor a religious event but more of a festive occasion and/or a convenient excuse to party. There has been much debate during the last 40 to 50 years among social scientists about ethnic groups and their rate of assimilation in American society (Alba & Nee, 2003; Chong, 1998; Ebaugh, 2003; Gans, 1979, 1992; Glazer & Moynihan, 1970; Gordon, 1964; Greeley, 1974; Sears, Fu, Henry, & Bui, 2003). The transformation which is occurring today among ethnic groups is more complex than simply distinguishing between whether the United States is a melting pot or merely culturally pluralistic (Alba, 1990, p. 3). Nagel (1994, p. 154) stated that while some scholars point to a “weakening of ethnic boundaries in the white American population,” others show “a maintenance or increase in ethnic identiﬁcation,” thus producing what she calls an “ethnic paradox.” Ethnicity, like religion, was predicted by some scholars to fade oﬀ the radar screen of modern American life. This did not happen to either religion (see Ammerman, 2005; Berger, 1969; Gorski, 2000, 2003; Stark & Bainbridge, 1985; Stark & Finke, 2000; Warner, 1993) or ethnicity in the United States (see Alba, 1990; Alba & Nee, 2003; Gans, 1979, 1992; Glazer & Moynihan, 1970; Greeley, 1971, 1974; Waters, 1990). The secularization thesis deﬁnes the old paradigm that has dominated the social scientiﬁc study of religion for decades, and it is best characterized by the belief “that the rise of modernity is the demise of religion” (Finke & Stark, 2003, p. 97). An emerging new paradigm within the social scientiﬁc study of religion is identiﬁed most closely with the religious economies model and rational-choice theory (Stark & Finke, 2000, p. 35). The new paradigm indicates that religion survives because people make calculated choices about the costs and beneﬁts of religious meaning systems. Herberg (1983) argued that ethnic groups were disappearing and being replaced by a triple melting pot based on religious groups. Ethnic boundary lines, within each of the three major religious traditions, were dissolving and religious identity was becoming the sine qua non of one’s identity. Alba (1990, p. 304) concluded that while Herberg viewed “religion as a possible haven for ethnicity,” the evidence is to the contrary, except possibly for ethnic groups that are also religious entities, like Jews and Greeks. Herberg’s hypothesis has

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not been supported and two key factors have challenged Herberg’s predictions: (a) ethnic groups have not disappeared (although Alba argues that a new European American identity has emerged) and (b) interreligious marriage increased during the latter twentieth century (Alba, 1990, p. 14; Greeley, 1971, p. 82; Glazer & Moynihan, 1970, p. xxxvi; Lieberson & Waters, 1988, pp. 234–235). While neither religion nor ethnicity have disappeared from American life, arguments can be made regarding the salience of religion and ethnicity in everyday life. For example, borrowing from the work of Gans (1994, pp. 577–578) regarding ethnicity and religiosity among European Americans, St. Patrick’s Day parades can be both an example of symbolic ethnicity, “the consumption and use of ethnic symbols intended mainly for the purpose of feeling or being identiﬁed with a particular ethnicity, but without either participating in an existing ethnic organization (formal or informal) or practicing an ongoing ethnic culture,” and symbolic religiosity, “the consumption of religious symbols apart from regular participation in a religious culture or in religious organizations.” If symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity characterize American society, then it is plausible to argue that the inﬂuence of ethnicity and religion on American values and behavior have waned in the last decades of the twentieth century and the ﬁrst decade of the twenty-ﬁrst century. The ﬁndings are mixed regarding whether decades of assimilation and intermarriage have weakened ethnicity and religion. Waters (1990, 1998) and Alba (1990) found support for Gans’ symbolic ethnicity thesis. Waters (1990, p. 12) interviewed white Catholic European Americans from California and Pennsylvania, the majority of whom were of Irish, Italian, and Polish ancestry. Alba (1990, p. 34) interviewed people from a wide range of European backgrounds including those of English, Irish, German, Italian, French, Scottish, Dutch, and Polish ancestry. Rebhun’s (2004) study of American Jews mostly supports both Gans’ symbolic ethnicity and religiosity theses, while Kivisto and Nefzger’s (1993) study of American Jews does not support his symbolic ethnicity thesis. Winter’s (1996) study of American Jews does not support either of Gans’ theses. Religion and ethnicity are frequently mutually reinforcing concepts. Smith (1978, p. 1161) identiﬁed changes in the relationship of religion and ethnicity over time among immigrants to the United States. The most relevant change in the relationship between religion and ethnicity, for the present discussion, is the role that religion played

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in the “redeﬁnition” of the boundaries of ethnicity. Emigration to the United States became a “theologizing experience,” not necessarily a “secularizing process” (Smith, 1978, p. 1181). Smith (1978, p. 1181) argued that the “folk theology and religious piety” of immigrants provided stability as well as facilitated social change in their adopted country. Religion has been for the immigrant “a major way of exercising one’s ethnic identiﬁcation” (Hammond & Warner, 1993, p. 58). Hammond and Warner (1993, p. 66) concluded that even though religion and ethnicity inﬂuence each other at the present time, they think that their relationship will decline in the future as more Americans choose their own religious and ethnic identities instead of accepting those identities ascribed to them at birth. One’s religious and ethnic identities have become increasingly voluntary (Waters, 1990). This change from ascribed to achieved identities is at the heart of Gans’ (1979, 1994) theses of symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity. Religion can be ethnic and ethnicity can be religious. One example of this is provided by Greeley (1972, pp. 118–119) who concluded that “American religion functions as a quasi-ethnic group” and that Catholic ethnic groups are to some degree “quasi-denominations within American Catholicism.” While there might be some truth to this statement, it has become apparent over time that some scholars consider ethnicity a more important predictor of behavior and attitudes than religion. Greeley (1974, p. 119) found that German American Protestants and German American Catholics were more alike than German American Catholics and Irish American Catholics. Alba (1990, p. 304) concluded, based on his research of white ethnics in the “Capital Region” of New York, “that religion has only a weak power to support ethnicity (although the linkage between the two deserves further study).” Glazer and Moynihan (1970, p. xxxvi) argued that “the role of religion as primary identity for Americans” in the 1960s was in decline while ethnicity was becoming a more important component of one’s primary identity. The relationship between religion and ethnicity can take diﬀerent forms (see Abramson, 1980, pp. 869–870). The pattern that best ﬁts our discussion and the most common one in the United States is “religious ethnicity” (Hammond & Warner, 1993, p. 59). Ethnic Catholics, including Irish Catholics, are an example of this pattern. Irish Americans are an ethnic group connected to a religious tradition, but other ethnic groups are also connected to the same religious tra-

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dition. For example, besides Irish Catholics, there are Italian, Mexican, Vietnamese, and German Catholics. Hammond and Warner (1993, p. 63) examined the strength of ethnic identity and religious aﬃliation and their relationship in 12 ethnic groups and found that “religious identity tends to be strongly related to ethnic identity at the group level.” Hammond and Warner (1993, p. 65) also examined the strength of ethnic identity and religious aﬃliation and their relationship in three categories of ethnic groups and found that “Catholic Americans have assimilated at nearly the rate of Protestant Americans, but they have secularized at a lesser rate.” In other words, contrary to Alba (1990), who stated that religion has only a weak inﬂuence on ethnicity, religion inﬂuences ethnic identity more than ethnic identity inﬂuences religion particularly for Catholic Americans. There are a variety of conﬂicting ﬁndings in the scholarly literature regarding the relationship between religion and ethnicity. As Greeley (1971, p. 85) indicated, “Whether the Irish were Catholic because they were Irish, or Irish because they were Catholic is a question that is impossible to answer.” While Greeley might be correct, we will attempt, in the remaining sections of this paper, to answer the question: What is the relationship between religion and the ethnic identity among members of Irish organizations in Savannah, Georgia? Methods Participants Eight hundred and twenty-nine surveys were sent via ﬁrst class mail, and 39 surveys were returned to us by the post oﬃce as undeliverable. Two hundred and sixty-one people returned completed surveys for a response rate of 33%. Of the 261 surveys returned, 181 of the respondents were male and 78 were female. Two respondents failed to indicate their sex. Two of the organizations are for females only, and one of the organizations is co-ed. The remaining Irish organizations are male only. This explains the large gap between male and female respondents. Another factor which inﬂuenced the composition of our respondents is that there are fewer young people who are members of Savannah’s Irish organizations. Our respondents mirror the age distribution seen in these organizations. Of the 261 surveys returned, 254 included the respondent’s age. Thirty-ﬁve (13.4%) of the respondents were 23 to 39-years-old, 54 (20.7%) were 40 to

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49-years-old, 57 (21.8%) were 50 to 59-years-old, 57 (21.8%) were 60 to 69-years-old, 39 (14.9%) were 70 to 79-years-old, and 12 (4.6%) were 80 to 89-years-old. As one can see, the majority of respondents were 50 years-of-age and older. Our respondents were very educated. When asked what was their highest level of education, .8% had attended high school but did not graduate, 10.3% had obtained a high school diploma or general education diploma, 3.1% had attended a post secondary school other than college, 31.0% had attended college but did not graduate, 19.9% had obtained a bachelor’s degrees, 10.0% had attended either graduate or professional school but did not graduate, and 24.1% had obtained either a graduate or professional degree. Sixty-nine percent of the respondents had a family income of at least $50,000 before taxes in 2003. Twenty-ﬁve percent had a family income of at least $100,000, while 2.3% reported an income of below $20,000. Sixtysix percent of the respondents are employed and 32% are retired. The following are the ﬁve largest occupational categories reported: managers/executives/administrators 21.1%, sales/marketing 12%, service occupations 9.6%, health occupations 9.6%, and clerical/administrative support 9.2%. When asked what their religious preference was, 91.6% were Catholic and 5.4% were Protestant. Respondents were asked to identify their ethnic (cultural) background in their own words. As one can imagine, this group is very mixed ethnically. Respondents identiﬁed 54 diﬀerent ethnic labels to describe themselves. The six most identiﬁed ethnic labels were: Irish 34.5%, Irish American 13.0%, Irish Catholic 8.4%, Irish German 5.4%, Scottish Irish 4.6%, and American with Irish heritage 3.8%. For those who did not identify themselves as Irish or who were not of Irish ancestry, 2.3% were members of Irish organizations because they were married to a person of Irish ancestry, referred to in Savannah as IBMs (Irish by marriage), and 1.9% grew up associating with people of Irish ancestry and developed friendships based on this association. An additional 1.5% of the respondents did not identify themselves as Irish. Measures Survey respondents were asked to either circle the most appropriate response, ﬁll in the blank, or provide as complete an answer as possible to each of the 48 questions. The following questions from the

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survey will form the basis for the discussion in the results section: (a) How important is religion for forming/maintaining your ethnic identity? (from 1 = not at all important to 7 = very important); (b) The following [friendships, church/religion, customs or traditions (other than the parade), family, cultural events, (other than the parade), school, ethnic organizations, St. Patrick’s Day Parade] are items that inﬂuence one’s ethnic identity. Please rank the previous eight items in order of importance to you from 1 (most important) to 8 (least important); (c) How important of a role did your family play in the formation of your ethnic identity? (from 1 = not at all important to 7 = very important); (d) How important are these ethnic organizations for forming/maintaining your ethnic identity? (from 1 = not at all important to 7 = very important); (e) For those who attended Catholic schools, how important were they in the formation of your ethnic identity? (from 1 = not at all important to 7 = very important); (f ) How often do you attend religious services? (from 1 = everyday to 9 = never); (g) When you were growing up, did your parents do anything to emphasize one part of your background over the other(s)? ( yes or no); (h) If the respondent answered Yes to the previous question, they were asked to answer the following question, What did your parents do? (open-ended response format); and (i) What exactly do you do at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade? (open-ended response format). These last three questions: ( j) How important is your ethnicity (cultural background) to your identity? (from 1 = not at all important to 7 = very important); (k) How often do you think of yourself as a member of your ethnic group? (from 1 = not at all often to 7 = very often); and (l) How close do you feel to other members of your ethnic group? (from 1 = not at all close to 7 = very close), were used to create an index depicting the strength of ethnic identity. These last three items had a Cronbach’s alpha of .87 which indicates they have a high degree of internal reliability. Procedures Members of 10 of the 11 Irish organizations in Savannah (the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Clan-na-Erin Society, Daughters of Ireland, Fenian Society, Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, Irish Heritage Society, Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, Police Emerald Society, Shenanigans Society, and Sinn Fein) participated in the survey. The Hibernian Society declined to participate, although individual members, who

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were also members of other Irish organizations, did participate. We chose to study members of Savannah’s Irish organizations, instead of Irish Americans who were not members of these organizations, because we were able to get access to vital information such as their names and mailing addresses. Leaders of the organizations facilitated our access to their membership lists and members were mailed, during the ﬁrst week of November 2004, an eight-page survey (available by request), which consisted of 14 open-ended and 34 closed-ended questions. A detailed cover letter was attached to the survey, and a business reply envelope was included. A follow-up postcard was sent the second week of November, and a second follow-up postcard was sent the third week of November. In addition to the survey, 38 one-to-two hour semi-structured, tape-recorded interviews (interview schedule available by request) were conducted with 47 individuals (in several interviews more than one person participated) from Savannah’s Irish American community between September 2003 and May 2005 (only four of these people did not grow up in Savannah). The interviewee pool included 19 females and 28 males. The following is the age distribution of the interviewees: 1 was 26–years-old, 4 were 41 to 50-years-old, 8 were 51 to 60-years-old, 15 were 61 to 70-years-old, 16 were 71 to 80-yearsold, and 3 were 81 to 85-years-old. The interviewee pool reﬂects the predominant age range and gender of those involved in the Irish organizations of Savannah. This sample is comparable to the survey population previously described. Interviewing older people also enabled us to document descriptions and interpretations of changes in the Irish American community over the last ﬁfty to sixty years. Three of the interviewees converted to Catholicism as adults, and the remainder have been Catholics all of their lives. The self-reported ancestry/ethnic origins of the group mirror the variety of answers about ethnicity reported in the surveys. Results Religion is important for the members of Irish organizations in Savannah in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity (see Table 1). Forty-ﬁve percent of respondents said religion was very important in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity. Fiftyseven percent of women said it was very important as did 40% of

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Table 1. Cross-tabulation of Importance of Religion for Forming/ Maintaining Ethnic Identity by Age and Sex Sex M

Importance of Religion

40–49

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 1 0 1 4 7 8 22

4 3 2 2 12 8 13 44

2 3 1 1 7 8 16 38

1 2 0 4 5 10 16 38

1 1 2 1 3 2 15 25

0 1 1 0 3 1 2 8

9 11 6 9 34 36 70 175

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 0 0 0 2 3 6 12

0 0 1 2 1 2 4 10

2 1 2 2 1 3 8 19

0 0 1 4 2 0 12 19

0 2 0 0 0 0 11 13

1 0 0 0 0 0 2 3

4 3 4 8 6 8 43 76

Total F

Importance of Religion

Total

Age 50–59 60–69 70–79 80–89 Total

23–39

(N = 251). Chi-square for males = 25.022 and for females = 36.279.

men. Religion is important in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity across all age groups but especially among those 70 to 79-years-old. Sixty-eight percent of them said it was very important as did 49% of those 60 to 69-years-old. Religion is also important in forming and maintaining ethnic identity across all education groups but particularly among those whose highest level of education was a high school degree or general equivalency degree and for those who attended a post secondary school other than college. Seventyseven percent of high school graduates and those with a general equivalency degree said religion was very important to them in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity and 63% of those who attended a post secondary school other than college said religion was very important to them in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity. Only 38% of those with a graduate or professional degree and 35% of those with a bachelor’s degree responded that religion was very important in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity. Respondents ranked eight items (friendships, church/religion, customs or traditions other than the parade, family, cultural events other than the parade, school, ethnic organizations, and the St. Patrick’s Day

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parade), in the order of importance these items have for inﬂuencing their ethnic identity. Family was ranked the most important item followed by church/religion. Fifty-three percent of the respondents ranked family as the most important inﬂuence on their ethnic identity. Eighteen percent of the respondents ranked church/religion as the most important inﬂuence on their ethnic identity. Thirty-one percent of women ranked church/religion as the most important inﬂuence on their ethnic identity, while 17.2% of men ranked church/religion as the most inﬂuence on their ethnic identity. Church/religion is important to members no matter their age, but for those 70 to 79–years-old almost half (47%) listed this as the most important inﬂuence on their ethnicity, while only 10% of those 40 to 49-yearsold agreed that church/religion was the most important inﬂuence on their ethnicity. While religion is an important inﬂuence on the formation and maintenance of ethnic identity, 38% of the respondents said family played a very important role in the formation of their ethnic identity (see Table 2). Ethnic organizations also played a signiﬁcant role in the formation of their ethnic identity (see Table 3). Thirty-nine percent

Table 2. Cross-tabulation of Importance of Family in the Formation of Ethnic Identity by Age and Sex Sex M

Importance of Family

F

Importance of Family

40–49

50–59

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 1 3 3 8 7 23

0 3 5 1 11 10 13 43

1 1 2 3 4 10 17 38

2 2 4 4 8 6 12 38

1 0 4 3 5 0 12 25

0 1 0 3 1 1 3 9

4 8 16 17 32 35 64 176

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 1 0 3 2 5 12

0 1 0 1 2 4 2 10

0 2 0 2 3 5 7 19

0 0 3 0 4 3 9 19

1 0 0 0 1 5 7 14

0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2

1 4 4 3 14 19 31 76

Total

Total

Age 60–69 70–79 80–89 Total

23–39

(N = 252). Chi-square for males = 33.490 and for females = 26.553.

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Table 3. Cross-tabulation of Importance of Ethnic Organizations for Forming/Maintaining Ethnic Identity by Age and Sex Sex M

Importance of Ethnic Organizations

40–49

50–59

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 2 4 2 7 6 22

2 3 0 1 11 12 14 43

0 2 1 1 1 13 17 35

2 2 0 3 5 10 16 38

2 2 1 0 4 1 14 24

1 2 0 0 1 1 3 8

7 12 4 9 24 44 70 170

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 0 1 2 1 1 5 10

0 1 0 1 2 2 3 19

2 3 1 2 3 3 4 18

0 0 1 3 6 4 4 18

0 1 0 2 1 1 7 12

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

2 5 3 10 13 11 24 68

Total F

Importance of Ethnic Organizations

Total

Age 60–69 70–79 80–89 Total

23–39

(N = 238). Chi-square for males = 44.690 and for females = 22.622.

of the respondents reported that ethnic organizations were very important in the formation of their ethnic identity. Those respondents who attended Catholic schools were asked how important these schools were in the formation of their ethnic identity (see Table 4). Forty-three percent of these respondents indicated that Catholic schools were very important in the formation of their ethnic identity. Forty-two percent of men and 47% of women responded that Catholic schools were very important in the formation of their ethnic identity. Fifty-nine percent of respondents indicated their parents emphasized one part of their ethnic background over another part. When asked to give examples of what their parents did to accomplish this, 20% replied that they were raised Catholic, attended Catholic schools, or lived in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood. Twenty-one percent said their parents emphasized St. Patrick’s Day and the parade, and 37.9% stated they were exposed to their Irish culture/heritage. Respondents often made statements that ﬁt into more than one category. Another question asked what they did at the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Among the various responses, the one most pertinent to the present discussion, is that 17% attended the St. Patrick’s Day Mass

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Table 4. Cross-tabulation of Importance of Catholic Schools for Formation of Ethnic Identity by Age and Sex Sex M

Importance of Catholic Schools

40–49

50–59

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 1 0 6 3 7 18

1 0 2 0 11 10 11 35

0 2 1 2 5 11 11 32

0 0 0 4 7 6 12 29

0 0 0 0 4 2 14 20

1 0 0 1 0 2 4 8

2 3 4 7 33 34 59 142

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 0 1 3 3 2 10

0 0 0 0 1 2 1 4

0 1 1 4 3 2 4 15

0 1 1 0 1 4 9 16

1 0 1 0 0 1 10 13

0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2

1 3 3 5 8 12 28 60

Total F

Importance of Catholic Schools

Total

Age 60–69 70–79 80–89 Total

23–39

(N = 202). Chi-square for males = 40.655 and for females = 32.428.

at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in downtown Savannah prior to the start of the parade. Respondents were asked how important their ethnicity (cultural background) was to their identity (see Table 5). Forty-ﬁve percent said it was very important, and .8% said it was not at all important. Thirtyone percent of those who indicated that ethnicity was very important to their identity also indicated that religion was very important in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity. Sixty-two percent of the respondents attend religious services once a week, and 45% of these respondents said religion is very important in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity (see Table 6). Fifty-seven percent of the respondents who attend religious services 2 to 3 times a week indicated that their ethnicity is a very important part of their identity. Forty-nine percent of those who attend religious services once a week said that their ethnicity was a very important component of their identity. Sixty-three percent of those 70 to 79-years-old replied that they considered their ethnicity to be a very important part of their identity (see Table 7). They were followed by 55% of 80 to 89-year-olds who replied that their ethnicity was very important to their identity.

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Table 5. Cross-tabulation of Importance of Ethnicity to Identity by Importance of Religion for Forming/Maintaining Ethnic Identity and Sex Sex M

Importance of Ethnicity

2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 0 1 2 1 2 3 9

0 2 0 3 4 1 1 11

0 0 0 2 2 2 2 8

0 0 0 3 2 3 1 9

0 0 3 3 10 8 10 34

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 0 1 1 0 1 4

0 0 0 2 0 1 0 3

0 0 0 1 3 0 0 4

0 0 2 2 1 0 3 8

0 0 0 0 2 1 3 6

Total F

Importance of Ethnicity

Importance of Religion 3 4 5 6

1

Total

7

Total

0 0 2 3 6 16 8 35

1 0 0 5 5 9 50 70

1 2 6 21 30 41 75 176

0 0 0 1 2 2 3 8

1 0 0 2 4 7 29 43

1 1 2 9 13 11 39 76

(N = 252). Chi-square for males = 95.700 and for females = 70.345.

Table 6. Cross-tabulation of Church Attendance by Importance of Ethnicity for Identity and Sex 1

2

Importance of Ethnicity 3 4 5 6

7

Total

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2

1 2 2 0 0 1 0 0 6

3 2 9 2 2 2 1 1 22

0 2 19 4 1 2 0 2 30

1 3 19 6 2 9 1 0 41

1 5 50 6 1 11 1 0 75

6 14 102 18 6 25 3 3 177

1 2 3 4 6 8 9

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

0 0 2 0 0 0 0 2

0 0 7 1 1 0 0 9

0 0 8 3 2 0 0 13

0 1 10 0 0 0 0 11

0 8 27 2 1 1 0 39

1 9 54 6 4 1 1 76

Sex M

Church Attendance

Total F

Church Attendance

Total

(N = 253). Chi-square for males = 41.537 and for females = 169.003.

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Table 7. Cross-tabulation of Importance of Ethnicity by Age and Sex Sex M

Importance of Ethnicity

F

Importance of Ethnicity

40–49

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 0 1 5 2 6 8 22

0 1 1 5 11 11 15 44

0 0 1 2 4 13 18 38

0 1 0 6 8 7 16 38

1 0 2 1 3 3 14 24

0 0 1 2 2 0 4 9

1 2 6 21 30 40 75 175

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 0 0 1 2 2 7 12

0 0 1 3 4 0 2 10

0 1 0 3 3 4 8 19

0 0 1 1 3 4 10 19

1 0 1 1 0 1 10 14

0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2

1 1 3 9 12 11 39 76

Total

Total

Age 50–59 60–69 70–79 80–89 Total

23–39

(N = 251). Chi-square for males = 32.099 and for females = 28.508.

A linear regression model was constructed using strength of ethnic identity as the dependent variable and sex, age, frequency of attendance of religious services, importance of religion in forming/maintaining ethnic identity, importance of ethnic organizations for forming/maintaining ethnic identity, and importance of family in the formation of ethnic identity as independent variables. Table 8 displays a correlation matrix and Table 9 displays the results of the regression analysis. Age, frequency of attendance of religious services, importance of religion in forming/maintaining ethnic identity, importance of ethnic organizations for forming/maintaining ethnic identity, and importance of family in the formation of ethnic identity are all related to ethnicity identity. The strength of ethnic identity was more salient among older respondents, with those who attended church regularly, and with members who attached higher levels of importance to religion, ethnic organizations, and family in forming and maintaining their ethnic identities. The importance of ethnic organizations and particularly the importance of family as transmitters of ethnicity are most signiﬁcantly related to the strength of ethnic identity. Data from the in-depth, semi-structured interviews support the survey ﬁndings which indicate a statistically signiﬁcant relationship between Catholicism and Irish identity among our study population.

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Table 8. Variable Correlations 1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

2

3

Strength ethnicity 1.0 Age .06 Sex –.07 .03 Church attendance –.02 –.27*** –.08 Religion importance .45*** .08 .04 Ethnic org importance .56*** –.01 –.09 Family importance .56*** –.04 .06

4

5

6

7

–.49*** –.18** .51*** –.05 .34*** .23*** 1.0

**p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 9. Linear Regression Model with Strength of Ethnic Identity as the Dependent Variable Independent Variable

Beta

SE

t

VIF

Model F

R-Squared

Sex Age Church attendance Rel importance Ethnic org importance Family importance

–.06 .12 .19 .18 .40 .43

.39 .13 .15 .14 .12 .12

–1.32 2.62* 3.51*** 2.92*** 7.63*** 8.92***

1.03 1.09 1.45 1.92 1.40 1.17

46.73

.55

*p < .05. ***p < .005.

Only three of the interviewees were not members of at least one of the Irish organizations in Savannah we surveyed, so data from both sources were drawn essentially from the same pool of people. The comments of the interviewees serve not only to personalize the statistical proﬁle compiled from the survey results, but also illustrate how complexly intertwined family, religion, school, and neighborhood have been in shaping Irish identity in Savannah. Also, since 42 of the 47 interviewees were older than 50, they were able to describe transformations in Savannah’s Irish community and in perceptions of Irishness over the past several decades, thus alerting us to consider how the bases for, and native interpretations of, ethnic identity have changed with time and circumstance. The rest of this section provides verbatim quotes which typify the responses of most interviewees on topics pertaining to the relationship of religion and ethnicity. The label, “Irish Catholic,” itself is a melding of ethnic and religious identities, and, for many of the people we talked to, the two are inextricably intertwined. As one 84-yearold nun reﬂected, “I have a very diﬃcult time separating Irish and

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Catholic and the more I think about it, most of my recollections pertain to my being Catholic.” A 74-year-old man observed, “Most of the Irish people who came here were Catholic and the Church aﬀorded them a social gathering place, an outlet, and provided education—formal education. And so an association began almost at birth with the Church that for most of us lasted life-long.” He added, “the culture would turn out Irish mainly because of the preponderance of people coming from that culture.” When asked how family passed on Irish customs, people would often describe Catholic customs. For example, a 74–year-old woman described early memories of Irish customs as follows: We always had a little altar. It was on top of our dresser. And I remember Mother telling us that they had a little altar upstairs at the end of their hall and their oldest sister, who went to be in the convent, she would keep the altar cloth—it was linen cloth—clean and kept the candles there and everything. It was, you know, either a cruciﬁx there and maybe a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary I think which is Irish. And we’d have little holy water fonts . . .

Similarly, a 58–year-old woman said, “And another Irish tradition that my mother had was sprinkling Holy Water in the house every night.” She also said that her family attended Mass on the First Friday of every month, a Mass dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She said she grew up thinking it was an Irish tradition because “I guess we were in with a lot of Irish people. You know, a lot of families we knew—it was like all the Irish going to church.” Similarly, a 62year-old woman said: . . . it seems like when I would go to novenas with my mother as a child—a novena is a nine day prayer service in the Catholic Church, usually held in the evening. And I would look around, and I would see the other ladies there that were her friends and older—and their names would go through my head, they were mostly Irish names in the Church, in a parish that was not totally Irish.

Since the Irish were the most numerous of the Catholic immigrants to Savannah, their predominance in the parishes, and the frequent venues for interaction aﬀorded by being active in the Church, served to strengthen the association of the Irish with Catholicism in the minds of both insiders and outsiders. For example, one Savannah Irishman stated: And it’s how—the social structure in Savannah is or was and probably to a degree still is—but, when I was growing up, there were four

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ethnic divisions in Savannah. There were Jews. There were Crackers, which were white Protestants. There were blacks. And then there were the Irish. Whether or not you were of Italian descent, which there were kids who were from Savannah who were Italians. Or Lebanese descent, and there were a number of Lebanese who were native Savannahians. If you were a Catholic, you were considered to be Irish. And when jobs were given out or whatever, when you went to vote, if you were Catholic, you were the Irish vote. And so it was impossible to get away from that. A 69-year-old man stated: I didn’t think I made a distinction (between white Catholics of diﬀerent ethnicities)—in fact I didn’t know that all of them didn’t get along until I went north to school and I found out about segregation—how the Italian didn’t like the French and the Irish didn’t like the French and Italians, and all of that. I never knew that part of segregation in my life until I was taught by the Yankees.

Also, he said, in his childhood, “As far as Irish—I think it was almost at that particular time that Irish was synonymous with Catholic— even if their name was Russo or some other Italian name—it was synonymous with the Irish and Catholic was almost interchangeable at that time.” Due to the opportunities for interaction, one interviewee also thought that the Church had helped to foster upward mobility for poorer Irish Catholics. We have a number of “lace-curtain” Irishmen who are—those are wealthy, socially established people. And then they’re a lot of “billy goats,” also known as “shanty Irish,” who are working class, blue-collar types. But the thing that’s unique that gave these people, I think, a great deal of them, upward mobility is the Church. I mean you, you went in and the lace-curtain Irishman would be sitting right next to the billy goat. And they got to know each other. And that was sort of the— the Catholic Church was the great, in a sense, the great equalizer.

Other people talked about the intertwining of the Church and other social institutions in shaping a sense of being Irish in Savannah, such as the 64–year-old man who said, “And church and government and family seemed like they all went together because all the people were the same people that—you were at school, at church, everything we attended were the same people.” A 75-year-old woman said, “Everything was family and church and school. And pushing education, and those were just trademarks of the Irish I guess here . . .” A number of the elderly interviewees also grew up in a downtown neighborhood where many of their neighbors were also Catholics with Irish ancestry. “That was Old Fort,” said one 74-year-old

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woman, “It was almost like Little Vatican or something. They were mostly Catholic people because it was close (to the Catholic Cathedral).” She described walking from this neighborhood to parochial schools. So, opportunities to associate with other Catholics of Irish ancestry were typically available in the Church, in the neighborhood, and, importantly, in the Catholic schools. As one 64-year-old man noted, “Well, you didn’t know anybody but Catholics because we went to Catholic school. Everybody our family got together with were Catholic.” Of 47 interviewees, only 5 had not attended Savannah’s parochial schools. Many of the elderly informants described how they still keep in touch with high school classmates through monthly luncheons and other functions. As one 58-year-old man noted, “Very few Catholics went to public school . . . Catholic education was extremely aﬀordable, because they had plenty of priests and nuns to work for next to nothing.” A 78-year-old man commented, “I was the youngest of six kids, you know. And we all went to Catholic grammar school and Catholic high school . . . And I mean, we—we’ve always associated Irish with Catholicism.” One 78-year-old woman, whose grandfather was a Catholic from Ireland but who had been raised Baptist and converted to Catholicism only as a young adult, said that when she joined a local Irish organization, she was one of the ﬁrst members to prove her Irish ancestry, which she said, got to be a joke, because other members said, “This is funny . . . Of all people, we didn’t even know she was Irish.” And she said to them, “No, I wasn’t, as far as you-all’s interpretation of Irish.” To the other members, who had mostly been raised as Catholics, she said, “your interpretation of Irish was, you know, the ones that you grew up with, going all the way through Catholic schools and to St. Vincent’s (the Catholic girl’s high school) and everything, so to speak.” People did frequently say that their school experiences were important in inﬂuencing their sense of Irish identity, particularly two kinds of experiences. These were marching with the schools in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and being taught by nuns, and some priests, from Ireland. The following are some representative comments related to the inﬂuence of Catholic schools on their ethnic identity: So many of the nuns that taught us in school came from Ireland. And, they—St. Vincent’s Academy—that was a novitiate. And these girls were like 15, 16, 17, very young. And that’s where they entered the novitiate and did all their studies and things. And that’s where they were professed.

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And nearly all the nuns were Irish nuns in elementary school except for one. They had all been born in—the one nun was from Savannah, and she was Italian . . . But, all the other nuns in elementary school so far as I can remember were all Irish. So that—they said it’s a wonder all the Irish kids didn’t speak with a brogue, because we had so many nuns and priests that were Irish. I’d say the ﬁrst four grades of school, I had a woman from Ireland in a black habit teaching me. And her anecdotes and her stories probably did burrow in there somewhere, and their approach to the religion, which was very pious. And then I think that that’s—the Catholic schools were, I don’t know, a center—I can’t put the right word to it and I’m sure you can—for educating the people in their religion and also in their heritage and everything. Now I think it’s left up to the families and a lot of the families are ﬂoating oﬀ and I can see that even with my children’s family. Maybe one of the earliest things that I remember was I thinking I was going to hell because I was in the basement of the cathedral school and the nuns had us praying for the rain to stop so we could march in the parade, and I was sort of hoping it wouldn’t. . . . the Catholic schools all marched in the parade so it didn’t matter, you know, what ethnic background you had, you marched. Right, that’s right. And I think that’s probably kind of the way St. Patrick’s Day is now. I mean, if you think about it, everybody, on St. Patrick’s Day, everybody is Irish, regardless of whether you really are or not, you know. You’re out there celebrating with them.

With increasing commercial and tourist development of St. Patrick’s Day in recent decades, many interviewees felt that the religious signiﬁcance of the day (to them) was being overshadowed. In 1983, a new ritual, the Celtic Cross Ceremony, was developed by leaders of Savannah’s Irish organizations and unmistakably represents connections between family, community, religion, and ethnicity. One 68-year-old man described this event as follows: Well, the best ceremony there is, as far as being Irish in my opinion, is the Celtic Cross Ceremony, and that’s on the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day and on that day all of the Irish societies march together, they all carry their banners in; the young children carry the ﬂags of Ireland in. It’s tremendous pageantry. And then after church . . . all of the societies process from the Cathedral . . . And they go down to Emmet Park on the river front and there’s a Celtic Cross that’s been there for about twenty years, made in Ireland, transported over here. There’s a little brief ceremony at which the Marshal (Grand Marshal of the parade) of course is recognized. The Marshal lays a wreath at

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w. l. smith and b. hendry the base of the monument. There’s always a featured speaker and then after that you have a reception. But that ceremony is so meaningful because it gets all of the Irish societies together and it’s strictly about your Irish heritage. Generally the motto on the monument is dedicated to the Irish who came to this country—past, present, and future. And there have been so many people that have come to this area from Ireland and whose roots are deeply embedded in Savannah, in Georgia itself, and whose families are still here. It’s just a great ceremony. Now that’s one of the ones and that, as I said, is my favorite, my personal favorite.

Both the survey data and the data from the personal interviews highlight the interconnectedness of religion and ethnicity among the Savannah Irish. The following quote from a 60-year-old man sums up this ﬁnding quite succinctly, “My Irish and my Catholicism are so intermingled that baptisms, weddings, funerals, and all other types of family gatherings contain portions of both.” Discussion and Conclusion Kelly (2005, p. 150) concluded that the intertwining of Catholicism and Irish ethnicity produced a New York Irish identity and Meagher (2001, p. 16) found that Catholicism and Irish ethnicity also produced a Worcester Irish identity. Based on the information provided in the previous section, we believe the same thing can be said about the Savannah Irish, although for them it has produced a distinctive Savannah Irish identity. While the Savannah Irish, the New York Irish, and the Worcester Irish share a common ancestry, their experiences and the social construction of their ethnic identities are not identical. Anderson (1995, p. 80) argued that Southern Catholics did not experience an “immigrant church” as did Catholics from the Northeast and Midwest. In the Northeast and the Midwest it was the ethnic community that was “the conservator of religious identity and faith” while in the South “family is the primary institutional locus of Catholic identity, instruction and passing on the faith” (Anderson, 1995, pp. 889–890). Anderson (1995, p. 90) found that for Catholics in the South religion was dependent on family because throughout history in the South the family has been the pivotal social institution. This situation was and still is due primarily to the “weak institutional presence of the Catholic Church” in the South and to the emphasis of race over ethnicity in the South. Catholics constitute only 5% of the

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population in Georgia and about 3% of the population in the territory designated as the diocese of Savannah which occupies the lower twothirds of the state (Gillis, 1999, p. 24). White ethnicity was not as much a factor in the South as it was in the very ethnically diverse Northeast and Midwest (Anderson, 1995, p. 90). Our research partially supports Anderson’s thesis. As discussed in the previous section, survey results show the Savannah Irish reported that family is the most important inﬂuence on their ethnic identity followed by ethnic organizations, and church/religion. And the interviews revealed ways in which family and religion are closely interrelated. While Catholics are deﬁnitely a minority in Savannah, their numbers have always provided them with a large support group that served as a bulwark in a region of the country that was not always hospitable to Catholics. Our analysis of the Savannah Irish does not support Gans’ theses of symbolic ethnicity or symbolic religiosity. We studied people who participated in ethnic organizations, a feature indicative of a stronger ethnic identity than Gans’ symbolic ethnicity. It should also be said this study population may have skewed our ﬁndings regarding symbolic ethnicity. If our study population was representative of all Irish Americans in Savannah our ﬁndings might have supported Gans’ thesis. The same can be said about the question of symbolic religiosity. Sixty-two percent of our study population attended Mass once a week, while D’Antonio, Davidson, Hoge, and Meyer (2001, p. 53) reported that only 37% of Catholics nationwide attend Mass weekly. Our respondents are not only more concerned with their ethnicity, their weekly church attendance rate is signiﬁcantly higher than the national level. That said, whether religion will continue to have a strong inﬂuence on the ethnic identity of the Savannah Irish is more diﬃcult to assess. Once the oldest generations are gone, will the generations that succeed them have the same fervency for religion? The results of a regression analysis using strength of ethnic identity as the dependent variable and sex, age, frequency of attendance of religious services, importance of religion in forming/maintaining ethnic identity, importance of ethnic organizations for forming/maintaining ethnic identity, and importance of family in the formation of ethnic identity as independent variables are displayed in Tables 10 and 11. Respondents younger than 50-years-old composed the population for Table 10. Table 11 displays the results of a regression analysis (the same dependent variable and independent variables as

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Table 10. Linear Regression Model with Strength of Ethnic Identity as the Dependent Variable (<50 Years of Age) Independent Variable

Beta

SE

Sex Church attendance Family importance Ethnic org importance Rel importance

–.05 .19 .34 .45 .30

.64 .25 .20 .21 .22

t –.67 2.11* 4.37*** 5.28*** 2.85**

VIF

Model F

R-Squared

1.01 1.70 1.22 1.47 2.26

25.32

.63

*p <.05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 11. Linear Regression Model with Strength of Ethnic Identity as the Dependent Variable (50 >Years of Age) Independent Variable

Beta

SE

t

VIF

Model F

R-Squared

Sex Church attendance Family importance Ethnic org importance Rel importance

–.09 .19 .47 .38 .11

.49 .19 .15 .15 .17

–1.56 2.99** 7.64*** 5.75*** 1.52*

1.04 1.23 1.17 1.38 1.77

33.06

.53

*p < .10. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

the previous regression) but using respondents 50-years-old and older as the population instead of those younger than 50-years-old. The beta weights between both these age groups are similar regarding church attendance. There is a diﬀerence between the two age groups regarding the importance of religion for forming and maintaining their ethnic identity. For those under 50 years-of-age, the importance of religion has more predictive value regarding the strength of their ethnic identity than it does for respondents 50 and older, although religion is important for both age groups in forming ethnic identity. It appears from this measure that the fervency of religion among the younger respondents is not wavering. Nevertheless, we see the need for more research on this issue. The Savannah Irish have more than just a symbolic identiﬁcation with their ethnicity and religion. While St. Patrick’s Day and the parade and season are no doubt important to them, and the majority of their Irish activities occur during this time of the year, they choose to be Irish not just during this time of the year. The frequent meetings throughout the year of the Irish organizations, interactions at

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church and family functions, and rituals such as wakes, weddings, and funerals reinforce their Irishness. These social rituals produce a sense of group solidarity (Collins, 1992, p. 7). The Celtic Cross ceremony is a good example of a social ritual that both reﬂects and reinforces a sense of Irish Catholic identity for these Savannahians. With the demographic, economic, political, and social changes in the city in recent decades, they have found a new way to explicitly anchor their sense of Irishness to their Catholic faith. Our ﬁndings, as discussed in the previous section, also challenge Alba’s (1990, p. 304) position “that religion has only a weak power to support ethnicity.” Overwhelmingly the respondents to our survey and those who were interviewed reported that religion inﬂuenced their ethnic identity. This was particularly true for women and respondents 60 to 79-years-old. In the survey, 31% of those who indicated that ethnicity was very important to their identity also replied that religion was very important in forming and maintaining their ethnic identity. Next to family and ethnic organizations, church/religion was the most important transmitter of ethnic identity. In addition, the respondents to our survey and those who were interviewed strongly agreed that attending Catholic schools played an important role in the formation and maintenance of their ethnic identity. To some extent, we found, especially in the comments made by those who were interviewed, that the Catholic parishes in Savannah functioned as what Greeley (1972) calls a quasi-ethnic group, and that the Savannah Irish function, to some extent, as a quasi-denomination within Catholicism. This became apparent when we were frequently told by our respondents that in Savannah white Catholics were often considered Irish, even if they were not Irish, and if they were Irish they were usually considered Catholic, even if they were not Catholic. Signiﬁcantly intertwined with religion and family, ethnicity is an important part of our respondents’ identity. This might come as a surprise to some in light of Anderson’s (1995) and other scholars’ observation that ethnicity in the South was often overlooked in deference to race. What also might be surprising to some, but probably not to southerners, is that when asked how important their identity as a southerner was in comparison to their other identities (including their ethnic identity), 30% said it was much more important. Although Killian (1985, p. 70) referred to Catholics and Jews as “marginal white southerners,” he found they exhibit a sense of regional loyalty

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that “has been as important to them as it has been to their white Protestant neighbors.” The empirical data and analyses and the qualitative (interview) data provide evidence that religion has some inﬂuence in predicting the ethnic identity of Irish Americans in Savannah. We need to focus more in future research on the inﬂuence ethnic identity has on religion and religiosity. We hope our research has in some way contributed to Alba’s (1990, p. 304) call for further study of the complex relationship between religion and ethnicity. More research needs to be done on this topic. We are in the process of producing other papers as part of our study of Savannah’s Irish community that will address such issues as the importance of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and season, the importance of southern identity, and the social and cultural construction of ethnic identity among the Savannah Irish. References Abramson, H. J. (1980). Religion. In S. Thernstrom (Ed.), Harvard encyclopedia of American ethnic groups (pp. 869–875). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alba, R. D. (1990). Ethnic identity: The transformation of white America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Alba, R. D., & Nee, V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ammerman, N. T. (2005). Pillars of faith: American congregations and their partners. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Anderson, J. W. (1995). Catholic imagination and inﬂections of “church” in the contemporary south. In J. W. Anderson (Ed.), The culture of Bible belt Catholics (pp. 79–132). New York: Paulist Press. Berger, P. L. (1969). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Chong, K. H. (1998). What it means to be Christian: The role of religion in the construction of ethnic identity and boundary among second-generation Korean Americans.” Sociology of Religion, 59, 259–286. Collins, R. (1992). Sociological insight: An introduction to non-obvious sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. D’Antonio, W. V., Davidson, J. D., Hoge, D. R., & Meyer, K. (2001). American Catholics: Gender, generation, and commitment. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Ebaugh, H. R. (2003). Religion and the new immigrants. In M. Dillon (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of religion (pp. 225–239). New York: Cambridge University Press. Finke, R., & Stark R. (2003). The dynamics of religious economies. In M. Dillon (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of religion (pp. 96–109). New York: Cambridge University Press. Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2, 1–20. —— (1992). Comment: Ethnic invention and acculturation, a bumpy-line approach. Journal of American Ethnic History, 12, 42–52. —— (1994). Symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: Towards a comparison of ethnic and religious acculturation. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 17, 577–592.

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Gillis, C. (1999). Roman Catholicism in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Glazer, N., & Moynihan, D. P. (1970). Beyond the melting pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press. Gordon, M. (1964). Assimilation in American life: The role of race, religion, and national origins. New York: Oxford University Press. Gorski, P. S. (2000). Historicizing the secularization debate: Church, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300–1700. American Sociological Review, 65, 138–167. —— (2003). Historicizing the secularization debate: An agenda for research. In M. Dillon (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of religion (pp. 110–122). New York: Cambridge University Press. Greeley, A. M. (1971). Why can’t they be like us?: America’s white ethnic groups. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. —— (1972). The denominational society: A sociological approach to religion in America. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company. —— (1974). Ethnicity in the United States: A preliminary reconnaissance. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Hammond, P. E., & Warner, K. (1993). Religion and ethnicity in late-twentieth century America. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 527, 55–66. Herberg, W. (1983). Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An essay in American religious sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kelly, M. C. (2005). The shamrock and the lily: The New York Irish and the creation of a transatlantic identity, 1845–1921. New York: Peter Lang. Killian, L. M. (1985). White southerners. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press. Kivisto, P., & Nefzger, B. (1993). Symbolic ethnicity and American Jews: The relationship of ethnic identity to behavior and group aﬃliation. Social Science Journal, 30, 1–12. Lieberson, S., & Waters, M. C. (1988). From many strands: Ethnic and racial groups in contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Meagher, T. J. (2001). Inventing Irish America: Generation, class, and ethnic identity in a New England city, 1880–1928. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Nagel, J. (1994). Constructing ethnicity: Creating and recreating ethnic identity and culture. Social Problems, 41, 152–176. Rebhun, U. (2004). Jewish identiﬁcation in contemporary America: Gans’s symbolic ethnicity and religiosity theory revisited. Social Compass, 51, 349–366. Sears, D. O., Fu, M., Henry, P. J., & Bui, K. (2003). The origins and persistence of ethnic identity among the “new immigrant” groups. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66, 419–437. Smith, T. L. (1978). Religion and ethnicity in America. The American Historical Review, 83, 1155–1185. Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. S. (1985). The future of religion: Secularization, revival and cult formation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Stark, R., & Finke, R. (2000). Acts of faith: Explaining the human side of religion. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Warner, R. S. (1993). Work in progress toward a new paradigm for the sociological study of religion in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1044–1093. Waters, M. C. (1990). Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —— (1998). The costs of a costless community. In M. W. Hughey (Ed.), New tribalisms: The resurgence of race and ethnicity (pp. 273–295). New York: New York University Press. Winter, J. A. (1996). Symbolic ethnicity or religion among Jews in the United States: A test of Gansian Hypotheses. Review of Religious Research, 37, 233–247.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTAL IMAGES AND MINISTERIAL JOB SATISFACTION AMONG ANGLICAN CLERGYMEN IN ENGLAND Douglas W. Turton and Leslie J. Francis * Abstract A sample of 1,276 Anglican parochial clergymen in England completed a modiﬁed form of the Glass Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale, a self-reported scale on parental images, and the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The aim of the present study was to test empirically the relationship between parental images and current levels of ministerial job satisfaction among clergymen. Given the fact that previous studies have demonstrated the relationship between aspects of clergy work-related psychological health and individual diﬀerences in personality, the present study also included an established measure of personality. The data demonstrate that negative parental images are a signiﬁcant predictor of poor ministerial job satisfaction, after controlling for individual diﬀerences in age and in personality.

Writing in the mid-1980s, Wilson (1987) observed that, while studies on the work-related satisfaction of paid employees in business and industry abound, relatively few studies have been conducted on the job satisfaction of religious professionals. The situation has not changed greatly from the mid-1980s. Gaining greater understanding of ministerial job satisfaction may hold an important key to interpreting the workrelated psychological health of clergy for two reasons. First, it is clear from a number of recent studies that clergy are experiencing unacceptably high levels of work-related stress and emotional exhaustion. Second, psychological theory concerned with balanced aﬀect suggests that good levels of job satisfaction help to prevent high levels of emotional exhaustion from becoming too professionally disabling.

* The Rev. Dr. Leslie J. Francis is Director of the Welsh National Centre for Religious Education at the University of Wales, Bangor. He may be reached at Welsh National Centre for Religious Education at the University of Wales, Bangor, Normal Site, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2PZ, Wales, UK. Alternatively, he may be reached via phone at 01248 382566, fax at 01248 383954 or via email at [email protected]. His website is www.bangor.ac.uk/rs/pt. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006

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d. w. turton and l. j. francis Clergy Work Related Stress and Professional Burnout

A number of recent studies focusing on the negative aspects of the psychological work-related health of clergy have drawn attention to high levels of stress and emotional exhaustion. Three examples of relatively recent studies focusing on clergy stress are provided by Coate (1989), Davey (1995), and Warren (2002). Three relatively recent studies focusing on emotional exhaustion among the clergy are provided by Turton (2003), Francis, Louden, and Rutledge (2004), and Rutledge and Francis (2004). Coate (1989) in her book, Clergy Stress, examines clergy stress from a psychodynamic perspective and suggests that signs of stress in clergy are often less obvious than the occasional scandals, and the exodus of clergy from their orders and vows. She suggests that a not inconsiderable number of clergy feel the need to depart from ministry and go into secular employment. There is also a growing concern about the number of clergy applying for early retirement. She suggests that clergy are subject to hidden pressures which are related to strong stereotypes held by congregations and to hidden personal histories. She further suggests that in the area of religion and ministry there is an inherent pressure that is not present with other caring professions. She describes this inherent pressure as the interpreting and internalizing of the values of the Gospels or other religious traditions which can, at some point, seem to ﬂy in the face of both common sense and human wellbeing. Coate (1989) identiﬁed the roots of clergy work-related stress within four main areas as: the strain of caring, the strain of relating to God, the strain of proclaiming, and the strain of being. She argues that clergy often experience diﬃculty in dealing with stress caused by such factors because they ﬁnd it especially diﬃcult to admit to the pressures of their work, feeling perhaps that they should somehow be “better” than their secular counterparts. Davey (1995) in his book, Burnout: Stress in the Ministry, suggests that “priesthood is acknowledged as a stressful occupation and many of its practitioners exhibit recognisable signs of stress” (p. 31). Davey adds that to be a priest is to live in a potentially pressured and stressful position; some of the pressures are similar to those experienced by other professionals in similar caring occupations, while others are speciﬁc to the nature of the exercise of priestly ministry. Davey (1995) identiﬁes four main sources of stress for clergy. The ﬁrst area concerns the ministerial role, balancing role expectations with role performance and confronting role conﬂict, role ambiguity,

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and role overload. The second area concerns career development. The third area concerns appropriate support and recognition; clergy perceive themselves to be overworked, under-appreciated, and lack conﬁdence that their particular skills and aptitudes will be recognised and utilized by those in authority. The fourth area concerns the interface between home and work and the problems of balancing the use of the parsonage as the centre for domestic and professional life. Warren (2002) in her book, The Cracked Pot, also approaches workrelated stress among clergy from a psychodynamic perspective. She describes, in a variety of ways, the stress among the Anglican clergy whom she interviewed, but speciﬁcally identiﬁes depression, broken marriages, clergy struggling with their positions, feelings of insecurity, and pressures from within and without. She highlights the need of some clergy for father ﬁgures, which are epitomised in their bishops, and the consequent and inevitable sense of strain when bishops fail to fulﬁl this deep unconscious need through apparent lack of pastoral support. Speciﬁcally she identiﬁes the often negative public focus on clergy’s activities which has caused a sense of stress within the institutional church and extreme trauma to individuals through such exposure. In a study among 2,000 male stipendiary parochial clergy in the Church of England (with a response rate of 65%), Turton (2003) included a modiﬁed form of the emotional exhaustion scale proposed by Maslach and Jackson (1986) as one of the three indices of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Results indicated that Anglican clergymen were working too hard (43%), feeling burned out from parish ministry (16%), experiencing stress from working with people all day (25%), feeling used up at the end of the day (39%), feeling emotionally drained with parish ministry (25%), and ﬁnding that working with people creates too much stress (25%). A second empirical study by Francis, Louden, and Rutledge (2004) included the same modiﬁed form of the Maslach Burnout Inventory in a survey mailed to 3,581 regular and secular Catholic priests in England and Wales, with a response rate of 41%. Results within the emotional exhaustion scale indicated that Catholic clergy were working too hard (26%), feeling burned out from parish ministry (14%), experiencing strain from working with people all day (27%), feeling used up at the end of the day (36%), feeling emotionally drained with parish ministry (19%), and ﬁnding that working with people directly creates too much stress (27%).

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A third empirical study by Rutledge and Francis (2004) also used the same modiﬁed form of the Maslach Burnout Inventory among a larger battery of tests among a 15% random sample of male Anglican clergy identiﬁed on the Church Commissioners’ payroll. A total of 1,476 questionnaires were mailed, resulting in 1,071 usable responses representing a response rate of 73%. Results within the emotional exhaustion scale indicated that Anglican clergy felt they were working too hard (31%), feeling burned out from parish ministry (8%), experiencing strain from working with people all day (12%), feeling used up at the end of the day (29%), feeling emotionally drained with parish ministry (13%), and ﬁnding that working with people creates too much stress (12%). Balanced Affect and Job Satisfaction The classic model of balanced aﬀect proposed by Bradburn (1969) maintains that positive aﬀect and negative aﬀect are not opposite ends of a single continuum, but two separate continua. According to this model, good psychological health is characterised by the presence of positive aﬀect and the absence of negative aﬀect, while poor psychological health is characterised by the absence of positive aﬀect and the presence of negative aﬀect. In many ways Maslach and Jackson’s (1986) notion of professional burnout is an extension of Bradburn’s classic model. For Maslach and Jackson (1986), burnout occurs when high levels of emotional exhaustion (and depersonalisation) are not counter-balanced by high levels of personal accomplishment or job satisfaction. According to this classic model, it is totally reasonable for individual clergy to experience at one and the same time high levels of positive aﬀect (ministerial job satisfaction) and high levels of negative aﬀect (emotional exhaustion). According to this model of balanced aﬀect, warning signs of poor work-related psychological health occur among clergy when high levels of negative aﬀect (emotional exhaustion) coincide with low levels of positive aﬀect (ministerial job satisfaction). It is for this reason that research concerning the nature and correlates of ministerial job satisfaction may be of considerable theoretical and practical relevance. If clergy are indeed engaged in a high stress profession, it is important to understand the nature and sources of the job satisfaction which is able to oﬀset the damaging consequences of such work-related stress.

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Generally research concerned with assessing job satisfaction across diﬀerent areas of work reveal clergy to be a professional group who gain considerable satisfaction from their work. For example, Sales and House (1971) found that clergymen, along with scientists and university teachers, reported the highest levels of job satisfaction. More recently, Goetz (1997) reviewed the results of several American surveys and concluded that the clergy demonstrated a remarkably high degree of job satisfaction. In the United Kingdom, Rose (1999) carried out a detailed statistical analysis of some 34,000 observations on job satisfaction collected in the British Household Panel Survey over the period 1991–1999. In terms of overall work satisfaction, clergy ranked second only to medical secretaries out of 143 occupational groups, with 72% of clergy stating that their work satisfaction was high or very high, although working conditions and remuneration were known not to be favourable. A survey commissioned by the Archbishops’ Council (2001) for the Clergy Stipends Review Group included a single item on job satisfaction completed by 6,295 stipendiary clergy and lay workers in the Church of England (described as a “nearly two-thirds” response rate). In response to the statement “I would rate my job satisfaction currently as,” 25% chose excellent, 49% good, 18% adequate, 6% poor, and 1% very poor. The remaining 1% did not provide an assessment of their job satisfaction. The proportions of clergy who rated their level of job satisfaction as poor or very poor ranged from 3% in the diocese of Ely to 22% in the diocese of Oxford. In his questionnaire survey completed by 372 Church of England clergymen, Fletcher (1990) assessed job satisfaction by a simple multichoice item. In response to this item, 53% of the clergy reported that “I feel it is a worthwhile job and would not dream of doing anything else”; 20% reported that “I feel it is a worthwhile job, but I wouldn’t mind doing something else for a living”; 8% reported that “I feel it is a worthwhile job, but I can think of lots of other jobs I would like to do”; 14% reported that “I feel it is a worthwhile job, but the Church should look seriously at alternatives to full-time ministry”; 1% reported that “I feel it is a worthwhile job, but it’s not for me and I would get out if I could”; and 2% reported that “I think it is a worthwhile job, but I dislike it very much and would dearly love to do something else.” Reﬂecting on these responses, Fletcher (1990, p. 28) concluded that “if this item is scored on a 1–6 scale (where 6 = very dissatisﬁed ) the mean score for the clergy

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is 1.95 and constitutes very high satisfaction levels.” Fletcher’s multiple choice item has not been reused by subsequent research and may be diﬃcult to justify in terms of the six items chosen to reﬂect gradations in clergy job satisfaction. Building on a study by Francis and Rodger (1994), Hills and Francis (2005) developed the Satisfaction with Aspects of Ministry Inventory (SAMI). This instrument invited the clergy to rate the satisfaction they derived from each of ten roles (evangelist, leader in the community, leader of public worship, parish administration, pastor and counsellor, preacher, sacraments, spiritual director, teacher, visitor) on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (very little) to 7 (very much). Global satisfaction was computed by aggregating the levels of satisfaction recorded against the individual roles. At the same time varimax (orthogonal) rotation identiﬁed three clearly interpretable factors concerned with pastoral care and church services, with religious instruction, and with administration and community-based activities. Taking an individual diﬀerences approach on data provided by 1,447 newly ordained Anglican clergy in the United Kingdom, this study demonstrated that work satisfaction was predicted, in ascending order of importance, by demographic factors (age, sex, marital status, and form of ministry), by psychological factors (extraversion, psychoticism, and neuroticism), and by theological orientation factors (Catholic or evangelical, liberal or conservative). Working in a diﬀerent tradition, Glass (1976) also developed an instrument speciﬁcally designed to assess job-satisfaction among the clergy, the Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale (MJSS). The development of this measure involved three main steps. The ﬁrst step identiﬁed eight component aspects of ministry which might aﬀect job satisfaction, deﬁned as: traditional functions, including administration, preaching, priestly roles, teaching, counselling, visiting, and professional and continuing study; relationships and support, including contact with supervisors and denominational superiors, fellow ministers, congregation, family, and people in general; denominational involvement, including governing bodies and placing mechanisms; ecumenical involvement, including ministerial associations and cooperative projects; community involvement, including community social action programmes and participation in civic clubs; working conditions, including hours, environment, and resourcing; wages and beneﬁts, including salary, vacations, retirement provisions, and opportunities for advance-

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ment; and intrinsic aspects of ministry, including appropriateness of training and utilisation of skills and abilities. The second step constructed 206 Likert-type items designed to cover all the aspects of the minister’s job. A review panel, invited to assess the items for face validity, clarity, relative diﬃculty, and redundancy, reduced the pool of items to 102. The third step analysed the responses of 144 Methodist ministers to these 102 items. Item analysis was used to select the 25 items best able to discriminate between high scorers and low scorers. The items selected by this method concentrated particularly on three of the eight component aspects of ministry identiﬁed by the original conceptual analysis: relationships and support, intrinsic aspects of ministry, and denominational involvement. On the other hand, wages and beneﬁts and many of the traditional functions of ministry (preaching, priestly roles, teaching, counselling, and visiting) were seen to be peripheral to the overall assessment of satisfaction with ministry. Turton and Francis (2002) proposed a revised form of Glass’ Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale by modifying the items to make them more accessible to Anglican clergy in England. This revised scale was mailed as part of a larger battery of tests to a random sample of 2,000 male stipendiary parochial clergy working in the Church of England with at least ﬁve years experience since ordination to the diaconate. Just 33 of the questionnaires were not successfully delivered, and completed questionnaires were received from 1,276 of the recipients, making an overall response rate of 65%. The 23 items of this revised instrument were each assessed on a 5-point Likert scale: agree strongly (5), agree (4), not certain (3), disagree (2), and disagree strongly (1). Scale scores could, therefore, range from 23 to 115. Turton and Francis’ data reported a mean score of 79.9 for clergy in their forties, rising to a mean score of 83.4 for clergy in their sixties. The majority of clergy were reporting a high level of ministerial job satisfaction. In their foundation study, Turton and Francis (2002) commended their revised form of the Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale for further use in studies concerned with the individual and contextual factors associated with ministerial job satisfaction. In a subsequent study, Francis and Turton (2002) employed this instrument to assess whether clergy inﬂuenced by the charismatic movement were more or less satisﬁed with their ministry than clergy not inﬂuenced by the charismatic movement, and to adjudicate between two contrasting hypotheses.

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On the one hand, one hypothesis suggests that the clear manifestations of the activity of the Holy Spirit, characteristic of the charismatic movement, may be thought to give the assurances and rewards likely to enhance ministerial job satisfaction among charismatically inclined clergy. On the other hand, a second hypothesis suggests that a theological perspective which accentuates the conﬂict between good and evil and which enhances the demands made by God upon the human agent may be thought to generate pressures and responsibilities likely to depress ministerial job satisfaction among charismatically inclined clergy. The data demonstrated that charismatically inclined clergy recorded higher levels of ministerial job satisfaction in comparison with clergy not inﬂuenced by the charismatic movement. Parental Images and Clergy Formation One potentially fruitful line of enquiry regarding the aetiology of individual diﬀerences in ministerial job satisfaction, drawing on certain aspects of psychodynamic theory, concerns the relevance of parental images shaped during childhood and sustained into mature adulthood, in shaping clergy work-related experiences and job satisfaction. Hoornaert and Pierloot (1976) suggest that within the discipline of dynamic psychology there is a basic notion that a child, in the ﬁrst years of life, develops relationship patterns with parental ﬁgures. These relationship patterns are part of fundamental attitudes and expectations that are the basis of future object relations. These internal perceptions are developed through the interaction with two diﬀerent parental ﬁgures, namely the mother and the father. These internal objects can be regarded as the source of internal “presences” with which a person constantly unconsciously interacts (see Sandler, 1990). The source of these internal objects lies with the symbols of mother and father. According to Huber, Piron, and Vergote (1964), the symbolic dimensions of parental ﬁgures can best be understood as psychical gestalts, that is to say, as aﬀective and mental schemas formed by personal experiences and enriched by the meanings assigned by the cultural world of the subject. Hoornaert and Pierloot (1976) suggest that the content of the maternal symbolic dimension refers to the experiences of early childhood such as care, protection, security, and intimacy, whereas the paternal symbol comprises a multitude of signiﬁcations in the realm of law, model, forethought, and promise. Another deﬁnition of parental images oﬀered by Vergote

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and Aubert (1972/1973) is that parental images are a mental representation that expresses interpersonal relationships that contain aﬀect and contribute to personal identity. Hoornaert and Pierloot (1976) suggest that the formation of images is a process of maturation whereby the individual person, the meaningful other, and the relationship between them, acquire speciﬁc form and colour. Juxtaposition with self-image is the idea marked by a number of characteristics that are constructed from these key ﬁgures with whom aﬀective interactions have taken place. Furthermore certain ideal notions are created from signiﬁcant ﬁgures that become personal internal constructs. These key or signiﬁcant ﬁgures create certain internal ideal notions which form both real and ideal parental ﬁgures. Additional factors from the personal life history also come into play in the image formation of the ideal parental ﬁgures. Within the psychometric literature several instruments have been developed to assess various aspects of parental images and to establish the empirical correlates of parental image instruments. Two of the better established instruments are the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) established by Parker, Tupling, and Brown (1979) and the Egna Minnen Betraﬀande Uppfostran (EMBU; translated “On my memories of upbringing”) established by Perris, Jacobsson, Lindstrom, von Knorring, and Perris (1980). Research using these two instruments has helped to map the psychological correlates of parental images across quite a wide ﬁeld. There already exist two research traditions which link parental images with clergy formation. First, Byers, Forrest, and Zaccaria (1968) examined the theory of Roe and Siegleman (1957, 1964) that choice of the ministerial profession was related to parental attitudes. Roe and Siegleman’s theory postulates that, if children experience warm, loving parents, their occupational choice will be oriented toward work involving people. Conversely, a cold, rejecting parent will orientate a person to an occupation involving inanimate objects, other living things, or ideas. Byers, Forrest, and Zaccaria (1968) administered two instruments to 79 junior and 65 senior theological students and 127 clergy and formulated the following hypotheses: that clergy are signiﬁcantly diﬀerent from a normal group of people in terms of recalled early parent-child relationships; that clergy needs are signiﬁcantly diﬀerent from a normal group; and that there would be a signiﬁcant relationship between recalled early parent-child relationships

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and adult needs. Byers, Forrest, and Zaccaria (1968) administered the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS), developed by Edwards (1959) as a measure of adult need, and the Family Relations Inventory (FRI), developed by Brunkan and Crites (1964) speciﬁcally to test Roe and Siegleman’s theory. The EPPS scale measures achievement, deference, order, exhibition, autonomy, aﬃliation, intraception, succorance, dominance, abasement, nurturance, change, endurance, heterosexuality, and aggression. The FRI consists of 202 true-false items describing early relationships with parents and yields scores with respect to six scales: father acceptance (FA), father avoidance (FAv), father concentration (FC), mother acceptance (MA), mother avoidance (MAv), and mother concentration (MC). The clergy group had a signiﬁcantly higher mean score than the normal group on the FAv scale. There were also moderately signiﬁcant correlations between autonomy, aﬃliation, and abasement and FA; change and FC; autonomy, aﬃliation, abasement, and nurturance and FAv; and achievement and dominance and MA. The 127 clergy rated their fathers as signiﬁcantly more avoidant and aloof than the normal group. In a second study, Potvin and Suziedelis (1969) administered a 419 item questionnaire to a 20% sample of all the United States Roman Catholic seminarians and to a control sample of over 1,000 nonseminarian students. This research suggests that seminarians describe their parents in more positive terms, report themselves more often the favourite child in the family, and report that their mothers are more strict and their fathers less inﬂuential. This research tradition suggests that parental images comprise a formative inﬂuence on clergy choice of profession, and it is reasonable to postulate from this research that parental images are important in inﬂuencing subsequent ministerial activity and aﬀect. Research Aim In the light of the above research it is possible to hypothesise that negative internal unconscious parental images held by clergy will have a pessimistic eﬀect upon their perceived level of job satisfaction. The aim of the present study, therefore, is to test empirically the relationship between parental images and current levels of job satisfaction among a sample of clergy. Given the fact that a number of previous studies have demonstrated the relationship between clergy work-related personal accomplishment or ministerial job sat-

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isfaction and individual diﬀerences in personality (Francis, Louden, & Rutledge, 2004; Francis & Turton, 2004a, 2004b; Golden, Piedmont, Ciarrocchi, & Rodgerson, 2004; Rodgerson & Piedmont, 1998; Rutledge & Francis, 2004), the present study proposes to include an established measure of personality alongside these indices. Method Sample Turton (2003) administered a 380-item questionnaire to a random sample of 2,000 male stipendiary parochial clergy working in the Church of England with at least ﬁve years experience since ordination to the diaconate. Just 33 of the questionnaires were not successfully delivered, and completed questionnaires were received from 1,276 of the recipients, making an overall response rate of 65%. The respondents comprised one priest in his late twenties, 133 in their thirties, 451 in their forties, 441 in their ﬁfties, 247 in their sixties, and three in their seventies. Eighty-three percent were married, 10% single, 1% widowed, 2% separated or divorced and not remarried, and 3% were divorced but remarried. Instruments Parental images To obtain information about parental images, respondents were asked, “As a child how would you describe your mother/maternal carer,” and “As a child how would you describe your father/paternal carer.” There then followed a semantic diﬀerential grid comprising 13 opposite adjectival descriptors of emotions that could have been used to describe the retrospective emotional experiences of their parents. These included, for example, close—distant, caring—uncaring, loving —unloving, and critical—uncritical. Each extreme was interspersed with numbers 1 through 7, and the respondents were asked to circle the number that reﬂected their experience. The questionnaire was so constructed to indicate the low numbers as a positive or more positive perception and the high numbers as a less positive or negative feeling. The development of this new semantic diﬀerential measure of parental images was designed to build on the research tradition concerned with both parental images and God images as

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pioneered by Benson and Spilka (1973) and recently reviewed by Francis (2005). Job satisfaction Job satisfaction was assessed by the Revised Glass Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale (Turton & Francis, 2002) which proposed a 23item scale that identiﬁed three aspects of ministry: relationships and support, intrinsic aspects of ministry, and denominational involvement. The items were scored on a 5-point Likert scale: agree strongly, agree, not certain, disagree, and disagree strongly. Items included “I ﬁnd meaning and purpose in my work as a priest,” “I feel I am doing the work God wants me to do,” and “Most days I am glad that I am a priest.” Personality Personality was assessed by the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985) which proposes a 12-item measure of extraversion, a 12-item measure of neuroticism, and a 12-item measure of psychoticism. It also contains a 12item lie scale. Each item is assessed on a dichotomous scale: yes and no. Extraversion is assessed by items like “Do you like mixing with people?” and “Are you a talkative person?” Neuroticism is assessed by items like “Are your feelings easily hurt?” and “Does your mood often go up and down?” Psychoticism is assessed by items like “Do you prefer to go your own way rather than act by the rules?” and “Would you take drugs which may have strange or dangerous eﬀects?” The lie scale comprises items like “Are all your habits good and desirable ones?” and “Have you ever cheated at a game?” Data Analysis The data were analysed by the SPSS statistical package, using the reliability, correlation and regression routines (SPSS Inc. 1988). Results and Discussion Table 1 presents the scale properties of the psychometric instruments employed in the study. The semantic diﬀerential grid designed to assess parental images recorded very high levels of internal consistency with alpha coeﬃcients of .94 for mother/maternal carer and .95 for father/paternal carer. Given the directionality of scoring for

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Table 1. Scale Properties Items Image of mother/maternal carer Image of father/paternal carer Job satisfaction Eysenck’s neuroticism scale Eysenck’s extraversion scale Eysenck’s psychoticism scale Eysenck’s lie scale

Alpha

Mean

SD

0.94 0.95 0.89 0.82 0.85 0.46 0.71

34.4 40.6 81.1 4.8 7.0 2.2 4.1

14.1 14.8 11.0 3.2 3.5 1.6 2.6

Table 2. Correlation Matrix Age Job satisfaction 0.08** Image of mother 0.03 Image of father –0.06* Neuroticism –0.06* Extraversion 0.01 Psychoticism 0.03 Lie scale 0.17***

Lie

Psychoticism Extraversion Neuroticism Father Mother

0.03 –0.01 –0.06 –0.13*** –0.05 –0.06*

0.00 0.06 0.03 –0.16*** 0.07*

0.18*** –0.06* –0.08* –0.15***

–0.36*** –0.17*** –0.16*** 0.13*** 0.49*** 0.17***

N = 1,276. *p < = .05, **p < = .01, ***p < = .001.

these semantic diﬀerential grids, the higher mean scores recorded by fathers in comparison with mothers demonstrates that the clergy felt more positively about their mothers than about their fathers. The four scales of the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire recorded alpha coeﬃcients in line with those generated by other studies. In particular the lower alpha coeﬃcient recorded by the psychoticism scale is consistent with the known diﬃculties in operationalising this construct (Francis, Brown, & Philipchalk, 1992). The Revised Glass Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale also recorded a highly satisfactory index of internal consistency reliability. Table 2 presents the Pearson correlation coeﬃcients between the two indices of parental images, the four indices of the Short Form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Revised Glass Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale. Four features of this correlation matrix deserve commentary. First, there is a small but signiﬁcant relationship between some dimensions of personality and parental images. A more positive view both of mother and of father is held by individuals who recorded

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higher scores on the extraversion scale and lower scores on the neuroticism scale. At the same time neither psychoticism scores nor the lie scale scores are predictors of individual diﬀerences in parental images. There is a strong correlation between the image of mother/ maternal carer and the image of father/paternal carer. Second, there is a signiﬁcant relationship between some dimensions of personality and ministerial job satisfaction. A higher level of ministerial job satisfaction is held by individuals who record higher scores on the extraversion scale and lower scores on the neuroticism scale. Once again neither psychoticism scores nor lie scale scores are predictors of individual diﬀerences in ministerial job satisfaction. Third, there is a signiﬁcant relationship between parental images and levels of ministerial job satisfaction. A higher level of ministerial job satisfaction is held by individuals who hold a more positive image of mother/maternal carer than by individuals who hold a more positive image of father/paternal carer. Fourth, age emerges as a small but signiﬁcant predictor of some key individual diﬀerences among the clergy. The older clergy recorded a higher level of ministerial job satisfaction and a more positive image of their father. Older clergy also recorded a more stable personality proﬁle (lower neuroticism scores) and a more socially conformist proﬁle (higher lie scale scores). Given the potential contaminants of age and personality in accounting for the correlation between parental image and ministerial job satisfaction among the clergy, Table 3 presents the multiple regression model in which age and personality were entered into the equation before regressing maternal images and paternal images on ministerial job satisfaction. The statistics conﬁrm that higher levels of ministerial job satisfaction are associated with older clergy, with extraverted clergy and with emotionally stable clergy. After controlling Table 3. Multiple Regression Model Predictor Age Neuroticism Extraversion Psychoticism Lie Scale Mother Father

r2

r2

0.01 0.13 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.15 0.16

0.01 0.12 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.01

Increase F P <

Beta

t

P <

7.9 135.6 11.0 2.1 0.8 12.8 7.1

0.06 –0.32 0.09 –0.03 –0.03 –0.09 –0.07

2.1 –10.4 3.2 –1.1 –0.9 –2.7 –2.0

.05 .001 .01 NS NS .01 .05

.01 .001 .001 NS NS .001 .01

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for individual diﬀerences in age and personality, parental images continue to convey signiﬁcant but small additional predictive power on levels of ministerial job satisfaction. Moreover, both maternal image and paternal image convey independent predictive power in spite of the signiﬁcant correlation between these two indicators. In other words, clergy who hold a poor image of mother or of father are likely to record lower levels of ministerial job satisfaction than clergy who hold positive images of both parents. Clergy who hold a poor image of mother and of father are likely to record lower levels of ministerial job satisfaction than clergy who hold a poor image of only one parent. It needs to be emphasised that the proportion of variance in ministerial job satisfaction accounted for by parental image is quite small. Nonetheless, the variance explained by maternal image and paternal image considered together is twice that explained by age and nearly twice that explained by extraversion scores. Conclusion The main aim of the present study has been to examine the relationship between parental images and the level of ministerial job satisfaction experienced by Anglican clergymen. The data indicate that clergymen who carry a negative image of their parents also report a lower current level of ministerial job satisfaction. This ﬁnding is of both theoretical and practical signiﬁcance. At the level of theory, it is necessary to speculate about the psychological mechanism linking parental image with ministerial job satisfaction. The data are consistent with the following account. The internalised image of the parent is being unconsciously evoked to evaluate the clergyman’s work-related performance. Positive and aﬃrming parents are likely to reinforce a positive view of workrelated performance. Aﬃrming parents are likely to evaluate the job as successfully performed, and the clergyman supported by such parents is likely to concur with that aﬃrmative judgement. Negative and criticising parents are likely to reinforce a negative view of workrelated performance. Criticising parents are likely to evaluate the job as inadequately performed and the clergyman criticised by such parents is likely to concur with the critical judgement. According to this theoretical perspective, the unconscious internalised image of a parent may aﬃrm or undermine self-conﬁdence and work-related satisfaction into later life.

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At the level of practice, it may be wise and helpful to undertake developmental work on the parental images held by clergy as an integral part of ongoing ministerial formation and of continuing professional education. Enabling clergy to recognise the power of negative parental images in undermining their current ministry and workrelated psychological health may enable them to bring such images into consciousness and, thereby, neutralise their negative inﬂuence. It may also be important for therapists working with clergy displaying signs of low ministerial job satisfaction to recognise the potential value of addressing parental images as a possible aggravating inﬂuence in reducing the levels of ministerial job satisfaction (positive aﬀect) which are needed to counter the levels of stress (negative aﬀect) so prevalent within the experience of clergy. The present study is the ﬁrst to have considered the potential role of parental images in inﬂuencing levels of ministerial job satisfaction among clergy. The ﬁndings suggest that further research in this ﬁeld would be fruitful. The design of future research in this tradition needs also to learn from the potential limitations in the present study. Such limitations may be discussed within three main categories. First, the present study has been limited by the choice of psychometric instruments included. Further research may wish to select measures of ministerial job satisfaction in addition to the Revised Glass Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale. For example, Hills and Francis (2005) proposed the advantages of employing a multidimensional model of workrelated satisfaction in the Satisfaction with Aspects of Ministry Inventory. Further research may wish to explore the advantages of employing other indices of parental images and wider experience of parents as proposed, for example, by the Parental Bonding Instrument (Parker, Tupling, & Brown, 1979) and the Egna Minnen Betraﬀande Uppfostram (Perris, Jacobsson, Lindstrom, von Knorring, & Perris, 1980). Further research may wish to employ diﬀerent models of personality from that proposed by versions of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. For example, Rodgerson and Piedmont (1998) have advocated the use of the Big Five model of personality in studies among clergy. Second, the present study has been limited by the choice of sample in three highly speciﬁc ways in terms of denomination, sex, and country. Further research may wish to examine the same research problem among female clergy as well as among male clergy, among other denominations as well as among Anglicans, and in other countries as well as in England.

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Third, the present study has been limited by the choice of control variables taken into account. Individual diﬀerences in clergy work-related psychological health and ministerial job satisfaction may be related both to personal variables and to situational variables. Although the present study took personality into account, contextual variables were not taken into account. Further research may well wish to redress the balance. References Archbishops’ Council (2001). Generosity and sacriﬁce: The results of the clergy stipends survey. London: Church House Publishing. Benson, P. L., & Spilka, B. P. (1973). God-image as a function of self-esteem and locus of control. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 12, 297–310. Bradburn, N. M. (1969). The structure of psychological well-being. Chicago: Aldine. Brunkan, R. J., & Crites, J. O. (1964). An inventory to measure the parental attitude variables in Roe’s theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 11, 3–12. Byers, A. P., Forrest, G. G., & Zaccaria, J. S. (1968). Recalled early parent-child relations, adult needs, and occupational choice: A test of Roe’s theory. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 15, 324–328. Coate, M. A. (1989). Clergy stress: The hidden conﬂicts in ministry. London: SPCK. Davey, J. (1995). Burnout: Stress in the ministry. Leominster: Gracewing. Edwards, A. L. (1959). Edwards personal preference schedule. New York: Psychological Corporation. Eysenck, S. B. G., Eysenck, H. J., & Barrett, P. (1985). A revised version of the psychoticism scale. Personality and Individual Diﬀerences, 6, 21–29. Fletcher, B. (1990). Clergy under stress: A study on homosexual and heterosexual clergy. London: Mowbray. Francis, L. J. (2005). God images and self-esteem: A study among 11- to 18-year olds. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 16, 105–121. Francis, L. J., Brown, L. B., & Philipchalk, R. (1992). The development of an abbreviated form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQR-A): Its use among students in England, Canada, the USA and Australia. Personality and Individual Diﬀerences, 13, 443–449. Francis, L. J., Louden, S. H., & Rutledge, C. J. F. (2004). Burnout among Roman Catholic parochial clergy in England and Wales: Myth or reality? Review of Religious Research, 46, 5–19. Francis, L. J., & Rodger, R. (1994). The inﬂuence of personality on clergy role prioritization, role inﬂuences, conﬂict and dissatisfaction with ministry, Personality and Individual Diﬀerences, 16, 947–957. Francis, L. J., & Turton, D. W. (2002). Are charismatic clergy more satisﬁed with their ministry? A study among male parochial clergy in the Church of England. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 5, 135–142. —— (2004a). Recognising and understanding burnout among the clergy: A perspective from empirical theology. In D. Herl & M. L. Berman (Eds.), Building bridges over troubled waters: Enhancing pastoral care and guidance (pp. 307–331). Lima, OH: Wyndham Hall Press. —— (2004b). Reﬂective ministry and empirical theology: Antidote to clergy stress? In C. A. M. Hermans & M. E. Moore (Eds.), Hermeneutics and empirical research in practical theology: The contribution of empirical theology by Johannes A van der Ven (pp. 245–265). Leiden: Brill.

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Glass, J. C. (1976). Ministerial job satisfaction scale. Review of Religious Research, 17, 153–157. Goetz, D. (1997). Why Pastor Steve loves his job. Christianity Today, 7, 12–19. Golden, J., Piedmont, R. L., Ciarrocchi, J. W., & Rodgerson, T. (2004). Spirituality and burnout: An incremental validity study. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32, 115–125. Hills, P. R., &. Francis, L. J. (2005). Global and diﬀerential work satisfaction among newly ordained Anglican clergy: Demographic factors, personality variables and theological orientation. Journal of Empirical Theology, 18, 187–204. Hoornaert, F., & Pierloot, R. (1976). Paternal and maternal symbolism in the parental images of psychosomatic and neurotic patients. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 20, 237–246. Huber, W., Piron, H., & Vergote, A. (1964). La psychanalyse, science de l’hommen. Bruxelles: Ch. Dessart. Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. (1986). The Maslach Burnout Inventory (2nd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. Parker, G., Tupling, H., & Brown, L. B. (1979). A parental bonding instrument. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 52, 1–10. Perris, C., Jacobsson, L., Lindstrom, H., von Knorring, L., & Perris, H. (1980). Development of a new inventory assessing memories of parental rearing behaviour. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 61(4), 265–274. Potvin, R. H., & Suziedelis, A. (1969). Seminarians of the sixties: A national survey. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Rodgerson, T. E., & Piedmont, R. L. (1998). Assessing the incremental validity of the Religious Problem-Solving Scale in the prediction of clergy burnout. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 37, 517–527. Roe, A., & Siegleman, M. (1957). The origin of interests. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 4, 212–217. —— (1964). The origin of interests. Washington, DC: American Personnel Guidance Association. Rose, M. (1999). Explaining and forecasting job satisfaction: The contribution of occupational proﬁle. Unpublished working paper 2, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath. Rutledge, C. J. F., & Francis, L. J. (2004). Burnout among male Anglican clergy in England: Testing a modiﬁed form of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 15, 71–93. Sales, S. M., & House, J. (1971). Job dissatisfaction as a possible risk factor in coronary heart disease. Journal of Chronic Diseases, 23, 861–873. Sandler, J. (1990). On internal object relations. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 38, 859–880. SPSS Inc. (1988). SPSSX user’s guide. New York: McGraw-Hill. Turton, D. W. (2003). Pastoral care of the clergy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wales, Bangor. Turton, D. W., & Francis, L. J. (2002). Assessing ministerial job satisfaction: The reliability of the Revised MJSS among male Anglican clergy. Review of Religious Research, 44, 169–172. Vergote, A., & Aubert, C. (1972/1973). Parental images and representations of God. Social Compass, 19, 431–444. Warren, Y. (2002). The cracked pot: The state of today’s Anglican parish clergy. Stowmarket: Kevin Mayhew Ltd. Wilson, F. R. (1987). Professional ministry satisfaction in evangelical education agencies. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 15, 148–160.

PRAYER, PURPOSE IN LIFE, PERSONALITY, AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES AMONG NON-CHURCHGOING 13-TO 15-YEAR-OLDS IN ENGLAND AND WALES Leslie J. Francis and Mandy Robbins* Abstract Data are provided from a sample of 12,717 13- to 15-year-olds who never attend church concerning frequency of personal prayer, perceived purpose in life, personality (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) and social attitudes (school, law and order, and substances). These data demonstrate a signiﬁcant positive relationship among nonchurchgoers between frequency of personal prayer, purpose in life, and prosocial attitudes, after controlling for sex, age, and personality. Multivariate modelling suggests that the inﬂuence of personal prayer on prosocial attitudes is partly, but not wholly, mediated via purpose in life.

In the mid-1980s, Professor Newton H. Malony was able to lament, with good reason, that: Nowhere is the long standing breach between psychology and religion more evident than in the lack of research on prayer. Only a few studies of prayer exist in spite of the fact that prayer is of central religious importance. (Finney & Malony, 1985a, p. 104)

Similar points were made in subsequent reviews by Hood, Morris, and Watson (1987, 1989), Poloma and Pendleton (1989), Janssen, de Hart, and den Draak (1989), and McCullough (1995). Renewed interest in the ﬁeld from the early 1990s has been signalled, however, by a marked growth in the journal literature and by the publication of two key books, The Human Side of Prayer: The Psychology of Praying (Brown, 1994) and Psychological Perspectives on Prayer: A Reader (Francis & Astley, 2001).

* Author Note: The analysis reported in this paper was sponsored by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. The Rev. Dr. Leslie J. Francis may be contacted at Welsh National Centre for Religious Education, University of Wales, Bangor, Normal Site, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2PZ, Wales, UK, or via phone at 01248 382566, fax at 01248 383954, or email at [email protected]. His website is www.bangor.ac.uk/rs/pt. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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Three quite diﬀerent strands exist in recent research on prayer. The ﬁrst strand has examined the use of prayer among speciﬁc groups of people or in speciﬁc situations, but without evaluating the eﬀectiveness of such prayer activity. The general conclusion from this strand of research is that a large number of people engage in prayer to help them deal with many areas of life. Speciﬁc studies have examined the practice of prayer in relation to the following areas: anxiety (Koenig, George, & Siegler, 1988), arthritis (AbraídoLanza, Guier, & Revenson, 1996; Bill-Harvey, Rippey, Abeles, & Pfeiﬀer, 1989; Cronan, Kaplan, Posner, Blumberg, & Kozin, 1989), cardiac surgery (Saudia, Kinney, Brown, & Young-Ward, 1991), chronic low back pain (Keefe, Crisson, Urban, & Williams, 1990; Rosenstiel & Keefe, 1983; Turner & Clancy, 1986), chronic pain (Brown & Nicassio, 1987; Tuttle, Shutty, & DeGood, 1991), conﬂict resolution (Butler, Stout, & Gardner, 2002), death and dying (Fry, 1990), distress (Gibson, 1982), general coping (Shaw, 1992), general illness (Bearon & Koenig, 1990), health concerns (Trier & Shupe, 1991), major life crises (Ellison & Taylor, 1996), money problems (Chatters & Taylor, 1989), persistent knee pain (Keefe et al., 1997), pregnancy (Levin, Lyons, & Larson, 1993), renal transplant (Sutton & Murphy, 1989), sick children (Cayse, 1994; DeVellis, DeVellis, & Spilsbury, 1988), and stress (Neighbors, Jackson, Bowman, & Gurin, 1983). A few studies have taken this strand of research one step further by examining the perceived eﬀectiveness of prayer through the eyes of those who pray. For example, Lilliston and Brown (1981) studied the perceived eﬀectiveness of prayer vis-à-vis physical and psychological problems. Henning (1981) studied prayers perceived as answered and eﬀectual and prayers perceived as unanswered and ineﬀectual among a sample of ten missionaries. In a telephone survey conducted in Richmond, Virginia, among 586 adults, Johnson, Williams, and Bromley (1986) asked the question, “Have you ever experienced a healing of a serious disease or physical condition that you believed resulted from prayer or considered to be a divine healing?” One in every eight respondents (14.3%) responded aﬃrmatively to this question. Other studies like Davis (1986) provide a personal account of how prayer has changed individual lives. The second strand concentrates on the objective eﬀects of prayer, building on the pioneering studies of Joyce and Welldon (1965) and Collipp (1969), and includes major studies set up in the tradition of double blind clinical trials to measure the eﬀect of intercessory prayer

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on the outcome of patients admitted to coronary care units (Aviles et al., 2001; Byrd, 1988; Harris et al., 1999). Two of these studies demonstrated positive eﬀect associated with intercessory prayer, although the third failed to do so. Double blind clinical trials have also been established to examine the eﬀect of intercessory prayer in other health-related contexts. For example, Matthews, Marlow, and MacNutt (2000) examined the case of rheumatoid arthritis and found that the group in which intercessory prayer was experienced achieved signiﬁcantly higher improvement compared with the control group. Cha, Wirth, and Lobo (2001) examined the case of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer and found that the intercessory prayer group achieved a signiﬁcantly higher pregnancy rate. Matthews, Conti, and Sireci (2001) examined the case of kidney dialysis patients and found that intercessory prayer was not signiﬁcantly related to medical or psychological outcomes. In a less medically orientated study, O’Laoire (1997) examined the psychological variables of self-esteem, anxiety, and depression and found that, in comparison with a control group, no signiﬁcant eﬀects were associated with distant intercessory prayer. Walker, Tonigan, Miller, Comer, and Kahlich (1997) conducted a study in the treatment of alcohol abuse and dependency, and found no diﬀerences between intercessory prayer intervention and nonintervention groups on alcohol consumption. The third strand of research concentrates on the subjective eﬀects of prayer on those who engage in praying. Over the years quite an impressive body of research has begun to document the beneﬁcial correlates of prayer across a wide range of issues and in a wide range of situations. In an early study, Parker and St Johns (1957) monitored the eﬀect of prayer among a sample of 45 volunteers suﬀering from either psychosomatic symptoms or experiencing considerable subjective emotional stress. The volunteers were invited to indicate a preference for participation in one of three groups of 15 each. One group received weekly individual psychotherapy sessions. The second group agreed to pray daily that their speciﬁc problems would be overcome. They were styled the random pray-ers. The third group followed a programme of prayer therapy. At the beginning of the study all participants completed ﬁve psychological tests: the Rorschach Inkblot Test, the Szondi Test, the Thematic Apperception Test, the Sentence Completion Test, and the Word Association Test. After a nine month period these tests were re-administered. An impartial tester identiﬁed an average of 72% improvement from the

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prayer therapy group and a 65% improvement from the individual psychotherapy group, compared with no improvement among the random pray-ers. Elkins, Anchor, and Sandler (1979) monitored the eﬀect of prayer on tension reduction after a 10 day training period among a sample of 42 individuals. Tension was measured both psychologically and subjectively. Prayer was found to reduce tension levels on both measures, but not suﬃciently to reach statistical signiﬁcance. Carlson, Bacaseta, and Simanton (1988) undertook a similar experiment among three groups of undergraduates enrolled in a Christian liberal arts college. Each group contained 12 students. One group followed a programme of progressive relaxation exercises. One group followed a programme of prayer and biblical meditation. One group served as a control. After a 2-week period members of the prayer and biblical meditation group reported less anger and anxiety than members of the other two groups. Carson and Huss (1979) monitored the therapeutic eﬀect of prayer among chronic undiﬀerentiated schizophrenic residents in a state mental institution. Twenty clients were assigned to student nurses in a one-to-one relationship. Ten clients and the students volunteered to use prayer and scripture readings. The other ten clients and students used only the context of a therapeutic relationship without prayer and scripture readings. Both the clients and the students completed assessment tools before and after a 10-week experience. The ﬁndings showed that the students who participated in the prayer group perceived greater changes in themselves, including greater sensitivity to others. The major changes in the clients with prayer revealed an increased ability to express feelings of anger and frustration, a more positive outlook about possible changes in their lives and a decrease in somatic complaints. Finney and Malony (1985b) studied the use of Christian contemplative prayer as an adjunct to psychotherapy among a sample of three men and six women. The authors conclude that the “results gave modest circumstantial support” (p. 288) for the hypothesis that the use of contemplative prayer would be associated with improvement in psychotherapy. The relationship between prayer and marital adjustment was examined by Gruner (1985) in a study of 208 couples to whom he addressed the question, “How often have you used prayer in connection with your personal problems, problems of your children, and problems

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between you and your mate?” He found a signiﬁcant positive relationship between prayer use and marital adjustment. The relationship between prayer and death anxiety was examined by Koenig (1998) in a study of 708 elderly people. He found a signiﬁcant inverse relationship between the use of prayer and religious beliefs during diﬃcult times and death anxiety. The relationship between prayer and measures of general wellbeing was examined in a series of three papers and a book by Poloma and Pendleton (1989, 1991a, 1991b) and Poloma (1993), drawing on the ﬁndings of a telephone survey conducted among 560 adults as part of the annual Akron Area Survey in Ohio. From these data they identify four types of prayer, styled meditative, ritualistic, petitionary, and colloquial, in addition to measures of frequency of prayer and prayer experience. Each type of prayer was found to relate diﬀerently to the ﬁve quality of life measures included in the survey. The index of prayer experiences generally proved the best predictor of quality of life. People who perceived themselves as having received a deﬁnite answer to a speciﬁc prayer request were more likely to enjoy a higher level of general satisfaction with life. The relationship between prayer and psychological well-being was examined by Shuler, Gelberg, and Brown (1994), drawing on a sample of 50 inner city homeless women. Prayer was signiﬁcantly related to less use of alcohol, less use of drugs, fewer perceived worries, and fewer depressive symptoms. The relationship between prayer and psychological hardiness was examined by Carson (1993) in a study of 100 subjects who were either HIV positive or who were diagnosed with ARC or AIDS. Carson found a signiﬁcant positive correlation between prayer and hardiness, where hardiness is deﬁned as a personality characteristic which acts as a resource in resisting the negative eﬀects of stress and in decreasing the incidence and severity of stress-related illnesses. The relationship between prayer and coronary heart disease was examined by Gupta (1996) drawing on data from 3,397 men in India. Prayer was signiﬁcantly associated with reduced evidence of coronary heart disease. In a second study, drawing on data from 1,982 men and 1,166 women in a rural population in India, Gupta, Prakash, Gupta, and Gupta (1997) conﬁrmed this ﬁnding among men, but not among women. The relationship between prayer and psychological recovery following coronary bypass surgeries was examined by Ai, Dunkle,

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Peterson, and Bolling (1998) and by Ai, Bolling, and Peterson (2000) among a sample of 151 older patients registered at the University of Michigan Medical Center. The data demonstrated that most patients pray about their post-operative problems and that private prayer appears signiﬁcantly to decrease depression and general distress one year after surgery, as assessed by the Symptom Checklist90-R (Derogatis, 1983). The relationship between prayer and eight speciﬁc categories of physical and mental health was examined by Meisenhelder and Chandler (2000), drawing on data from 1,025 members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. They found that people who prayed more often scored lower in their physical functioning and their ability to carry out role activities, and higher in their reports of physical pain. However, people who prayed more often also had signiﬁcantly higher mental health scores in comparison with those who prayed less often, despite their greater physical health problems. In a subsequent study, Meisenhelder and Chandler (2001) employed the same eight speciﬁc categories of physical and mental health in a study among 1,412 active Presbyterian pastors. The results indicated a high level of functioning for all eight categories of physical and mental health and a high frequency of prayer. Despite restricted variation in both health and prayer, higher frequency of prayer was signiﬁcantly related to higher scores in three areas of health: vitality, general health, and mental health. These relationships remained signiﬁcant even after controlling for sex and age. Not all studies concerned with the subjective correlates of prayer, however, have conﬁrmed the beneﬁcial eﬀects of prayer on those who engage in praying. For example, Markides (1983) and Markides, Levin, and Ray (1987) failed to ﬁnd a consistent relationship between prayer and life satisfaction in their longitudinal analysis of data on Mexican-Americans and Anglos. Anson, Carmel, Bonneh, Levenson, and Maoz (1990) failed to ﬁnd a signiﬁcant relationship between prayer and stress-deterrence in a sample of 230 members of Israeli kibbutzim. Ellison and Gay (1990) failed to ﬁnd a signiﬁcant relationship between prayer and life satisfaction in a sample of 2,107 adults from the National Survey of Black Americans. Francis and Gibbs (1996) failed to ﬁnd a signiﬁcant relationship between prayer and self-esteem among a sample of 166 children between the ages of 8 and 11 years. Moreover, a few studies have reported negative correlates of prayer. For example, Mull, Cox, and Sullivan (1987)

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reported that frequency of prayer has a slight inverse link with general health and with functional capacity in a sample of 380 residents of specialised housing units for seniors. Similarly, Ellison, Boardman, Williams, and Jackson (2001) reported that frequency of prayer has a slight inverse link with well-being and a weak positive association with psychological distress in a sample of 1,139 adults from the 1995 Detroit Area Study. A number of other studies, concerned more generally with the broader correlates of religiosity, have conﬂated questions about personal prayer with wider issues of personal devotion in such a way that prayer cannot be isolated for independent analysis. Examples of this problem are provided by: Ellison, Gay, and Glass (1989); Alexander and Duﬀ (1991); Ainlay, Singleton, and Swigert (1992); Ellison (1993, 1995); Koenig, George, Blazer, Pritchett, and Meador (1993); Koenig, George, Meador, Blazer, and Ford (1994); Berg, Fonss, Reed, and VandeCreek (1995); Musick (1996); Koenig, Hays, George, Blazer, Larson, and Landerman (1997); Koenig (1998); Koenig, George, Hays, Larson, Cohen, and Blazer (1998); Strawbridge, Shema, Cohen, Roberts, and Kaplan (1998); and Helm, Hays, Flint, Koenig, and Blazer (2000). Within the strand of research concerned with the subjective correlates of prayer, one particularly helpful set of studies has concentrated on the relationship between personal prayer and purpose in life. Purpose in life is a rich concept explored both by theology (Tillich, 1952) and by psychology (Frankl, 1978). Purpose in life is understood to be central to the meaning-making process which counters meaninglessness. As such, purpose in life is a central component of psychological well-being. It is purpose in life which makes living worthwhile and which helps to prevent despair from leading to suicide. Moreover, it is precisely to this construct that religious traditions speak. Substantive analyses of religion point to the beliefs, teaching, and rituals which explicitly address the fundamental questions concerning the meaning and purpose of life. Functional analyses of religion point to the meaning-making process as central to the raison d’être of religious and para-religious systems. There are clear grounds, therefore, for hypothesising a positive relationship between religiosity and purpose in life. Two studies conducted among adults and reported in the early 1990s oﬀered some clear support for this hypothesis. In the ﬁrst study among 345 members of a nondenominational programme,

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Richards (1991) found a positive correlation between intensity of the prayer experience and self-reported purpose in life. In the second study among 100 members of Alcoholics Anonymous, Carroll (1993) found a highly signiﬁcant positive correlation between a variety of spiritual practices, including prayer, and purpose in life. Against the background of these two studies conducted among adults, Francis began to explore the relationship between prayer and purpose in life among adolescents. In an initial study, Francis and Burton (1994) explored the relationship between personal prayer and perceived purpose in life among a sample of 674 12- to 16-yearolds attending a Catholic school and who identiﬁed themselves as members of the Catholic Church. Two main conclusions emerged from these data. First, the data demonstrated a signiﬁcant positive relationship between frequency of personal prayer and perceived purpose in life, even after controlling for individual diﬀerences in frequency of church attendance. Second, personal prayer was shown to be a stronger predictor of perceived purpose in life than church attendance. Building on this initial study, Francis and Evans (1996) strengthened the research design in two ways. They obtained a larger sample of pupils from across a wider range of schools. Then they ensured that church attendance was not a contaminating variable in explaining the correlation between prayer and purpose in life by conducting two separate analyses on two discrete subsets of their data. One subset comprised 914 males and 726 females who never attended church. The other subset comprised 232 males and 437 females who attended church most weeks. The data demonstrated a signiﬁcant positive relationship between frequency of personal prayer and perceived purpose in life both among those pupils who attended church most weeks and among those pupils who never attended church. Taking this research one step further, Francis (2005) replicated and extended the study by Francis and Evans (1996), drawing on two samples of 13- to 15-year olds. The ﬁrst sample comprised 7,083 males and 5,634 females who never attended church. The second sample comprised 1,738 males and 2,006 females who attended church nearly every week. According to these data some churchgoers never engaged in personal prayer, while some nonchurchgoers engaged frequently in personal prayer. The data demonstrated a signiﬁcant positive relationship between frequency of personal prayer and perceived purpose in life among both the churchgoers and the

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nonchurchgoers. Once again, this ﬁnding suggests that personal prayer is correlated with positive psychological beneﬁts for young people growing up outside the churches as well as within the churches. These simple and basic ﬁndings are consistent with the following theory which links prayer with purpose in life. The theory suggests that young people who pray are, consciously or unconsciously, acknowledging and relating to a transcendence beyond themselves. Acknowledging such a transcendence and relating to that transcendence through prayer places the whole of life into a wider context of meaning and purpose. The following psychological mechanism proposes a causal model according to which prayer may inﬂuence purpose in life. The practice of prayer implies both a cognitive and an aﬀective component. The cognitive component assumes, at least, the possibility of a transcendent power. Such a belief system is likely to support a purposive view of the nature of the universe. The aﬀective component assumes, at least, the possibility of that transcendent power being aware of and taking an interest in the individual engaged in prayer. Such an aﬀective system is likely to support a sense of value for the individual. These simple and basic ﬁndings are of particular signiﬁcance in light of the renewed interest among psychologists regarding the importance of purpose in life for psychological development. Early research in this area, as reviewed by Yalom (1980), focused largely on the relation between purpose in life and psychopathology. Some more recent studies have maintained this focus. For example, Newcomb (1986) found a negative relationship between purpose in life and fear and anxiety concerning the possibilities of nuclear war and nuclear accidents. Newcomb and Harlow (1986) found, in two diﬀerent samples, that perceived loss of control and meaninglessness in life mediated the relation between uncontrollable stress and substance use. Harlow, Newcomb, and Bentler (1986) found meaninglessness to mediate between depression and self-derogation and subsequent drug use for women and suicidal ideation for men. Coleman, Kaplan, and Downing (1986) reported that drug addicts were less likely than nonaddicts to have a well-deﬁned meaning in life. Schlesinger, Susman, and Koenigsberg (1990) found lower purpose in life scores among alcoholic men and alcoholic women than among nonalcoholics. Bechtel (1994) and Lyon and Younger (2001) found lower purpose in life scores among persons living with HIV disease. Lester and Badro (1992) and Edwards and Holden (2001) found lower purpose in life

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scores to be associated with higher levels of suicidal ideation. Rappaport, Fossler, Bross, and Gilden (1993) found lower purpose in life scores to be associated with greater death anxiety. Bigler, Neimeyer, and Brown (2001) found lower purpose in life scores to be associated with higher levels of general anxiety and depression. However, another set of recent studies has focused much more on the perspective of positive psychology to identify the positive correlates of purpose in life. For example, Zika and Chamberlain (1987) found purpose in life to be a strong consistent predictor of psychological well-being. Chamberlain and Zika (1988) found purpose in life to be associated with positive aﬀect and life satisfaction. Zika and Chamberlain (1992) found purpose in life to relate consistently more strongly to the positive dimensions of well-being than to the negative dimensions. Carrol (1993) and Waisberg and Porter (1994) found purpose in life to be positively associated with recovery from alcoholism. Shek (1992) found purpose in life to be associated with positive self-image. Coward (1996) found purpose in life to be associated with self-esteem, balanced aﬀect, cognitive well-being, and better health. Lewis, Lanigan, Joseph, and de Fockert (1997) found purpose in life to be associated with greater happiness. Bigler, Neimeyer and Brown (2001) found higher purpose in life scores to be associated with better self-esteem and better psychological well-being. Whitty (2003) found purpose in life to be associated with more mature defence mechanisms and more mature coping strategies. In a factor analytic study, Compton (2001) found that purpose in life was associated with measures of life satisfaction, happiness, positive aﬀectivity, self-acceptance, existential well-being, self-esteem, and environmental mastery. There is also a long history of demonstrating the direct relationship between purpose in life and social attitudes (Pearson & Sheﬃeld, 1975). A particularly relevant study among young people was reported by Shek, Ma, and Cheung (1994) who administered the Chinese version of the Purpose in Life Questionnaire (Shek, 1986) together with the Adolescent Behaviour Questionnaire (see Ma & Leung, 1991) to a sample of 2,972 secondary school students aged between 11 and 19 years. The Adolescent Behaviour Questionnaire generates two subscales associated with prosocial behaviour and six subscales associated with antisocial behaviour. The data demonstrated signiﬁcant negative correlations between purpose in life scores and all six subscales associated with antisocial behaviour: (a) cognitive and academic

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performance, deﬁned as deviant or socially disapproved acts in classroom and school setting, such as playing truant; (b) psychosexual activities, deﬁned as socially undesirable sexual activities, such as reading pornographic magazines; (c) antisocial acts in school, deﬁned as acts against teachers and school authorities, such as telling a lie to cheat the teacher; (d) antisocial acts in the family, deﬁned as antisocial acts occurring in the family setting, such as disobeying parental command; (e) antisocial acts in general, deﬁned as antisocial acts in other settings, such as gambling; and (f ) aggression, deﬁned as aggressive or hostile acts, such as foul language. The data also demonstrated signiﬁcant positive correlations between purpose in life and the two subscales associated with prosocial behaviour: (a) normative acts, deﬁned as socially acceptable or normative acts, such as apologising to others; and (b) altruistic acts, deﬁned as helping behaviours, such as voluntary work. The theory that personal prayer enhances a sense of purpose in life and that, in turn, purpose in life generates a more positive view of self and of the world may help to make sense of the ﬁndings from two studies concerned with the relationship between prayer and school-related attitudes during childhood and adolescence. An initial study by Francis (1992a) found that frequency of personal prayer was a signiﬁcant predictor of school-related attitudes among a sample of 3,762 11-year-old pupils in England. The pupils completed six semantic diﬀerential scales of attitudes toward school, lessons in English, music, mathematics, sports, and religious education. After controlling for the potential inﬂuences of sex and social class, frequency of personal prayer was a signiﬁcant predictor of a more positive attitude toward school and toward lessons in English, music, mathematics, and religious education, but not toward sports lessons. A replication of this original study was reported by Montgomery and Francis (1996) among a sample of 392 11- to 16-year-old girls attending a state-maintained single-sex Catholic secondary school in England. The pupils completed the same set of six semantic diﬀerential scales. After controlling for the potential inﬂuence of age and social class, frequency of personal prayer was a signiﬁcant predictor of a more positive attitude toward school, and toward lessons in music, religion, and English, but not toward lessons in mathematics and sports. These ﬁndings were not, however, reproduced in a third study reported by Robbins, Babington, and Francis (2003) among a sample of 150 8- to 11-year-olds.

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The theory that personal prayer enhances a sense of purpose in life and that, in turn, purpose in life generates a more positive view of self and the world during childhood and adolescence is also consistent with the ﬁndings of Long and Boik (1993) into the predictors of alcohol use among a sample of 625 rural sixth- and seventh-grade children in Montana. Their data demonstrated an inverse relationship between frequency of prayer and alcohol use. Against this background, the present analysis sets out to test four hypotheses. The ﬁrst hypothesis is that personal prayer is a signiﬁcant predictor of purpose in life. The second hypothesis is that purpose in life is a signiﬁcant predictor of social attitudes among young people. The third hypothesis is that personal prayer is a signiﬁcant predictor of social attitudes among young people. The fourth hypothesis is that the predictive power of personal prayer on social attitudes among young people is mediated entirely through purpose in life. These four hypotheses raise three problems which require examination before they can be usefully operationalised. The ﬁrst problem concerns the isolation of personal and private religious activity (prayer) from social and public religious activity (churchgoing). There is considerable evidence in research among young people that prayer and church attendance are highly correlated (Francis & Brown, 1990, 1991). There are two recognised research methods for dealing with the problem. One method employs multivariate analyses in order to control for individual diﬀerences in social and public religious activity before examining the inﬂuence of personal and private religious activity, while the other method isolates the inﬂuence of personal and private religious activity by conducting analyses on samples in which there is no variation in levels of public and social religious activity. The present study follows the precedent of Francis and Evans (1996) by examining the predictive power of personal prayer among young people who never attend church. In addition to dealing with the empirical issue of the contaminant of church attendance, this strategy raises the additional theoretical issue concerning the meaning and signiﬁcance of prayer for young people growing up completely outside the inﬂuence of public participation in church life. The second problem concerns the identiﬁcation of speciﬁc and appropriate social attitude areas. The Religion and Values Today Survey (Francis, 2001) which is being utilised for the analysis contains three scales of particular relevance concerned with attitude

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toward substances (see Francis, 1997c), attitude toward school, and attitude toward law and order. These three scales provide the means of operationalising the present hypotheses concerned with social attitudes. The third problem concerns the potential contaminating inﬂuence of personality. A number of recent studies have demonstrated, for example, that Eysenck’s three-dimensional model of personality (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991) is able to predict individual diﬀerences in prayer, including studies among school pupils (Francis & Wilcox, 1994, 1996; Smith, 1996), students (Francis, 1997a; Lewis & Maltby, 1996; Maltby, 1995), school teachers (Francis & Johnson, 1999), senior citizens (Francis & Bolger, 1997), and the general adult population (Kaldor, Francis, & Fisher, 2002). Another set of recent studies has demonstrated that Eysenck’s three-dimensional model of personality is able to predict individual diﬀerences over a range of areas concerned with subjective well-being in general (Francis, 1999; Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk, 1998; Hills & Argyle, 2001) and with purpose in life in particular (Addad, 1987; Francis, 2000; Francis & Kaldor, 2001; Moomal, 1999; Pearson & Sheﬃeld, 1974, 1989; Robbins & Francis, 2000). The present study addresses this third problem by drawing on a database which includes a reliable measure of the Eysenckian dimensional model of personality. This model argues that individual diﬀerences can be most economically and adequately expressed in terms of three higher order orthogonal dimensions characterised as extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. Eysenck’s instruments designed to operationalise this model also routinely include a lie scale (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991). Eysenck’s extraversion scales measure sociability and impulsivity. The opposite of extraversion is introversion. The high scorers on the extraversion scale are characterised by Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) in the test manual as sociable individuals who like parties, have many friends, need to have people to talk to, and prefer meeting people to reading or studying alone. Typical extraverts crave excitement, take chances, act on the spur of the moment, and are carefree and easy-going. Eysenck’s neuroticism scales measure emotional lability and over-reactivity, and identify the underlying personality traits which at one extreme deﬁne neurotic mental disorders. The opposite of neuroticism is emotional stability. The high scorers on the neuroticism scale are characterised by Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) in the test manual as anxious, worrying

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individuals who are moody and frequently depressed, likely to sleep badly, and to suﬀer from various psychosomatic disorders. Eysenck’s psychoticism scales identify the underlying personality traits which at one extreme deﬁne psychotic mental disorder. The opposite of psychoticism is normal personality. The high scorers on the psychoticism scale are characterised by Eysenck and Eysenck (1976), in their study of psychoticism as a dimension of personality, as being cold, impersonal, hostile, lacking in sympathy, unfriendly, untrustful, odd, unemotional, unhelpful, lacking in insight, strange, and with paranoid ideas that people were against them. The lie scales were originally introduced into personality measures to detect the tendency of some respondents to “fake good” and so to distort the resultant personality scores (O’Donovan, 1969). The notion of the lie scales has not, however, remained as simple as that and the continued use of lie scales has resulted in them being interpreted as a personality measure in their own right (Furnham, 1986; McCrae & Costa, 1983). According to one prominent account, the lie scale measures social acquiescence or social conformity (Finlayson, 1972; Massey, 1980). Method Sample The Religion and Values Today Survey, described in detail by Francis (2001), was completed by a total of 33,982 pupils attending year-9 and year-10 classes throughout England and Wales. This database was constructed to be thoroughly representative of young people in this age group (13– to 15-year-olds) being educated within both the state-maintained sector and the independent sector of schools. Data were provided from 163 schools, stretching from Pembrokeshire in the west to Norfolk in the east, and from Cornwall in the south to Northumberland in the north. A proper mix of rural and urban schools was included, as was a proper mix of independent and statemaintained schools. Within the state-maintained sector proper attention was given to the balance between Roman Catholic voluntary schools, Anglican voluntary schools, and nondenominational schools. Of the total respondents, 51% were male and 49% were female; 53% were in year 9 and 47% were in year 10. Of those educated within the state-maintained sector, 86% were in nondenominational

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schools, 9% in Roman Catholic schools, and 5% in Anglican schools. Of the total sample of pupils, 10% were being educated outside the state-maintained sector. Procedure Participating schools were asked to follow a standard procedure. The questionnaires were administered in normal class groups to all year-9 and year-10 pupils throughout the school. Pupils were asked not to write their name on the booklet and to complete the inventory under examination-like conditions. Although pupils were given the choice not to participate, very few decided not to take part in the survey. They were assured of conﬁdentiality and anonymity. Pupils were informed that their responses would not be read by anyone in the school, and that the questionnaires would be despatched to the University of Wales for analysis. Measures In addition to basic information about sex and school year, the present analysis draws on the following measures which were included in the questionnaires administered to all the pupils. Church attendance was measured by the item, “Do you go to church or other place of worship?” rated on a 5-point scale, ranging from never to nearly every week. Religious aﬃliation was measured by the item, “Do you belong to a church or other religious group?” followed by a check list of Christian denominations and other faith groups. The ﬁrst category in the list was none and the last category was other (please specify). Personal prayer was measured by the item, “Do you pray by yourself ?” rated on a 5-point scale, ranging from never to nearly every day. Purpose in life was measured by the item, “I feel my life has a sense of purpose,” rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from agree strongly to disagree strongly. Personality was assessed by the short-form Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Francis & Pearson, 1988). This instrument proposes four 6-item indices of extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and a lie scale. Each item is rated on a two-point scale: yes and no. Social attitudes were assessed by three 6-item indices concerned with the following conceptual areas: attitude toward school, attitude toward law and order, and attitude toward substances. Each of the 18 items

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contributing to these three scales was rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from agree strongly to disagree strongly. Analysis The present analysis was conducted on a subset of the total database deﬁned by two key parameters. First, the item in the survey concerned with religious aﬃliation was employed to exclude from analysis all pupils who identiﬁed with a non-Christian world faith. Second, the item in the survey concerned with attendance at a place of worship was employed to select only those pupils who never attended church. The analysis was, consequently, conducted on the subset of 12,717 pupils who reported that they never attended church and who did not identify themselves as aﬃliated to a non-Christian religious group. This subset of pupils, therefore, included nonchurchgoing young people who either claimed no religious aﬃliation or claimed aﬃliation with a Christian denomination. This subset included 7,083 males and 5,634 females, 6,440 year-9 pupils and 6,277 year-10 pupils. The composition of this subset reﬂects the general ﬁnding that more girls attend church than boys (Francis, 1997b). The data were analysed by the SPSS statistical package (SPSS Inc., 1988). Results and Discussion The ﬁrst step in data analysis examined the level of prayer activity and the level of purpose in life within the subset of the sample on which the present analysis is based. The data demonstrated that 29% of these young people who never attend church nonetheless pray at least occasionally and 3% of them pray nearly every day. It is this considerable level of prayer activity among nonchurchgoing young people which gives point to the following analysis. In response to the item, “I feel that my life has a sense of purpose,” 16% of the respondents checked agree strongly, 33% agree, 38% not certain, 7% disagree, and 6% disagree strongly. In other words, slightly under half (49%) of this group of young nonchurchgoers were clear that their life has a sense of purpose, and one in eight (13%) were quite clear that their life has no sense of purpose at all. The present study explores the implications of these individual diﬀerences.

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The second step in data analysis explored the reliability of the scales employed in the study. Table 1 presents the items of the three 6-item scales of attitude toward school, attitude toward law and order, and attitude toward substances. This table also presents the item rest of test correlation coeﬃcients and the alpha coeﬃcient (Cronbach, 1951). These data conﬁrm the item homogeneity and internal consistency reliability of the three scales. The three alpha coeﬃcients are in a range acceptable for short scales of this nature and are in excess of the threshold of 0.65 proposed by DeVellis (1991). All four scales of the short-form Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire also achieved satisfactory alpha coeﬃcients within the range expected for 6-item dichotomously scored personality measures (Francis & Pearson, 1988): extraversion, 0.68; neuroticism, 0.69; psychoticism, 0.58; and lie scale, 0.56. The third step in data analysis explored the bivariate relationship between the key variables. Table 2 presents the Pearson correlation coeﬃcients between personal prayer, purpose in life, attitude toward school, attitude toward law and order, attitude toward substances, sex, school year, extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and the lie scale. In view of the large size of the sample and the number of associations being tested, the probability level has been set at .01. The following relationships are worthy of comment. Sex diﬀerences were important in respect of personality, prayer, and social attitudes. As is consistent with general ﬁndings across the age span using Eysenck’s dimensional model of personality, females recorded higher scores than males on the neuroticism scale, the extraversion scale, and the lie scale, while males recorded higher scores than females on the psychoticism scale (see Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991). As is consistent with the general ﬁnding of sex diﬀerences in religious behaviours, the females recorded a higher level of prayer activity than the males (see Francis, 1997b). The females also recorded signiﬁcantly higher scores on all three scales of social attitudes: females held a more positive attitude toward school, a more positive attitude toward law and order, and a less permissive attitude toward substance use. There were no signiﬁcant sex diﬀerences in respect of purpose in life scores. School year had no signiﬁcant relationship with either prayer activity or purpose in life. Year-10 pupils were neither more nor less likely to pray than year-9 pupils. Year-10 pupils reported neither a

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leslie j. francis and mandy robbins Table 1. Measures of Social Attitudes

Scales and items

r

Attitude toward school School is boring* I am happy in my school I like the people I go to school with My school is in a boring place* Teachers do a good job My school is helping to prepare me for life alpha Attitude toward law and order There is nothing wrong There is nothing wrong There is nothing wrong legal age* There is nothing wrong There is nothing wrong the legal age* There is nothing wrong you like* alpha

in playing truant from school* in shoplifting* in buying cigarettes under the in travelling without a ticket* in buying alcoholic drinks under

0.53 0.52 0.25 0.30 0.44 0.40 0.67 0.54 0.50 0.53 0.47 0.49

in writing graﬃti wherever

Attitude toward substances It is wrong to sniﬀ glue It is wrong to use marijuana It is wrong to become drunk It is wrong to sniﬀ butane gas It is wrong to smoke cigarettes It is wrong to use heroin alpha

0.44 0.75 0.42 0.48 0.32 0.45 0.43 0.52 0.71

Note : Items with an asterisk have been reverse coded.

higher nor a lower level of purpose in life than year-9 pupils. On the other hand, school year had a signiﬁcant negative association with all three scales of social attitudes. Year-10 pupils held a less positive attitude toward school, a less positive attitude toward law and order, and a more permissive attitude toward substance use. The associations between school year and personality are all predictable. Year-10 pupils are signiﬁcantly more extraverted and signiﬁcantly more toughminded (higher psychoticism scores). Year-10 pupils are also signiﬁcantly less socially conforming (lower lie scale scores).

0.11*** 0.00 0.00 0.16*** –0.18*** –0.11*** 0.13*** 0.15*** 0.15*** 0.32***

0.10*** 0.06*** –0.04*** 0.07*** –0.15*** –0.32*** 0.31*** 0.33*** 0.41***

School 0.10*** 0.02** –0.08*** –0.17*** –0.02 –0.43*** 0.41*** 0.60***

Law and order

Note: *p < = .05, **p < = .01, *** p < = .001.

Prayer Sex School year Extraversion Neuroticism Psychoticism Lie scale Substances Law and order School

Purpose in life 0.10*** 0.03*** –0.09*** –0.13*** –0.00 –0.35*** 0.32***

Substances 0.12*** 0.09*** –0.10*** –0.14*** –0.03*** –0.42***

Lie scale –0.11*** –0.31*** 0.03** 0.12*** –0.08***

Psychoticism

Table 2. Correlation Matrix

0.14*** 0.26*** –0.00 –0.12***

Neuroticism 0.01 0.10*** 0.03***

Extraversion –0.01 0.02

School year

0.14***

Sex

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Personality scores provided signiﬁcant prediction of individual diﬀerences in prayer activity. In line with ﬁndings from previous research, higher levels of religiosity were associated with lower psychoticism scores (Francis, 1992b), higher social conformity (lie scale scores; Pearson & Francis, 1989), and higher neuroticism scores (Francis, Pearson, Carter, & Kay, 1981), but unrelated to extraversion scores (Francis & Pearson, 1985). Personality scores provided signiﬁcant prediction of individual diﬀerences in purpose in life. In line with ﬁndings from previous research, higher levels of purpose in life were associated with higher extraversion scores, lower neuroticism scores, lower psychoticism scores, and higher lie scale scores (Addad, 1987; Francis, 2000; Francis & Kaldor, 2001; Moomal, 1999; Pearson & Sheﬃeld, 1974, 1989; Robbins & Francis, 2000). Personality scores also provide signiﬁcant prediction of individual diﬀerences in social attitudes. In line with Eysenck’s original theory linking personality with social attitudes (Eysenck, 1975, 1976), low psychoticism scores were the strongest predictor of a more positive attitude toward school, a more positive attitude toward law and order, and a less permissive attitude toward substance use. Social conformity (high lie scale scores) was also associated with a more positive attitude toward school, a more positive attitude toward law and order, and a less permissive attitude toward substance use. A more positive attitude toward school was associated with stable extraversion. A more positive attitude toward law and order was associated with introversion. A less permissive attitude toward substance use was associated with introversion. Finally, a greater sense of purpose in life was associated with lower psychoticism scores, with lower neuroticism scores, with higher extraversion scores (tenderminded stable extraversion), and with higher lie scale scores (social conformity). Prayer activity provided signiﬁcant prediction of individual diﬀerences in purpose in life and in social attitudes. In line with ﬁndings from previous research, higher levels of prayer activity were associated with a greater sense of purpose in life (Francis & Evans, 1996) and a more positive attitude toward school (Montgomery & Francis, 1996), as well as a more positive attitude toward law and order and a more proscriptive attitude toward substance use. Purpose in life scores were signiﬁcantly correlated with social attitudes. A greater sense of purpose in life was associated with a more positive attitude toward school, a more positive attitude toward law and order, and a more proscriptive attitude toward substance use.

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The fourth step in data analysis recognised that the large number of signiﬁcant interactions between the variables presented in the correlation matrix pointed to the need for a multivariate model of data analysis. Table 3, therefore, presents the multiple regression statistics designed to test the following 3-stage model and hypothesised causal paths. Stage 1 of the model proposes prayer activity as the dependent variable and examines the cumulative predictive power of sex, school year, extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and lie scale scores entered in that ﬁxed order. The model accounts for between 4%–5% of the variance. A higher level of prayer activity is associated with being female, with social conformity (higher lie scale scores), with tendermindedness (lower psychoticism scores), and with emotionality (higher neuroticism scores). Stage 2 of the model proposes purpose in life as the dependent variable and examines the cumulative predictive power of sex, school year, extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, lie scale scores, and prayer, entered in that ﬁxed order. The model accounts for 10% of the variance in purpose in life scores. Personality accounts for much of this variance. A higher sense of purpose in life is associated with tenderminded stable extraversion and social conformity (low psychoticism, low neuroticism, high extraversion, and high lie scale scores). After taking personality into account, prayer activity continues to contribute additional predictive power. Greater frequency of prayer is associated with higher levels of purpose in life. Stage 3 of the model proposes social attitudes as the dependent variables (attitude toward school, attitude toward law and order, and attitude toward substances) and examines the cumulative predictive power of sex, school year, extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, lie scale scores, purpose in life, and prayer, entered in that ﬁxed order. Regarding attitude toward school, the model accounts for 23% of the variance. Personality accounts for a large proportion of this variance (17%). A more positive attitude toward school is associated with tenderminded stable extraversion and social conformity (low psychoticism, low neuroticism, high extraversion, and high lie scale scores). After taking personality into account, purpose in life contributes additional predictive power. Moreover, after taking purpose in life into account, prayer activity contributes further predictive power. Regarding attitude toward law and order, the model accounts for 28% of the variance. Personality accounts for a large proportion of

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leslie j. francis and mandy robbins Table 3. Multiple Regression Signiﬁcance Tests

Predictor variables

Increase R

2

Frequency of personal prayer sex 0.02 school year 0.02 extraversion 0.02 neuroticism 0.03 psychoticism 0.04 lie scale 0.04 Purpose in life sex 0.00 school year 0.00 extraversion 0.03 neuroticism 0.05 psychoticism 0.07 lie scale 0.08 prayer 0.10 Attitude toward school sex 0.00 school year 0.01 extraversion 0.01 neuroticism 0.04 psychoticism 0.14 lie scale 0.18 purpose 0.23 prayer 0.23 Attitude toward law and order sex 0.00 school year 0.01 extraversion 0.04 neuroticism 0.04 psychoticism 0.22 lie scale 0.27 purpose 0.28 prayer 0.28 Attitude toward substances sex 0.01 school year 0.01 extraversion 0.03 neuroticism 0.03 psychoticism 0.14 lie scale 0.17 purpose 0.19 prayer 0.19

R

2

F

Beta

t

P <

P <

0.02 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.01

254.5 3.3 0.3 137.8 57.8 117.6

.001 NS NS .001 .001 .001

0.09 –0.00 0.03 0.12 –0.03 0.11

9.2 –0.5 3.6 12.9 –2.6 10.8

.001 NS .001 .001 .01 .001

0.00 0.00 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.01 0.01

0.0 0.0 361.6 359.8 258.2 140.3 168.9

NS NS .001 .001 .001 .001 .001

–0.03 0.01 0.17 –0.17 –0.10 0.10 0.11

–3.0 1.1 19.6 –19.2 –9.8 10.6 13.0

.01 NS .001 .001 .001 .001 .001

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.03 0.10 0.04 0.05 0.00

54.6 22.4 44.9 350.8 1527.8 550.4 829.2 28.9

.001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001

–0.01 –0.02 0.07 –0.11 –0.23 0.18 0.23 0.04

0.6 –2.2 8.0 –13.6 –25.2 20.5 28.0 5.4

NS NS .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001

0.00 0.01 0.03 0.00 0.18 0.01 0.01 0.00

7.3 89.6 391.2 40.3 2833.2 957.7 162.9 26.7

.01 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001

–0.09 –0.04 –0.11 –0.01 –0.33 0.25 0.10 0.04

–10.8 –5.8 –13.3 –1.8 –37.0 29.1 12.1 5.2

.001 .001 .001 NS .001 .001 .001 .001

0.00 0.01 0.02 0.00 0.12 0.03 0.01 0.00

9.8 107.7 236.6 12.0 1708.6 450.6 186.1 12.9

.01 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001

–0.07 –0.06 –0.09 0.01 –0.27 0.18 0.11 0.04

–7.8 –7.7 –10.2 0.7 –28.8 19.4 13.0 4.7

.001 .001 .001 NS .001 .001 .001 .001

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this variance (26%). A more positive attitude toward law and order is associated with tenderminded stable introversion and social conformity (low psychoticism, low neuroticism, low extraversion, and high lie scale scores). Nonetheless, after taking personality into account, purpose in life contributes additional predictive power. Moreover, after taking purpose in life into account, prayer activity contributes further but limited predictive power. Regarding attitude toward substances, the model accounts for 19% of the variance. Personality accounts for a large proportion of this variance (17%). A more proscriptive attitude toward substances is associated with tenderminded, neurotic introversion, and social conformity (low psychoticism, high neuroticism, low extraversion, and high lie scale scores). Nonetheless, after taking personality into account, purpose in life contributes additional predictive power. Moreover, after taking purpose in life into account, prayer activity contributes further but limited predictive power. Conclusion The present study set out to test four hypotheses among a sample of 13- to 15-year-olds who never attend church. The ﬁrst hypothesis was that personal prayer is a signiﬁcant predictor of purpose in life. The second hypothesis was that purpose in life is a signiﬁcant predictor of social attitudes among young people. The third hypothesis was that personal prayer is a signiﬁcant predictor of social attitudes among young people. The fourth hypothesis was that the predictive power of personal prayer on social attitudes among young people is mediated entirely through purpose in life. The following conclusions can be drawn in respect of these hypotheses. First, the data build on and conﬁrm the previously published ﬁndings of Francis and Burton (1994) and Francis and Evans (1996) that frequency of personal prayer is a signiﬁcant predictor of purpose in life. This ﬁnding is consistent with the hypothesised psychological mechanism which proposes that prayer directly inﬂuences sense of purpose in life. The theory suggests that young people who pray are, consciously or unconsciously, acknowledging and relating to a transcendence beyond themselves. Acknowledging such a transcendence and relating to that transcendence through prayer places the whole of life into a wider context of meaning and purpose.

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Furthermore, the practice of prayer implies both a cognitive and an aﬀective component. The cognitive component assumes at least the possibility, if not the certainty, of a transcendent power. Such a belief system is likely to support a purposive view of the nature of the universe. Living in a universe which itself has meaning and purpose is likely to lend a sense of meaning and purpose to the individual who is part of that universe. The aﬀective component assumes at least the possibility, if not the certainty, of that transcendent power being aware of and taking an interest in the individual engaged in prayer. The aﬀective component supports the relational potential of a personal rather than an impersonal transcendent power. Living in relationship to such a personal transcendence is likely to support a sense of value and purpose for the individual. Second, the data build on and conﬁrm the previously published ﬁndings of Shek, Ma, and Cheung (1994) that purpose in life is a signiﬁcant predictor of prosocial attitudes. This ﬁnding is consistent with the hypothesised psychological mechanism which proposes that purpose in life directly inﬂuences social attitudes and behaviours. The theory suggests that antisocial attitudes and antisocial behaviour are compensatory functions which reﬂect a low level of meaning and purpose in life. A low sense of purpose in life leads to frustrations, meaninglessness, and anomie, which in turn are reﬂected in irrational fears (Newcomb, 1986), drug addiction (Coleman, Kaylan, & Downing, 1986), alcoholism (Schlesinger, Susman, & Koenigsberg, 1990), suicidal ideation (Edwards & Holden, 2001), and antisocial behaviours (Shek, Ma, & Cheung, 1994). Third, the data build on and conﬁrm the previously published ﬁndings of Francis (1992a) and Montgomery and Francis (1996) that personal prayer is a signiﬁcant predictor of social attitudes among young people. This ﬁnding is consistent with the hypothesised psychological mechanism which proposes the following causal route: greater frequency of personal prayer is associated with a higher sense of meaning and purpose in life and, in turn, a higher sense of meaning and purpose in life is associated with more prosocial attitudes and behaviours. According to this theory, purpose in life is the key psychological construct which mediates the beneﬁcial eﬀects of prayer on social attitudes. If this theory is wholly correct, two somewhat diﬀerent practical conclusions could be drawn from the research. The ﬁrst practical conclusion is the straightforward one which claims scientiﬁc support for the beneﬁcial psychological and social eﬀects of

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prayer among young people. A pedagogical strategy built on this conclusion would encourage the practice of prayer among young people wholly on psychological and social grounds, irrespective of theological persuasion or commitment. The second practical conclusion is one which sidesteps the religious and theological implications of the scientiﬁc ﬁndings and proposes the identiﬁcation of secular substitutes which can synthesise similar enhancement of purpose in life among young people. Fourth, by employing multiple regression techniques, the data have been interrogated to address the fourth hypothesis, namely that the predictive power of personal prayer on social attitudes is mediated entirely through purpose in life. The current data do not support this fourth hypothesis. When the multiple regression models have controlled for the inﬂuence of sex, age, personality and purpose in life, a small but statistically signiﬁcant direct path still remains between personal prayer and purpose in life. This ﬁnding demands some revision to the conclusion drawn in respect of the third hypothesis as well as rejection of the fourth hypothesis. The data demonstrate that some of the eﬀect of personal prayer on prosocial attitudes is mediated through enhanced purpose in life. In this sense the hypothesised psychological mechanism whereby prayer inﬂuences purpose in life and purpose in life inﬂuences prosocial attitudes is supported. At the same time, the data demonstrate that this hypothesised psychological mechanism is not suﬃcient to explain the total eﬀect of prayer on prosocial attitudes. In other words, prayer is able to eﬀect in young lives greater psychological and social beneﬁts than can be achieved solely by enhancing a sense of purpose in life. The present study has provided an exploratory analysis of the relationship between prayer, purpose in life, personality and social attitudes among a sample of 12,717 13- to 15-year-olds. The data have supported the beneﬁcial eﬀects of prayer among young people growing up outside the churches. Further research is now needed to extend this exploratory analysis. Such research would beneﬁt from addressing three signiﬁcant methodological limitations with the present study. The ﬁrst limitation concerns the relatively crude way in which prayer was measured in the present study. Future research may wish to include broader assessment regarding the form and content of prayer as well as frequency, following the lead given by Poloma and Pendleton (1989, 1991a, 1991b). The second limitation concerns the way in which purpose in life was assessed in the present

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BIBLICAL INTERPRETATIVE HORIZONS AND ORDINARY READERS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY Andrew Village * Abstract The notion of interpretative horizons and the diﬀerent interpretative worlds of author, text, and reader are important concepts in biblical hermeneutics, but there is little empirical evidence to show if they relate to ordinary Bible readers. Horizon separation and horizon preference were assessed among 404 lay members of the Anglican Church from central and southern England using the healing story from Mark 9:14–29 as a test passage. Low horizon separation was associated independently with a general belief that supernatural healing happens today, biblical literalism, membership of a healing prayer group, and familiarity with the test passage. Preference for the author horizon was unusual and associated with high levels of general or theological education and scepticism about supernatural healing today. The opposite was true for preference for the reader horizon, whereas preference for the text horizon was linked more speciﬁcally to biblical literalism among more educated readers.

It is generally recognised that academic biblical study has undergone profound changes in the last ﬁfty years, resulting in a wide range of philosophical and methodological approaches (Anderson & Moore, 1992; Clines, 1997; Segovia, 1995a; Tate, 1997; Thiselton, 1992). Although complex and multifaceted, the changes have mainly resulted from shifts in the locus of attention of academic biblical scholars. Modern biblical hermeneutics is often traced back to the writings of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who saw the task of interpretation in terms of the reader attempting to recreate as closely as possible the thoughtworld and ideas of the author (Thiselton, 1992). This enterprise dominated the ﬁeld of biblical interpretation for much of the twentieth century, when historical criticism held sway. Around the middle of the century, literary critics began to abandon any attempt at trying

* Author Note: This work was partly funded by grants from the Whiteﬁeld Institute and the Bible Society. I thank Leslie Francis of the University of Wales, Bangor, for help with the writing of this paper. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to the Revd. Dr. Andrew Village, Director of the Centre for Ministry Studies, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2DG or via email to [email protected]. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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to recreate the thought-world or intentions of the author (Wimsatt & Beardsley, 1971), and this approach was taken up by some biblical scholars from the 1970s onwards (M. Davies, 1990). Interpretation for them was about unravelling the meaning latent within the structures and narrative of the biblical text itself. More recently, attention has shifted to the role of readers in creating meaning as they read a text, a movement that has been driven by literary, ideological, and philosophical concerns (Adam, 1995; McKnight, 1985; Segovia, 1995b; Thiselton, 1992). Many writers on biblical hermeneutics now recognise that meaning arises from a complex interaction between the worlds of author, text, and reader (Fowl, 1998; Vanhoozer, 1998). In biblical hermeneutical circles, attention on the reader has largely been centred on the inﬂuence of sociological factors such as gender, social location, or ethnicity (Segovia & Tolbert, 1995a, 1995b). The idea that interpreters are inﬂuenced by factors external to the text has led some to suggest that readers are entirely inﬂuenced by the interpretative community in which they operate (Fish, 1980, 1994). Others have postulated that individual diﬀerences in psychology or personal experience might also shape the way that readers or listeners attend to the biblical text (Bassett, Mathewson, & Gailitis, 1993; Francis, 2003; Francis & Atkins, 2002; Kitzberger, 1999; Village & Francis, 2005). Given the amount of theoretical speculation within hermeneutics about the role of readers in creating meaning, there has been surprisingly little interest from sociologists or psychologists. Pioneering work on the process of reading by literary critics such as Norman Holland (1975) and Wolfgang Iser (1978) has not been matched by quantitative empirical studies that explore social and individual factors that might shape the way that people interact with texts. A few empirical studies have indicated that psychological type may inﬂuence the way that readers attend to biblical texts (Bassett et al., 1993; Village & Francis, 2005), and Village (2005d) showed that factors such as individual beliefs, educational experience, and charismatic practice are related to the extent of literal interpretation of the Bible. These initial studies suggest that there is further scope for applying the empirical tools of the social and psychological sciences to test the theoretical constructs of biblical hermeneutics that relate to the role of readers. The concept of “horizon” has been a key theoretical construct in biblical interpretation, especially since the work of Gadamer (1960)

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and Thiselton (1980). It refers to the fact that modern-day interpreters are limited in their ability to understand ancient texts because their viewpoint, or world-view, is rooted in their own contemporary culture. Contemporary readers lack full historical or archaeological information about the context in which scripture was written, and their patterns of thought may be totally diﬀerent from those of the original authors. Gadamer understood that to interpret a text fully it would be necessary to “fuse the horizons” of reader and author, a virtually impossible task. Although some literary and reader-response critics have largely abandoned any attempt to link the world of the author and reader, this is still a central enterprise of most academic biblical studies. A great deal of hermeneutical theory and biblical teaching is devoted to trying to ﬁnd ways of bridging the cultural gap between author and reader, so that the text can be understood now as it was when it was written. The notion of horizons is also related to the diﬀerent “worlds” of the author, text, and reader. Philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur argue that narrative texts in particular create a world, or possible worlds, which the reader can inhabit (Ricoeur, 1984; Thiselton, 1992). This world in the text is distinct from the world behind the text, which is the world of the author, and the world in front of the text, which is the world of the reader. These diﬀerent worlds represent diﬀerent foci of interest for readers, for whom interpretation may be understanding the intention of the author, recreating imaginatively the events described in the text, or applying the text in some way to their own life. Although readers may move between these worlds, it may also be that a given reader will prefer one world over another. How much ordinary Bible readers recognise or resist the issue of horizon is open to question. Ordinary in this sense refers to people who are not trained or professional interpreters, and who read the Bible in the context of the church rather than the academy. There is a dearth of empirical studies on how people who have no theological training relate to the Bible (Clines, 1997). Most academics who have studied the biblical interpretation of ordinary Bible readers have relied on small groups and anecdotal reporting (e.g., Mesters, 1991; Sibeko & Haddad, 1997), so it is diﬃcult to tell how far their conclusions can be generalised. In addition, the lack of any speciﬁc quantitative studies means that the relevance of horizon to ordinary readers is more a matter of opinion than knowledge. One possible way of ﬁlling this gap is to bring the methods of social or psychological

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science to bear on the question of how ordinary readers understand and relate to their sacred text. This paper applies empirical methods to biblical hermeneutics by examining the way that Christian churchgoers perceive and interpret a story from the New Testament. What factors shape the likelihood of a given reader being aware of the gap between ancient text and modern reader? Do ordinary readers attend to a particular horizon and, if so, what factors determine which horizon is preferred? The aim was to look at people with varied backgrounds to see if their church tradition, educational experience, religious beliefs, or religious practices aﬀected the way that they interpreted or applied a typical gospel story. The act of written communication requires an author to produce a text that is read by a reader. Notwithstanding the complexities involved in the production and transmission of the biblical text over the last two millennia, this still leaves three basic horizons when it is read: the author, the text, and the reader. Theoretically, ordinary readers could attend to any or all of these diﬀerent horizons when they read a Bible passage. They may see the passage as revealing something about the beliefs and intentions of the original author. Some readers may focus on the text itself; in the case of a story this would mean attending to the plot and characters and being less concerned about origins and original context of the passage. Other readers might see the passage as being primarily about them, teaching them what to believe or how to behave. Traditionally, academic biblical study has focused on the origins or literary structure of texts and has rarely ventured into applying results to believers. There is a strong separation between horizons of interest which has been positively promoted in academic circles as the correct way to engage in biblical study (P. R. Davies, 1995). In contrast, church-based Bible study and preaching tends to be applied, and knowledge of the Bible is seen as a means to Christian service rather than an end in itself. There are two main aspects of interpretation that need to be assessed in order to understand the signiﬁcance of horizon to ordinary Bible readers. Horizon separation refers to the extent to which readers recognise a biblical passage as being diﬀerent from their everyday experience. Is this story something that might happen today, or is it strange and alien? A diﬀerent measure is horizon preference, the extent to which interpretation of the passage is centred on one of

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the three horizons of author, text, or reader. Author-preference would be indicated by an understanding of the passage as a revelation of the thought-world and intentions of the original human author. Textpreference would be indicated by an understanding of the passage as a revelation of the thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes of the characters in the story. Reader-preference would be indicated by an understanding of the passage as directing the beliefs, attitudes, or actions of the reader. Horizon separation and horizon preference may be predicted by a range of factors related to the social location or individuality of readers. These might be factors that are intrinsic to an individual, such as sex, factors acquired through the experience of life, such as education or religious beliefs and practices, and factors that are external to individuals, such as the nature of their congregation. Education in general, and theological education in particular, is aimed at inculcating a critical objectivity that would be expected to increase horizon separation and increase a preference for the author horizon over the reader horizon. However, educational experience might be tempered by general beliefs about the nature of the Bible and the nature of God’s activity. Readers who approach the Bible as the Word of God should be more inclined to see the text as having universal appeal, intelligibility, and applicability. This is likely to reduce the perceived gap between the world of the text and the world of the reader. Christian conservatism is linked closely to notions of biblical authority and might therefore lead readers to apply the text to their own lives, even if the text is not taken literally. Literalism, on the other hand, may incline readers to concentrate on the event or story itself, without necessarily looking for present-day analogies or applications. Education may be linked to biblical conservatism and literalism, though the relationship may vary depending on church tradition. Village (2005d) found that literalism declined with increasing educational experience among Anglo-Catholics, but not among Evangelicals. This suggests there may be a complex interplay between these predictor variables and reader horizons. Horizon separation and preference might also be inﬂuenced by experience and religious practice, especially if that practice is related to the content of the text being read. Miraculous healing is frequently described in the New Testament gospels and praying speciﬁcally for supernatural healing is a practice that is more familiar to some

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Christians than to others (Village, 2005c). Texts referring to miraculous healing might seem more familiar to those who believe in the possibility of miraculous healing today and/or who engage in practices associated with Christian healing ministry than those who do not. Familiarity engendered by experience of miraculous healing in general might be tempered by experience of a particular biblical text; unfamiliarity with a text might increase horizon separation, especially if the practices referred to are not familiar to the reader. This paper is based on a study of biblical interpretation among Church of England laity (Village, 2003). This denomination embraces a wide range of traditions (Baker, 1996; Furlong, 2000; HylsonSmith, 1989, 1993; Randall, 2005). The majority of Anglican congregations in England belong to a geographical parish and are variously described as “middle of the road,” “traditional,” or “Broad Church” (Brierley, 2000); whereas eclectic, mainly urban, congregations are dominated by Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic churches. The former tend to be conservative, have little ritual in worship, and varying degrees of charismatic teaching or practice of healing prayer. In England, Anglo-Catholic churches are often liberal, have a strong focus on the ritual of the Eucharist, and are less likely to be charismatic. This means that readers in diﬀerent congregations are likely to hold diﬀerent beliefs and have diﬀerent experiences of charismatic practice and healing ministry. The aim was to assess perceived horizon separation and horizon preferences in relation to a story of miraculous healing and relate this to a variety of factors relating to individual diﬀerences, beliefs, and experience to ﬁnd out which exerted the strongest inﬂuence over the way that ordinary readers approached a biblical text. Method Questionnaire items were produced after 26 open-ended interviews with congregation members from a variety of churches around Northampton, England. The wording of items was reﬁned in three pilot studies, and the ﬁnal sample was from 11 churches in south and central England which were classiﬁed a priori by incumbents according to tradition. Beliefs about the Bible, miraculous healing, and charismatic practice in the study sample are reported elsewhere (Village, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c).

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Sample The 404 questionnaires returned comprised roughly equal numbers from Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Broad churches. Broad churches were in small towns covered by only one Anglican parish. Comparison of the sample with that recorded in the 1998 English Church Attendance Survey (Brierley, 2000) showed that it spanned much of the variation found in the Church of England but that it contained an almost identical gender ratio, more middle-aged people, and more frequent church attendees than expected from the church at large (Village, 2005a). Instruments The test passage was Mark 9:14–29, a story about the healing of a boy with an evil spirit. The passage was taken from the New Revised Standard Version, with all book, chapter, and verse markers removed. Participants were asked to read the passage and then respond to short statements about it by circling one of ﬁve answers: strongly agree, agree, not certain, disagree, or strongly disagree. Answers were numerically coded and used to create a summated rating scale (Likert, 1932; Spector, 1992) measuring the extent of horizon separation, with a high score indicating a high degree of separation. A wide range of items were tested in pilot trials, and the ﬁnal scale consisted of items that related to the transparency of the story and how diﬀerent it was from what might happen today (see Table 1). Internal reliability was tested using Cronbach’s alpha coeﬃcient (Cronbach, 1951).

Table 1. Items in the Horizon Separation Scale Item

IRC FL

This story is self-explanatory* I ﬁnd this story hard to relate to my life I cannot imagine this happening today This is a straightforward account of a miraculous healing* We can never know what was wrong with the boy This story has several aspects that are very hard to understand This story shows how diﬀerently people thought in those days

.34 .45 .55 .40 .43 .47 .41

.50 .64 .73 .56 .61 .64 .60

Note: IRC= item-rest correlation coeﬃcient, FL= factor loadings for unrotated solution using principal components analysis. *These items were reverse scored.

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Horizon preference was assessed using eight forced-choice items that related to the biblical passage (see Table 2). The items were introduced by the phrase, “This story shows us . . .” Each item consisted of three short statements relating to the author, text, or reader horizon. Author statements all contained the phrase “the writer,” and related aspects of the story to the intent or world of the author.

Table 2. Forced-choice Questions for the Horizon Preference Scales IRC HN 1

2

3

4

5

Response choices

A

A The writer’s fellow Christians could not always heal people T Why the disciples were not always able to heal people R Why people are not always healed when we pray for them today

.26

A The writer believed that Jesus was able to perform miracles T Jesus was renowned in his lifetime as a powerful worker of miracles R Jesus performs miracles today

.30

A The writer encouraged his readers to have faith in Jesus T Jesus encouraged the father’s weak faith R God encourages us today when our faith is weak

.38

A The writer was trying to dispel the fear of evil in the early church T Jesus overcame the people’s fear of evil R Through Jesus, we need not fear evil today A The writer wanted to denounce his faithless generation T Jesus was sometimes angry with the faithless people he met R God is sometimes angry at our lack of faith today

T

R

.28 .32

.17 .48 .36 .43 .47 .41 .48 .34 .41 .49

6

A The writer believed that prayer could exorcize demons .41 T Jesus believed that his disciples must pray if they were to heal .39 R Prayer is vital for a successful healing ministry today .50

7

A The mind of the original writer T The attitude of Jesus to his generation R What it means to be a faithful disciple today

8

.37 .36 .52

A The writer had compassion for the sick and demon-possessed .13 T The compassion Jesus had for the sick and demon-possessed .40 R That we should have compassion for the needy people we meet .38

Note: Questions were introduced with the words, “This story shows us . . . ( please circle the ONE answer that you prefer).” On the questionnaire, items within each question were presented in random order with respect to horizon. HN = Horizon: author (A), text (T), or reader (R). Dummy variables used for reliability analyses were scored 1 (item chosen) or 0 (item not chosen). IRC = item-rest correlation coeﬃcient for items in the same horizon.

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Text statements referred to actions, attitudes, or beliefs of characters in the story. Most reader statements contained the word “today” and linked the story to contemporary applications. Participants were asked to circle the statement that they preferred, and the number of choices for each horizon was taken as a measure of degree of preference for the author, text, or reader horizons. Although this was a forced-choice, rather than a summated rating scale, internal reliability was investigated in a similar way as for the other two scales by creating three dummy variables for each question. Each dummy variable was set to either one or zero depending on whether the relevant horizon was selected or not. The correlation technique used to calculate Cronbach’s alpha was considered to be suﬃciently robust to give approximate reliability estimates using these dummy variables. Independent variables used in analyses included scales related to beliefs about the Bible and supernatural healing. Conservativeliberal belief about the Bible was measured in this sample using 12 Likert items (with a 5-scale response) that assessed belief in the inerrancy, authority, and exclusivity of the Bible (Village, 2005a). The Bible scale was one-dimensional and internally reliable (high score indicated biblical conservatism, low score indicated biblical liberalism, a = .91). Biblical literalism was measured with a similar 10item scale using events from the Old and New Testaments (Village, 2005d). Participants were asked to say if the events happened or were ﬁctional stories using a 5-item scale ranging from deﬁnitely happened to deﬁnitely a story. The scale was also one-dimensional and internally reliable (high score indicated biblical literalism, a = .92). The supernatural scale was based on 12 Likert items that were responses to scenarios about supernatural healing (Village, 2005c); it had a similarly high internal reliability (high score indicated belief in supernatural healing today, a = .92). Other variables assessed experience or practice that related to events in the text: These were whether or not the person was part of a church healing prayer group (0 = no, 1 = yes) and the charismatic scale, a 5-item scale based on speaking in tongues, words of prophecy, dreams or visions, laying hands on people, and God speaking directly through the Bible (Village, 2005b). Other independent variables included educational experience and previous experience of the test passage. General education level was measured on a 5-point scale (0 = no formal qualiﬁcations to 4 = post-

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graduate qualiﬁcation), while a second, open question asked for a description of any theological or biblical training. Responses to this question were used to identify participants who had experienced higher education (that is, post high school certiﬁcate, diploma, or degreelevel) in theology or biblical studies (0 = no, 1 = yes). After reading the test passage, participants were asked if they had heard the story before and answers were coded as 0 (no or not sure) and 1 (yes). The questionnaire also assessed sex (1 = male, 2 = female) and church tradition, which was recoded into two dummy variables: trad1 (Anglo-Catholic = 1, other traditions = 0) and trad2 (Evangelical = 1, other traditions = 0). Sex was included as a control variable because it was related to education with men having higher average levels of education than women. Data Analysis Data were analysed using SPSS for Windows 12.0 (SPSS, 2003). The horizon separation and preference scales were produced from the sample in this study using a combination of factor analysis (Kim & Mueller, 1978a, 1978b; McKennell, 1970) and reliability analysis (Cronbach, 1951). Items were included in the scale if they had a high loading on a factor and if their removal from the scale would signiﬁcantly lower the Cronbach’s alpha coeﬃcient (Norusis, 1994; Spector, 1992). Multicollinearity was investigated using a correlation matrix of all dependent and independent variables. Final analyses used linear multiple regression analysis to identify the independent eﬀect of predictor variables after allowing for others in the model. Results Horizon Separation and Preference scales The seven items in the horizon separation scale (Table 1) were onedimensional on factor analysis with an acceptably high internal reliability (horizon separation: high score = awareness of separate horizons, a = .72). Reliability analyses of the dummy variables for horizon preference items (Table 2) indicated that there was a reasonable degree of internal consistency (author horizon: a = .63; text horizon: a = .65; reader horizon: a = .75). Among the 400 participants who answered all eight questions, text-horizon items were chosen most

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often (M = 3.55, SD = 2.10), closely followed by reader-horizon items (M = 3.20, SD = 2.34), with author-horizon items being chosen much less frequently (M = 1.25, SD = 1.48). Relationships Among the Dependent and Independent Variables There were some signiﬁcant correlations between the predictor variables, notably between the scales for biblical conservatism, literalism, supernatural healing, and charismatic practice (Table 3). Biblical conservatism and literalism were also related to church tradition, being more frequent in Evangelical churches than in Anglo-Catholic ones. Licht (1995) suggests correlations between independent variables should generally be less than 0.8 for a valid multiple regression analysis. Multiple collinearity was less than this in all cases, though the correlation between Bible and literalism scores was 0.74. These variables were both used as predictor variables, however, because theoretical considerations suggested they may have independent eﬀects on horizon preferences. Horizon separation was not related to choice of the text horizon, but was related in a predictable fashion to choice of author or reader horizons: Those who scored low on separation were more likely to choose the reader horizon and reject the author horizon (Table 3). Preferences for text and reader horizons were strongly inversely correlated (r = –.78) but were less strongly related to the author horizon (text: r = –.18; reader: r = –.47). It seemed that for many participants, preference largely involved a binary choice between text and reader horizons, with author horizon being less important in the process. Factors Aﬀecting Horizon Separation The best predictors of horizon separation were belief in supernatural healing and biblical literalism (Table 4). Participants who believed that supernatural healing happens today, and those who showed strong literal belief in the Bible in general, perceived little separation of horizons in the test passage. There was also a negative correlation with biblical conservatism (r = –.52), which remained after allowing for the eﬀects of the other two belief scales ( b = –.15). Although charismatic score was originally negatively correlated with horizon separation (r = –.42), the relationship disappeared when being part of a healing team was included in the model. Although

1.0 –.08 .01

–.02

–.05 –.24** .09

.08

.08 .07

.14**

.01 –.15** –.03 –.12*

1 2 3

4

5 6 7

8

9 10

11

12 13 14 15

1 400

3 404

.48**

.38** .48**

.39**

1.0 .18** .06

.23** –.13**

.20** –.10 .19** –.15**

.22** –.00

.08 .06 .09

5 404

.14** –.26** –.25** .06 .16** –.20** –.10* .24** –.03 .13** .06 .05 –.07 .01 .01 –.20**

–.38**

–.22** –.41**

–.22**

4 376

.13** 1.0

.15** –.10* .13** .11* –.05 .12*

–.01

1.0 –.55** 1.0

2 404

8 400

.16**

.23** .17**

9 399

.51**

.67**

.58** 1.0 .54** .60**

.36** 1.0

1.0

7 393

–.01 –.25** –.42** –.62** .20** –.01 –.31** –.45** .16** –.04 .06 .07 –.27** .05 .15** .23**

–.14**

.05 –.11*

.10

1.0 .02

6 402

11 404

–.52** –.56** –.39** –.51** .01 .10* .24** .22**

.74** 1.0

1.0

10 400

1.0 .38** .01 –.25**

12 404

14 400

15 400

1.0 –.18** 1.0 –.47** –.78** 1.0

13 400

Note: Dummy variables: Sex (1 = male, 2 = female); Trad1 (1 = Anglo-Catholic, 0 = other traditions); Trad2 (1 = Evangelical, 0 = other traditions); Heard story before (0 = no, 1 = yes); Theological education (0 = no, 1 = yes); Healing team (0= no, 1 = yes). * p < .05; ** p < .01

Sex Trad1 Trad2 Heard story before Theological education Education Healing team Charismatic score Supernatural score Bible score Literalism score Horizon separation Author Text Reader

Valid n

Table 3. Correlation Matrix for Independent and Dependent Variables

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Table 4. Multiple Regression Analysis of Horizon Separation Score (N = 354) Predictor

B

Sex Trad1 Trad2 Heard story before Theological education Education Healing team Charismatic score Supernatural score Bible score Literalism score Intercept

0.44 –0.81 0.53 –1.23 –0.08 –0.03 –2.27 0.07 –0.22 –0.07 –0.14 36.99

SE B

b

0.38 0.52 0.48 0.59 0.68 0.16 0.85 0.07 0.04 0.03 0.04 1.41

.05 –.08 .06 –.09* –.01 –.01 –.11** .05 –.38*** –.15* –.27***

Note: R2 for full model = 0.47. Two-tailed probabilities: * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. For dummy variables, see Table 3.

only 11% (n = 376) of those who answered the question indicated that they had not heard the story before, they had signiﬁcantly higher horizon separation scores even after allowing for the eﬀects of other independent variables. None of the other predictor variables relating to sex, church tradition, or education were signiﬁcantly related to horizon separation. Factors Aﬀecting Horizon Preference The signiﬁcant positive predictors of the author horizon were general education level, experience of theological education, and membership of a healing team, whereas the signiﬁcant negative predictors were the supernatural and literalism scores (Table 5). The only signiﬁcant predictors for the text horizon were general education level and literalism score, which were both positively correlated with preference for the text horizon. The signiﬁcant predictors for reader horizon were general education level, experience of theological education (both negatively correlated with preference for the reader horizon), and the supernatural score (positively correlated with preference for the reader horizon). The multivariate approach indicated that, after allowing for sex, church tradition, and whether or not they had heard the story before, readers with high levels of general education were more likely to

–0.17 –0.16 0.12 –0.22 0.97 0.16 0.75 –0.04 –0.04 –0.01 –0.05 5.65

0.14 0.19 0.18 0.22 0.25 0.06 0.31 0.03 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.53

SE B

Author

–.06 –.05 .04 –.05 .18*** .13** .11* –.09 –.22** –.01 –.29***

b

0.02 0.13 0.46 0.20 0.31 0.29 –0.52 0.01 0.02 –0.03 0.06 1.87

B

Text

0.24 0.33 0.30 0.38 0.42 0.10 0.53 0.05 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.89

SE B

Note: R2 for full model = 0.35 (Author); 0.07 (Text); 0.17 (Reader). Two-tailed probabilities: * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. For dummy variables, see Table 3.

Sex Trad1 Trad2 Heard story before Theological education Education Healing team Charismatic score Supernatural score Bible score Literalism score Intercept

B .00 .03 .11 .03 .04 .16** –.06 .17 –.06 –.13 .24**

b

0.16 0.24 –0.58 0.02 –1.28 –0.45 –0.24 0.03 0.06 0.03 –0.01 0.48

B

Table 5. Multiple Regression Analyses of Horizon Preference Scores (N = 351)

0.25 0.34 0.31 0.39 0.44 0.10 0.54 0.05 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.92

SE B

Reader

.03 .01 –.13 .00 –.15** –.24*** –.02 .04 .19* .13 –.03

b

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prefer the author or text horizons to the reader horizon than were those with less educational experience. This eﬀect was heightened by theological education, which tended to increase preference for the author horizon at the expense of the reader horizon. Biblical literalists tended to avoid the author horizon in preference for the text horizon but not the reader horizon. Belief in supernatural healing was associated with an increased preference for the reader horizon at the expense of the author horizon. The weak but statistically signiﬁcant eﬀect of belonging to a healing team on author horizon was in the opposite direction to that expected (positive correlation with author score), and may have been a spurious result as there were no corresponding eﬀects on preference for the other two horizons. It seemed that diﬀerences in horizon preference between men and women, or between Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical congregations, arose because of diﬀerences in education levels and religious beliefs, rather than because of a direct eﬀect of sex or church aﬃliation. Discussion This study has shown that it is possible, at least with a New Testament story, to produce internally reliable scales that measure horizon separation and preference. Similar scales could be produced for other types of biblical literature using the same principles, though each would have to be linked to the particular test passage used. Quantifying horizon variables using a test passage has a disadvantage over using more general questions on horizons because scales have to be developed for each passage. However it has the strong advantage that answers are more closely tied to the actual experience of reading than to abstract beliefs about how the Bible should be read. General scales might be useful in helping to test the validity of the construct across diﬀerent types of biblical literature. Horizon Separation The participants in this study showed marked variation in the extent of horizon separation. It was diﬃcult to judge this in absolute terms because the scale was designed to cover the likely range of responses, with most participants scoring near the scale mean. Nonetheless, although a few readers totally fused horizons, in seemed that in this typically Anglican sample, most demonstrated some sense of horizon

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separation. Participants who perceived little or no separation of horizons were usually people who held conservative (rather than liberal) beliefs about the Bible, who interpreted the Bible literally, and who were already familiar with the passage. All these factors were related because conservative belief is strongly correlated with literal belief and because both these beliefs are associated with frequent Bible reading (Village, 2005d), which would mean the passage was more likely to have been read or heard before. However, the eﬀects were independent and summative, implying that horizon separation can be attributed to a number of diﬀerent factors which produce the variety of responses seen in Anglican congregations. In general, education or speciﬁcally theological education seemed to have rather little eﬀect on the sense of horizon separation. This is a somewhat surprising ﬁnding because education should engender a sense of objectivity, and theological education and knowledge of the diﬀerent world of the biblical writers, which might increase a sense of the “otherness” of the passage. Instead, what people “believed the text to be” had more inﬂuence than the extent of their education. As expected, biblical conservatives and biblical literalists found the text most familiar, as did those who believed that miraculous healing happens today. This lends empirical support to the widely held understanding in hermeneutics that readers’ pre-understandings inﬂuence the way that they read a text. Education may not necessarily be eﬀective in changing this. Charismatic practice was strongly negatively correlated with horizon separation in the original analyses (r = –0.42, Table 3), but this eﬀect disappeared when other predictor variables were taken into account. Being part of a healing team seemed to reinforce the eﬀect of general belief in supernatural healing, suggesting that the sense of horizon separation can be reduced independently by both religious belief and religious practice. Familiarity with the passage seemed to lessen the sense of horizon separation, something that biblical exegetes tend to warn against, but something that has never been demonstrated empirically. In pilot studies, a number of diﬀerent passages were tested, and they evoked some interesting reactions from those who had not encountered them before. This was partly because the absence of clues as to origin led some participants to question whether they were scriptural passages at all or just stories invented by the researcher. Their perception of the passage was quite diﬀerent, suggesting there may be value in

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presenting scripture in contexts that mask its identity. Perhaps the formal presentation of scripture within some liturgical contexts militates against it having a real impact on the listeners. Horizon Preference The evidence from this sample of Anglicans from England is that, when they are forced to choose, most will interpret within their own world or the world of the text, rather than see the text as indicating the intention of the author. The overall higher preference for the text or reader horizons over the author horizon would come as no surprise to practitioners of historical criticism because these diﬀerent horizons of interest have long been taken as deﬁning academic versus faith-based reading of scripture. Again, this is a widely held assumption that has not hitherto been tested against empirical evidence. This does not mean that all church goers always avoid the author horizon, and there was considerable variation between individuals that could be explained by a variety of factors. One important factor was education, with both higher levels of general education and speciﬁcally theological education engendering more interest in the author rather than the reader horizon. This may be because education encourages readers to take a critical stance that reduces their willingness to extract ethical or spiritual lessons directly from the text. The strong eﬀects of education in promoting interest in the author, rather than reader, horizon is in contrast to the apparent lack of eﬀect on the sense of horizon separation. Education, it seems, does not necessarily make the text seem more distant, but it does, perhaps, make readers cautious about applying an ancient text to their own situation. If education encouraged interest in the author horizon, literal belief tended to discourage such interest in favour of the text rather than the reader horizon. Biblical literalism seemed to be associated with the kind of reading that stays within the world(s) projected by the text, rather than bringing meaning from the text into the reader’s own world. Biblical literalism is strongly linked to conservative views on biblical inerrancy and authority, but these results suggest that literalism and conservatism are not interchangeable in the way that they predict biblical interpretation. Literalism may be associated with a more subtle suspension of disbelief that enables the reader to imaginatively inhabit the world created by the text. In this sample,

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interest in the text horizon was also associated with higher levels of general education, suggesting that the ability to interpret a narrative text purely in its own terms may be a considered, rather than uncritical, literalism. The supernatural score was slightly but signiﬁcantly correlated with preference for the reader horizon after allowing for other factors in the model. It seemed that belief in supernatural healing, rather than biblical literalism, encouraged readers to apply this particular text to their lives. The supernatural scale was strongly correlated with the Bible scale (r = 0.60, Table 3) but it seemed that willingness to apply a healing story to the reader’s world was more directly related to their belief that this was something that can happen today than a general belief about the authority of scripture. Although the trend in academic hermeneutical theory has been to stress the importance of social location (Segovia & Tolbert, 1995a, 1995b) or interpretative communities (Elster, 2003; Fackre, 1999; Fish, 1980; Saye, 1996) on biblical interpretation, this study suggests that individual diﬀerences in belief and experience may be more inﬂuential. Although horizon preference was partially predicted by a number of variables such as church tradition and sex, multivariate analysis showed that it was more directly linked to education, beliefs (about the Bible and miraculous healing), and religious practice. Church tradition may be the easiest way of predicting how people might interpret the Bible (because it is relatively simple to measure), but it is not the most accurate; nor does the link between church tradition and horizon preference mean that tradition per se inﬂuences the way that ordinary readers interpret scripture. Congregational aﬃliation is a shorthand way of referring to particular beliefs or practices among members, and it is these beliefs and practices that that are the key direct inﬂuences on individual interpretative practices. Conclusion Horizon does seem to be a relevant aspect of biblical interpretation among some lay people. Horizon separation and preference can be measured relatively easily, and both seem to be shaped by a number of independently operating factors. Given that horizon is such an important concept among teachers of biblical interpretation, there would seem to be a case for more nuanced studies that will look at

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a variety of scriptural genres. In this study, based mainly on committed church goers, there were relatively few people who were unfamiliar with the test passage and few who had been theologically educated. Both these factors proved to be important variables in shaping horizon separation or preference, so studies that included more of these groups might yield some useful results. References Adam, A. K. M. (1995). What is postmodern biblical criticism? Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Anderson, J. C., & Moore, S. D. E. (Eds.). (1992). Mark and method. New approaches in biblical studies. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Baker, J. (1996). Churchmanship. In I. Bunting (Ed.), Celebrating the Anglican way (pp. 110–124). London: Hodder & Stoughton. Bassett, R. L., Mathewson, K., & Gailitis, A. (1993). Recognising the person in biblical interpretation: An empirical study. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 12, 38–46. Brierley, P. (2000). The tide is running out. London: Christian Research. Clines, D. J. A. (1997). The Bible and the modern world. Sheﬃeld: Sheﬃeld Academic Press. Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coeﬃcient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16, 297–334. Davies, M. (1990). Literary criticism. In R. J. Coggins & J. L. Houlden (Eds.), A dictionary of biblical interpretation (pp. 402–405). London: SCM Press. Davies, P. R. (1995). Whose Bible is it anyway? Sheﬃeld: Sheﬃeld Academic Press. Elster, C. A. (2003). Authority, performance, and interpretation in religious reading: Critical issues of intercultural communication and multiple literacies. Journal of Literacy Research, 35, 663–692. Fackre, G. (1999). Bible, community and spirit. Horizons in Biblical Theology, 21, 66–81. Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ——. (1994). There’s no such thing as free speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fowl, S. E. (1998). Engaging scripture. Oxford: Blackwell. Francis, L. J. (2003). Psychological type and biblical hermeneutics: SIFT method of preaching. Rural Theology, 1, 13–23. Francis, L. J., & Atkins, P. (2002). Exploring Mark’s Gospel: An aid for readers and preachers using year B of the Revised Common Lectionary. London: Continuum—Mowbray. Furlong, M. (2000). C of E: The state it’s in. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Gadamer, H. G. (1960). Truth and method (English translation, 1979, 2nd ed.). London: Sheed & Ward. Holland, N. (1975). 5 readers reading. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hylson-Smith, K. (1989). Evangelicals in the Church of England 1734–1984. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. ——. (1993). High churchmanship in the Church of England from the sixteenth century to the late twentieth century. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Iser, W. (1978). The act of reading: A theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Kim, J. O., & Mueller, C. (1978a). Factor analysis: Statistical methods and practical issues. London: Sage.

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——. (1978b). Introduction to factor analysis. London: Sage. Kitzberger, I. R. (Ed.). (1999). The personal voice in biblical interpretation. London: Routledge. Licht, M. H. (1995). Multiple regression and correlation. In L. G. Grimm & P. R. Yarnold (Eds.), Reading and understanding multivariate statistics (pp. 19–64). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. New York: Columbia University Press. McKennell, A. (1970). Attitude measurement: Use of coeﬃcient alpha with cluster or factor analysis. Sociology, 4, 227–245. McKnight, E. V. (1985). The Bible and the reader: An introduction to literary criticism. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Mesters, C. (1991). Listening to what the Spirit is saying to the churches: Popular interpretation of the Bible in Brazil. In W. Beuken, S. Freyne, & A. Weiler (Eds.), The Bible and its readers (pp. 100–111). London: SCM. Norusis, M. (1994). SPSS Professional Statistics 6.1. Chicago: SPSS Inc. Randall, K. (2005). Evangelicals etcetera: Conﬂict and conviction in the Church of England’s parties. Aldershot: Ashgate. Ricoeur, P. (1984). Time and narrative (B. Kathleen & D. Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Saye, S. (1996). The wild and crooked tree: Barth, Fish and interpretive communities. Modern Theology, 12, 435–458. Segovia, F. F. (1995a). “And they speak in other tongues”: Competing modes of discourse in contemporary biblical studies. In F. F. Segovia & M. A. Tolbert (Eds.), Reading from this place: Social location and biblical interpretation in global perspective (Vol. 1, pp. 1–34). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. ——. (1995b). Cultural studies and contemporary biblical criticism: Ideological criticism as a mode of discourse. In F. F. Segovia & M. A. Tolbert (Eds.), Reading from this place: Social location and biblical interpretation in global perspective (Vol. 2, pp. 1–17). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Segovia, F. F., & Tolbert, M. A. E. (Eds.). (1995a). Reading from this place, Volume 1. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. ——. (Eds.). (1995b). Reading from this place, Volume 2. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Sibeko, M., & Haddad, B. (1997). Reading the Bible “with” women in poor and marginalized communities in South Africa. Semeia, 78, 83–92. Spector, P. E. (1992). Summated rating scale construction. London: Sage. SPSS. (2003). SPSS base 12.0 user’s guide. Chicago: SPSS Inc. Tate, W. R. (1997). Biblical interpretation (2nd ed.). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. Thiselton, A. C. (1980). The two horizons. Exeter: The Paternoster Press. ——. (1992). New horizons in hermeneutics. London: HarperCollins. Vanhoozer, K. J. (1998). Is there a meaning in this text? Leicester: Apollos (IVP). Village, A. (2003). Biblical interpretation among Church of England lay people. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. ——. (2005a). Assessing belief about the Bible: A study among Anglican laity. Review of Religious Research, 46, 243–254. ——. (2005b). Christian belief about the Bible and the Holy Spirit in relation to psychological type. Review of the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 16, 1–16. ——. (2005c). Dimensions of belief about miraculous healing. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 8, 97–107. ——. (2005d). Factors shaping biblical literalism: A study among Anglican laity. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 26, 29–38. Village, A., & Francis, L. J. (2005). The relationship of psychological type preferences to biblical interpretation. Journal of Empirical Theology, 18, 74–89. Wimsatt, W. K., & Beardsley, M. (1971). The intentional fallacy. In W. K. Wimsatt (Ed.), The verbal icon: Studies in the meaning of poetry (pp. 1–18). London: Methuen.

A FACTOR ANALYSIS OF THE FETZER/NIA BRIEF MULTIDIMENSIONAL MEASURE OF RELIGIOUSNESS/SPIRITUALITY (MMRS) Ralph L. Piedmont, Anna Teresa Mapa and Joseph E. G. Williams* Abstract The Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (Fetzer Institute/NIA Working Group, 1999) was developed to capture in abbreviated form an array of spiritual/religious constructs that were related to psychosocial and health outcomes. Little research has examined the psychometric aspects of this hybrid scale. Using 452 undergraduate students, normative information at both the item and scale level was provided. The factor structure of the instrument and correlations with personality and family environment were obtained. Results indicated that several of the scales lack reliability, and the issue of how well these scales reﬂect their original, longer parents remains in question. Principal components analyses indicated that the items of the MMRS constitute three dimensions that are mostly independent of personality. Spirituality and religiosity emerged as highly correlated, unidimensional constructs.

Multiple measures of spirituality and religiousness are available today (see Hill & Hood, 1999). Despite a wide diversity of instruments, authors are developing and adding new instruments to the literature at an exponential rate. However, the easy availability of many instruments has not translated into a growing pool of research studies that provide evidence of construct validity for these measures. For many measures there is only a single study that outlines its basic reliability and validity, usually in a single sample of undergraduate students. This leaves the ﬁeld with no cumulative body of knowledge on any scale. Gorsuch (1984, 1990), with little success, has gone so far as

* Author Note: Support for this project came from the Institute for Religious and Psychological Research. Portions of these data were presented at the 2003 Annual Convention of the Eastern Psychological Association in Baltimore, MD. The authors are grateful to Rose Piedmont for her editorial eﬀorts. Request reprints from Ralph L. Piedmont, Department of Pastoral Counseling, Loyola College in Maryland, 8890 McGaw Road, Suite 380, Columbia, MD 21045 or via email at [email protected]. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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to call for a complete ban on the creation of new instruments until we better understand the existing ones. Recognizing that the pool of spiritual and religious constructs is diverse, the Fetzer Institute along with the National Institute on Aging assembled a working group of professionals in the area to examine the current state of assessment. Their task was to identify key aspects of spirituality and religiosity along with measures designed to capture those constructs. This group recognized that “. . . religious/spiritual variables cannot simply be combined into a single scale that examines the eﬀects of a single variable, ‘religiosity’; rather, each relevant dimension of religiousness and spirituality should be examined separately for its eﬀects on physical and mental health” (Fetzer/National Institute on Aging Working Group, 1999, p. 2). This group acknowledged that spirituality and religiousness represent multidimensional constructs that need to be represented in their entirety if a scale is to provide useful predictive coverage of the constructs. The Working Group, accordingly, identiﬁed 12 separate domains for inclusion in any comprehensive assessment: Daily Spiritual Experiences, Meaning, Values, Beliefs, Forgiveness, Private Religious Practices, Religious/Spiritual Coping, Religious Support, Religious/ Spiritual History, Commitment, Organizational Religiousness, and Religious Preference. Previous empirical work found these domains predicted various health outcomes. For this working group, these 12 domains represented key religious and spiritual categories and items from each domain were condensed into a single scale that they recommended be used in future health research. In creating this measure, called the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (MMRS), the working group developed pools of items to measure each of these12 domains. Some of these items were selected from speciﬁc instruments while others captured spiritual or religious themes found in the literature. From these item sets, a smaller number were selected for inclusion into the ﬁnal scale. Anywhere from 1 to 6 items from each of the 12 sets of items was included in this composite instrument. Although the working group acknowledged that this brief assessment instrument did not represent all domains of spiritual/religious functioning, they did assert that it does serve as a useful starting point for researchers who are interested in examining the role of spirituality in health situations. The MMRS does contain items that represent a putatively wide range of salient religious/spiritual constructs.

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Strength of the MMRS. The major advantage of the MMRS is that it represents the collective wisdom of an expert panel regarding what constructs constitute the spiritual/religious domain. Although this scale is not seen as comprehensive, it does represent the most inclusive instrument constructed to date and, as such, provides an approximation for what the spiritual/religious domain represents. This raises three important research issues. First, by bringing together items from varied instruments, the MMRS provides an opportunity to examine the factor structure of these constructs so as to determine whether they are truly multidimensional or merely multifaceted. Second, by identifying constructs as being “spiritual” or “religious” in nature, the opportunity exists for examining the degree of overlap these variables have with each other and with established personality variables. To what extent do these numinous dimensions capture aspects of the individual non-overlapping with established personality constructs? Finally, to the extent that spirituality and religiosity represent orthogonal constructs to personality, the dimensions included in the MMRS can serve as the basic building blocks for the construction of a comprehensive taxonomy of spiritual/religious constructs. These numinous variables can serve as empirical reference points for deﬁning what is and is not spiritual or religious. Weaknesses of the MMRS. The most obvious weakness of the MMRS is the fact that it is a compilation of several short forms. Smith, McCarthy, and Anderson (2000) noted eleven “sins” associated with the use of short forms, and the MMRS falls victim to several. First, no evidence is presented that the reduced scales included in the MMRS preserve the content coverage of the domain it intends to assess. Items were selected for inclusion into the MMRS based on item-total correlations: Those items with the highest associations with the total score were included. The negative eﬀect of doing this is that the content breadth of the construct being assessed is narrowed. Thus, these smaller scales may have less predictive validity. A second sin is that no evidence has been presented that demonstrates the extent to which these smaller scales overlap with their larger originals. To what extent does the short version capture similar variance as the longer one? A third diﬃculty is that no data is presented that demonstrates that the factor structure of the larger instruments has been preserved in the smaller ones. Finally, the whole purpose of using a short form is that it saves time and increases eﬃciency. Certainly, combining 12 scales into a single instrument

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certainly appears to be economical, but no data are presented that insure that this increase in testing eﬃciency is not oﬀset by a corresponding loss in validity. These are important psychometric issues that need to be resolved if the MMRS is to be considered a useful instrument for the ﬁeld. However, we identify two other limitations to the scale. First, although normative information is provided for each item on the scale (Fetzer Institute/NIA Working Group, 1999), no such information is given for the short scales themselves. Thus, users are not given useful interpretive information regarding each of the smaller scales. As such, the MMRS represents more of an epidemiological-type screener than an assessment tool. Second, no validity information about the scales is provided. Thus, there is some question regarding the practical utility of this instrument for the ﬁeld. The purpose of this study is to address some of these issues. First, normative information will be given for both the individual items and the short scales in a general sample of college students. Alpha reliabilities for these short scales will also be examined. The entire scale itself will then be factor analyzed in order to address the following questions: (a) How many dimensions underlie the items included in the MMRS? Will separate dimensions appear for each of the diﬀerent scales represented in the items? (b) To what extent will the spirituality (those items that address a relationship with some transcendent reality) and religiosity (those items that relate to involvements in rituals and practices identiﬁed with a speciﬁc religious denomination) items of the MMRS form diﬀerent dimensions? (c) To what extent will these dimensions of spirituality and religiosity overlap with each other? Based on the results of the principal components analysis, factors will be derived and then correlated to other measures of personality, spirituality, and family dynamics. This will be done to determine whether these items hold any intrinsic validity. Finally, another principal components analysis will be performed where the MMRS items will be analyzed along with measures of the ﬁve-factor model (FFM) personality domains and a measure of spirituality. Such an analysis will examine the extent to which items contained in the MMRS are overlapping with traditional personality qualities. To be ultimately of use to the ﬁeld, measures of spirituality and religiosity should capture aspects of psychological functioning that are not redundant with extant measures of personality (see Piedmont, 2005).

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Method Participants Participants consisted of 452 undergraduate students (309 women, 142 men), ages 17 to 41 (Mean = 18.9) from a Midwestern state university. Concerning religious preference, 48% were Catholic, 41% were Christian, 1% were Jewish and Muslim, 4% were atheist/agnostic, and 6% indicated other. All participants volunteered and received course credit for their involvement. Measures Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (MMRS) The Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working Group (1999) developed this 40-item questionnaire by compiling abbreviated measures of 12 key domains (Daily Spiritual Experiences, Meaning, Values, Beliefs, Forgiveness, Private Religious Practices, Religious/ Spiritual Coping, Religious Support, Religious/Spiritual History, Commitment, Organizational Religiousness, and Religious Preference) that were identiﬁed as relevant to health outcomes and physiological, mental, and emotional well-being. Because the items of the MMRS were derived from a variety of instruments, there is no common response format. Items were answered from 4-point Likert-type to 8-point Likert-type indices along with a few open-ended questions. For the purposes of this paper, one item was not included in any analyses because it did not convey anything more than demographic information about the respondent: Item 36, which asked for participants’ religious aﬃliation. Therefore, only 39 items were included in all analyses. Two of these items were transformed into z-scores prior to analysis. These were Item 32 (During the last year how much was the annual contribution of your household to your congregation or to religious causes?) and 33 (In an average week, how many hours do you spend in activities on behalf of your church or activities that you do for religious or spiritual reasons?). Because these items were on metrics very diﬀerent from the other items and would bias any analyses, they were transformed. Idler et al. (2003) analyzed data from the General Social Survey of 1998 where the MMRS was included. Results provided general support for the reliability of most of the content scales and evidence of convergent and discriminant validity was provided.

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Spiritual Transcendence Scale Developed by Piedmont (1999), this 24-item scale consists of three subscales: Universality (a belief in the unity and purpose of life), Prayer Fulﬁllment (an experienced feeling of joy and contentment that results from prayer and/or meditation), and Connectedness (a sense of personal responsibility and connection to others). Items are answered on a 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree) Likert-type scale. A rater version of this scale was also developed to be completed by the peer evaluators. This form contains the same format as the selfreport version, with the exception that items are worded in the third person. Piedmont (1999, 2001) has shown these scales to have acceptable reliabilities for both the self-report (.83, .87, and .64 for Universality, Prayer Fulﬁllment, and Connectedness, respectively) and peer versions (.91, .87, and .72, respectively). Scores on these scales have also been shown to predict a variety of related spiritual constructs and a number of psychologically salient outcomes (e.g., stress experience, well-being, and attitudes towards sexuality; Piedmont, 1999). Piedmont and Leach (2002) have showed that the STS generalized cross-culturally to a sample of Indian Muslims, Christians, and Hindus. Faith Maturity Scale, Short Form (FMS) Developed by Benson, Donahue, and Erickson (1993), this scale assesses the degree to which one’s life is energized by a fulﬁlling faith orientation. Although this instrument contains 38 items, the version used in this study was the 12-item short form developed by Donahue (reported in Benson et al., 1993). Benson et al. (1993) report a correlation between scores on the short version and the total scale of r = .94. There are two subscales: the Horizontal, which evaluates the degree to which one’s faith leads toward commitments to help others, and the Vertical, which looks at one’s sense of closeness to God. Scores are obtained by simply adding responses from each item. Alpha reliability for the overall score was reported to be .88 for an adult sample of mainline Protestants. Individuals responded to the questions on a 1 (never true) to 7 (always true) Likert-type scale. One item, Item 9, was changed in these research studies from “My life is committed to Jesus Christ” to “My life is committed to the God of my understanding.” This was done to make the scale relevant to non-Christian, God-believing participants. Piedmont and Nelson (2001) found the scales to be structurally and predictively valid in a

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large sample of mostly Catholic individuals. Further, information on this scale was found to be independent of existing personality measures. Adjective Check List (ACL) Developed by Gough and Heilbrun (1983), this measure consists of 300 adjectives from which individuals select those which are viewed as most self-descriptive. Using a panel of experts familiar with the ﬁve-factor model (FFM) of personality, John (1990) created adjective marker scales for each dimension of the FFM by having these experts identify Adjective Check List items representative of each domain. These rational judgments were supported by empirical analyses that demonstrated both the convergence of these markers both with other measures of the FFM (McCrae, 1990) and with relevant scales from the ACL (Piedmont, McCrae, & Costa, 1991). These FFM marker scales were used in this study to capture self-ratings of personality. Family Environment Scale (FES) Developed by Moos and Moos (1994), this scale contains 90 statements about various aspects of one’s family environment that are responded to on a true-false scale. The instrument has 10 scales which assess three diﬀerent domains of family life: Quality of the Relationships which is measured by the Cohesion, Expressiveness, and Conﬂict scales; Personal Growth which is measured by the Independence, Achievement Orientation, Intellectual-Cultural, Active-Recreational Orientation, and Moral-Religious Emphasis scales; and the System Maintenance Dimension, captured by the Organization and Control scales. These scales show adequate internal consistency and temporal stability. Research has shown that the dimensions are useful for understanding the contribution of family dynamics to the experience of both physical and psychological problems. Piedmont, Ciarrocchi, and Williams (2002) showed that these scales correlated in meaningful ways with diﬀerent types of God image. Thus, one’s family environment appears to impact how one’s spirituality and religious values develop. Procedure All participants completed the questionnaires in groups of 10 to 25 individuals. All materials were presented as part of an overall packet

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of information. The order of the scales was counterbalanced to control for potential order eﬀects. All participants volunteered and received course credit for their time. Results Descriptive Statistics Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for each item separately by gender. These results ﬁnd mean-level values were consistent with those presented normatively, although only seven signiﬁcant gender diﬀerences are noted here in contrast to the 24 found normatively. This may be a function of the smaller sample size used in this study. Nonetheless, women rated themselves signiﬁcantly higher on “forgiveness of others” and “private prayer,” while men rated themselves higher on “feel that God is punishing them,” “religion involved in dealing with stress,” “congregation makes many demands,” “to what extend do you consider yourself to be a religious person,” and “To what extent do you consider yourself to be a spiritual person.” Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics and alpha reliability estimates for each of the short scales. Alpha reliabilities for the diﬀerent scales range from .28 to .91 (median = .68). Of the 15 values presented, ﬁve are under .60. Thus, the selection of items based on their item-total correlations has not resulted in smaller scales with high reliabilities. This may be a result of the very small number of items used to assess each construct. A comparison of the mean level scores for each of these scale with comparable scores obtained in a sample of adult, chronic pain patients (Rippentrop, Altmaier, Chen, Found, & Keﬀala, 2005) provides surprising similarities. Aside from the coping and religious support scales, there is much consistency in means and standard deviations across these two very diverse samples. Factor Analysis Using SPSS 11.5, a principal components analysis was conducted using the 39 MMRS items. Nine factors emerged with eigenvalues greater than one, and the scree test indicated that three factors, accounting for 43% of the variance, were appropriate (ﬁrst ﬁve eigenvalues were: 12.66, 2.34, 1.81, 1.58, 1.49). These factors were obliquely rotated and the pattern loadings are presented in Table 3. As can be seen, Factor 1 appears to capture spiritually-related issues, with

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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for Each MMRS Item Separately by Gender MMRS Item Daily Spiritual Experiences Feel God’s presence Find comfort in religion Feel deep inner peace Desire to be closer to God Feel God’s love Touched by beauty of creation Meaning Life unfolds according to divine plan Sense of mission Values/Beliefs God watches over Responsibility to reduce pain/suﬀering Forgiveness Forgives self Forgives others Know that God forgives Private Religious Practices Private prayer Mediation Religious Programs Bible reading Grace for meals Religions & Spiritual Coping Positive Religious Coping Life is part of a larger force Work with God as a partner Look to God for support Religion involved in dealing with stress Negative Religious Coping Feel that God is punishing Wonder if abandoned Make sense of situation without God Religious Support Congregation Beneﬁts Congregation helps with illness Congregation helps with problems Congregation Problems Congregation makes many demands Congregation is critical Religious/Spiritual History Faith change Faith gain Faith loss Commitment Carry beliefs to other areas of life Yearly contribution Service hours Organizational Religiousness/Public Activities Service attendance Other public religious activities Overall Self-Rating of Religious Intensity Religious Person Spiritual Person * p < .05; ** p <.01; *** p <.001; two-tailed.

Wo Mean

n

309 309 309 309 308 309

3.39 3.44 3.31 3.76 3.74 3.84

142 142 142 141 142 142

3.29 .66 3.41 .19 3.49 –1.52 3.84 –.53 3.69 .33 3.73 .81

308 309

3.04 2.93

142 142

2.92 2.86

1.45 .93

307 307

3.52 2.76

142 142

3.43 2.72

1.39 .54

309 309 305

3.12 3.35 3.65

142 142 142

3.03 3.16 3.55

1.29 2.64** 1.44

307 308 308 309 309

4.51 1.95 1.57 2.23 3.28

142 142 142 142 142

4.00 2.87** 2.15 –.13 1.57 .01 2.39 –1.22 3.48 –.89

309 309 309 309

2.25 2.18 2.96 1.54

142 142 142 142

2.39 –1.55 2.31 –1.60 2.85 1.20 1.70 –2.04*

306 306 308

1.31 2.12 2.68

142 140 141

1.49 –2.75** 2.24 –1.19 2.68 .01

308 308

2.93 2.84

142 142

2.78 2.76

308 308

1.52 1.63

141 141

1.67 –2.02* 1.70 –.80

308 307 308

.35 .53 .32

142 139 141

308 309 309

2.66 426.72 1.09

142 142 142

309 309

3.25 2.16

142 142

3.24 2.25

309 309

2.40 2.54

142 142

2.57 –2.09* 2.71 –2.11*

n

Mean

.39 .49 .30

t

1.35 .71

–.75 .75 .34

2.63 .37 2601.62 –1.26 .98 3.25 .07 –.77

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Table 2. Descriptive Statistics and Alpha Reliabilities for each MMRS Scale MMRS Scale Daily Spiritual Experiences Meaning Values/Beliefs Forgiveness Private Religious Practices Religions & Spiritual Coping Positive Religious Coping Negative Religious Coping Religious Support Congregation Beneﬁts Congregation Problems Religious/Spiritual History Commitment Organizational Religiousness/ Public Activities Overall Self-Rating of Religious Intensity

n

Current Sample Mean SD

Alpha

Adult Sample1 Mean SD

450 451 448 448 448 442 450 444 450 451 450 446 451 452

21.44 5.90 6.22 9.96 13.53 15.19 9.03 6.16 8.90 5.69 3.22 1.19 * 5.43

6.7 1.3 1.1 1.6 5.5 3.1 2.5 1.3 2.7 2.1 1.3 1.0 * 2.4

.89 .70 .45 .61 .71 .56 .83 .39 .67 .91 .69 .28 .51 .72

22.28 * 9.33 9.60 17.21 * 13.14 17.33 13.62 6.61 7.01 * * 5.54

8.3 * 1.9 1.8 8.7 * 4.5 2.6 2.2 1.6 1.3 * * 2.7

452

5.05

1.4

.75

5.27

1.5

Note: No values are presented for the student sample because two of these items were converted to z-scores for analysis. For the adult sample, information on these scales is not provided. Items included in each scale are noted in Table 1. 1

Data from Rippentrop et al. (2005).

items such as, “I feel God’s love for me,” “I desire a union with God,” and “Frequency of private prayer.” Factor 2 represents religious involvement (or religiosity), as indicated by items such as, “Frequency reading the Bible,” “Frequency of prayer before meals,” and “Had a religious experience that changed life.” Finally, Factor 3 contains items that reﬂect a state of spiritual distress, represented by a feeling of abandonment by God and interpersonal conﬂict with other congregants. Items include “I wonder whether God has abandoned me,” “God has abandoned me,” and “How often are the people in your congregation critical of you and the things you do?” Factors 1 and 2 were moderately correlated, r = .43. Factor 3 was independent of the other two factors. Factor scores were created using the regression method. These scores were then correlated with measures of religious involvement, personality, spirituality, and family environment. The results are presented in Table 4. As can be seen, Factors 1 and 2 correlated signiﬁcantly with the religious involvement scales. The pattern of ﬁndings supports the validity of these two factors. For example, Factor

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Table 3. Pattern Matrix from the Principal Components Analysis of the MMRS Items MMRS Item Feel God’s love for me Look to God for strength God as partner Spiritually touched by beauty of creation God watches over me I know God forgives me Sense of Mission I feel God’s presence Desire for union with God Carry religious beliefs into life Find strength in my religion My life is part of spiritual force Events in life unfold to divine plan Feel a deep inner peace or harmony Religion involved in dealing with stressful situations I consider myself a spiritual person I consider myself a religious person Frequency of private prayer Responsible for reducing pain in the world I have forgiven myself I have forgiven those who hurt me Frequency read the Bible/other religious literature Average hours/week spent religious activities (z-score) Frequency take part activities at a place of worship Frequency attend religious services Frequency pray before meals If ill, how supportive congregation Had problem, how much comfort from congregation Frequency view religious programming on radio/TV Average monthly contribution to congregation (z-score) Had a signiﬁcant gain in faith Frequency meditate Had religious experience that changed life How often congregation critical of you God has abandoned me Congregation makes too many demands on you God is punishing me for my sins Had signiﬁcant loss of faith Make sense of situation without relying on God

Component Spirituality .76 .72 .72 .68 .67 .67 .67 .66 .65 .62 .60 .60 .59 .55 .52 .51 .49 .48 .47 .44 .38 .11 –.04 .05 .20 .05 .17 .17 .00 –.19 .28 .23 .22 .04 –.15 .07 .17 –.22 –.16

Religiosity .09 .19 .10 .04 .12 –.10 –.02 .22 .20 .22 .31 .07 .06 .03 .40 .28 .41 .38 .03 –.17 –.11 .73 .71 .70 .66 .59 .58 .56 .50 .43 .37 .36 .36 .09 –.08 .12 –.02 .07 –.22

Note: Loadings having an absolute value of .30 or greater are given in bold.

Religious Crisis –.12 –.04 .08 .04 –.09 –.09 .12 –.12 –.05 .01 –.22 .28 .13 –.01 –.06 .03 –.05 –.19 .22 –.09 –.04 .04 –.08 .13 –.08 .10 .09 .09 .14 –.14 .09 .06 .12 .62 .57 .54 .51 .43 .32

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Table 4. Correlations Between MMRS Factors and the Religious, Spiritual, and Psychosocial Outcomes Outcome Criteria Religious Behavior Frequency Read the Bible Frequency Read Religious Lit Frequency of Prayer Union with God Relationship with God Frequency Attend Services Personality Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Agreeableness Conscientiousness

MMRS Item-Based Component Spirituality Religiosity Religious Crisis .39*** .33*** .61*** .67*** .72*** .45*** –.11* .03 .03 .22*** .12*

.68*** .62*** .57*** .49*** .53*** .71*** –.08 –.04 –.01 .14** .06

.03 .00 –.11* –.08 –.02 –.10* .04 .05 .01 –.09 –.09

Spiritual Transcendence Scales Universality Prayer Fulﬁllment Connectedness Total Transcendence

.52*** .66*** .24*** .65***

.28*** .55*** .06 .43***

.07 .09 –.01 .08

Faith Maturity Scale Vertical Scale Horizontal Scale Total FMS

.76*** .53*** .76***

.47*** .35*** .51***

–.02 .17*** .07

.08 –.03 .02 –.05 .11* .02 .07 .42*** .01 .03

–.05 –.06 .01 –.06 .07 –.01 –.03 .47*** –.03 –.01

–.04 .13** .08 .13** .12* –.01 .08 .08 .05 .04

Family Environment Scale Cohesion Expressiveness Conﬂict Independence Achievement Orientation Intellectual-Cultural Orientation Activity Moral-Religious Orientation Organization Control

N = 419. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p <.001; two-tailed.

1 (spirituality) correlated signiﬁcantly stronger with the Union with God and Relationship with God items than Factor 2 (religiosity), [t(416) = 4.83, 5.53, p < .001, respectively]. However, Factor 2 correlated signiﬁcantly stronger than Factor 1 on the Frequency of

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Reading the Bible, Frequency of Reading Religious Literature, and Frequency of Attending Services [t(416) = 7.56, 7.10, 7.14, p < .001, respectively]. There was no diﬀerence concerning Frequency of Prayer [t(416) = 1.06, n.s.]. Factor 3 correlated negatively with both Frequency of Prayer [r(417) = –.11, p < .05] and Frequency Attend Services [r(417) = –.10, p < .05]. Factors 1 and 2 both had some overlap with personality, although Factor 1 seemed to be more related than Factor 2. Factor 3 was independent of personality, indicating that the distress individuals’ feel in their relationship with God has nothing to do with any sense of personal emotional dysphoria or lability. As expected, both Factors 1 and 2 correlated with the two measures of spirituality. However, Factor 1 (spirituality) correlated signiﬁcantly stronger with total Transcendence [t(416) = 2.68, p < .01] and total Faith Maturity scores [t(416) = 7.72, p < .001] than Factor 2 (religiosity). Interestingly, Factor 3 had a signiﬁcant correlation with the Horizontal Scale from the Faith Maturity Scale [r(417) = .17, p < .001]. Finally, both Factors 1 and 2 are correlated with aspects of family functioning that relate to a moral and religious orientation. Factor 3 related to a family dynamic characterized by Expressiveness, Independence, and Achievement Orientation. Finally, a joint principal components analysis was conducted using the 39 MMRS items, the ﬁve personality domains of the FFM, and the three facet scales from the STS. Eleven factors emerged with eigenvalues greater than one, but a scree test indicated that four factors, accounting for 43% of the variance, were appropriate (ﬁrst six eigenvalues are: 13.60, 2.51, 2.23, 1.92, 1.62, 1.56). These four factors were obliquely rotated and the pattern loadings are presented in Table 5. As can be seen, Factor 1 again represents spirituality. The three facet scales from the STS all load on this dimension as do items such as “I have a sense of mission or calling in my own life,” and “I think about how my life is part of a larger spiritual force.” Factor 2 represents personality, given that all ﬁve of the personality domains have their highest loadings here along with the two items for forgiveness. Factor 3 represents a religiosity dimension and includes items such as “Besides religious services how often do you take part in other activities at a place of worship,” “How often do you read the Bible or other religious literature,” and “How often are prayers or grace said before or after meals in your home.” Factor 4 again represents items capturing spiritual distress themes surrounding

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Table 5. Pattern Matrix of the Joint Factor Analysis of MMRS Items, Five-Factor Model Personality Domains, and Spiritual Transcendence Facet Scales Factor Component Spirituality

Religiosity

MMRS Item Look to God for Strength God watches over me Sense of Mission Feel God’s love for me God as partner STS—Universality Desire for union with God Spiritually touched by beauty of creation My life is part of spiritual force Events in life unfold to divine plan Carry religious beliefs into life I feel God’s presence STS—Prayer Fulﬁllment I know God forgives me Find strength in my religion Religion involved in dealing with stressful situations Frequency of private prayer I consider myself a spiritual person Responsible for reducing pain in the world I consider myself a religious person STS—Connectedness Feel a deep inner peace or harmony Had a signiﬁcant gain in faith Frequency take part activities at a place of worship Frequency read the Bible/other religious literature Average hours/week spent religious activities (z-score) Frequency attend religious services Frequency pray before meals If ill, how supportive congregation Frequency view religious programming on radio/TV Had problem, how much comfort from congregation Average monthly contribution to congregation (z-score) Frequency meditate Had religious experience that changed life FFM—Neuroticism FFM—Openness FFM—Conscientiousness FFM—Agreeableness I have forgiven myself I have forgiven those who hurt me FFM—Extraversion How often congregation critical of you God has abandoned me Had signiﬁcant loss of faith Congregation makes too many demands on you God is punishing me for my sins Make sense of situation without relying on God

.72 .70 .69 .69 .68 .68 .67 .66 .66 .66 .65 .63 .62 .62 .55 .54 .51 .51 .50 .46 .46 .39 .37 .06 .16 –.01 .19 .08 .22 .01 .24 –.13 .21 .31 .14 –.14 –.07 .10 .24 .29 .03 .04 –.12 –.11 .05 .23 –.19

.19 .07 –.04 .12 .14 –.10 .18 .04 .04 .01 .20 .23 .27 –.10 .33 .38 .33 .27 .01 .42 –.27 .12 .31 .71 .70 .68 .65 .59 .54 .51 .50 .38 .37 .31 –.18 .06 .12 .07 –.07 –.09 –.09 .19 –.02 .03 .24 .02 –.19

Loadings having an absolute value of .30 or greater are given in bold.

Personality Religious Crisis –.08 –.05 .01 .12 .03 .03 –.14 .11 –.04 –.08 –.07 –.02 –.04 .13 –.02 –.02 –.10 .14 .09 .10 .06 .38 –.07 .07 .07 .11 .11 –.04 .06 .09 .06 –.06 .18 –.07 –.71 .64 .56 .52 .51 .38 .27 –.03 –.03 .02 –.10 –.26 .19

–.17 –.18 .05 –.23 –.03 .10 –.16 –.00 .24 .07 –.09 –.23 .07 –.18 –.33 –.13 –.26 .02 .21 –.12 .08 –.02 .07 .13 .07 –.02 –.12 .07 .11 .17 .13 –.11 .09 .12 .01 .07 –.16 –.11 –.06 –.01 .20 .55 .54 .52 .43 .40 .36

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abandonment/punishment by God, loss of faith, and conﬂict with fellow congregants. Interestingly, the only substantive correlation between factors was found for the spirituality and religiosity dimensions (Factors 1 and 3, respectively), r = .40. All other interfactor correlations were below .05. Discussion Four important points emerge from these data. First, it is interesting to note that spirituality and religiosity formed their own dimensions that were independent of personality, albeit overlapping ones. This suggests these constructs, despite a variety of deﬁnitions and scales, represent unitary dimensions. Rather than being considered multidimensional, religiosity and spirituality may be better conceived as multifaceted constructs. A distinction needs to be made between a multidimensional versus multifaceted scale because each carries with it important theoretical and psychometric implications. A multidimensional scale is one that contains several, independent dimensions. Scores on one of these dimensions do not correlate with scores on any other, and information contained across these dimensions is nonredundant. A multifaceted scale, on the other hand, is one that contains multiple dimensions that are all correlated to some degree. This overlap exists because the dimensions presumably are all emerging from a common latent construct. Multidimensional scales provide breadth of coverage, while multifaceted scales provide greater ﬁdelity of assessment for a single domain. A good example of these two types of scales is the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992). This scale is multidimensional because it assesses the ﬁve, independent dimensions of personality and provides comprehensive coverage of the ﬁeld of traditionally deﬁned personality constructs. It is also a multifaceted instrument because within each personality dimension, there are six speciﬁc “facet” scales (or subscales) that capture discrete aspects of this larger domain. All six facets are highly correlated and constitute a single overall dimension. However, each facet possesses suﬃcient unique variance to warrant separate interpretations. A second important point of these ﬁndings is that the spirituality and religiosity dimensions are signiﬁcantly correlated. This corresponds closely to ﬁeld research that has polled peoples’ perceptions of religiosity and spirituality and found that most people see them

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as closely related, but distinct constructs (Marler & Hadaway, 2002; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2003; Zinnbauer et al., 1997). In fact, most people see themselves as both religious and spiritual, with very few individuals indicating that they are one, but not the other. Piedmont and colleagues (Dy-Liacco, Kennedy, Parker, & Piedmont, 2005; Piedmont, Ciarrocchi, Dy-Liacco, & Williams, 2006) found similar results employing Structural Equation Modeling techniques in several studies, employing both American and Filipino samples, where the latent disattenuated correlation between these two constructs ranged from .45 to .64. Further, these same studies indicated that despite their overlap, spirituality and religiosity reﬂected important aspects of the numinous that could not be contained by a single dimension. Additional research will need to be conducted that examines the incremental predictive validity of these constructs over each other. Only in this way can it be determined if both are necessary for explaining behavior. Third, the two items dealing with forgiveness of self and others are linked notably with the personality dimensions rather than spirituality/religiousness. Forgiveness is being presented in both the clinical literature and research in the psychology of religion as a salient spiritual/religious construct. According to current data, however, the construct of forgiveness is distinct from religious and spiritual phenomena. This may be due to these items not explicitly linking forgiveness to God, the divine, or the sacred. However, using more developed measures of forgiveness, Walker and Gorsuch (2002) found that the dimensions of the FFM explained anywhere from 10% to 32% of the variance in four dispositional measures of forgiveness, a similar ﬁnding to the results here linking forgiveness to personality. Consistent with Walker and Gorsuch, the factor analysis results (i.e., Factor 2) showed that low Neuroticism and high Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were linked to more frequent forgiving of self and others (Extraversion loaded less than .30 on this factor). This raises the empirical question, “How much overlap can a numinous scale have with personality and still be considered numinous?” Finally, the fourth factor that emerged in this data set dealt with issues surrounding abandonment by God and rejection by one’s faith community. This dimension was independent of the other factors. There is growing research attention focusing on the “dark side” of religiosity/spirituality and uses terms such as “negative religious coping” (Pargament, 1997) or religious/spiritual struggle (Exline & Rose,

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2005). The loadings of these items contribute further to this important issue in religious research by identifying a core set of conﬂictbased items that are not simply a product of emotional dysphoria or interpersonal style. These items rather represent a direct conﬂict with transcendent issues that seemingly tap into other psychological aspects of the individual not already identiﬁed by traditional personality dimensions. Limitations. There are two issues that need to be considered when evaluating these ﬁndings. First, the limited nature of this sample needs to be considered. Participants are college students, mostly white, and predominantly Christian. Although the obtained mean scores were found comparable to scores obtained in an adult medical sample, it is not clear how these results may generalize to other, more diverse samples. Second, our conclusions about the unidimensional nature of spirituality and religiosity need to be tempered by the fact that the MMRS scales, because they are so brief, do not provide much depth to the constructs they assess. As a result, they may reﬂect only the more general aspects of the numinous, which may explain why these scales formed only two dimensions. It is possible that if more developed measures of these constructs (e.g., their long forms) were employed, a more diverse factor structure may have been found. Conclusions. Overall, these ﬁndings provide some much-needed information about the MMRS scale and its utility to the ﬁeld. Although items were selected on the basis of their item-total correlations, it is clear that several of these small item scales have very poor reliability. For those with more acceptable levels, it still needs to be determined whether they maintain the content coverage of the constructs they are intended to measure. Much more information still needs to be collected about the validity of the MMRS scales before it can be considered a useful psychometric instrument for assessing numinous qualities. As it currently exists, it should not be considered anything more than just a brief screening instrument. Nonetheless, these data do oﬀer support for the potential utility of the constructs contained in the MMRS for expanding our understanding of spiritual processes. Research should continue to explore the predictive value of the individual types of constructs (e.g., private religious practices, daily spiritual experiences, religious coping, etc.), especially using the long form versions, where normative and validity data already exist (e.g., The Daily Experiences Scale, Underwood

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& Teresi, 2002; The Religious Coping Scale, Pargament, Koenig, & Perez, 2000). Researchers should also examine the larger numinous dimensions these scales form; they may serve as the basis for the development of a taxonomy of numinous constructs. Further, the data do indicate that the information captured by the MMRS (with the exception of the forgiveness items) appeared to be mostly independent of personality as represented by the domains of the FFM. Thus, the MMRS has the potential to add explanatory power to any predictive model. Future research will need to document the incremental validity of the MMRS (Piedmont, 2005). The principal components analyses indicated that despite having a collection of items from 12 diﬀerent domains, these items really constitute two major areas of interest: one relating to spiritual experiences and the other to religious involvements. These highly correlated dimensions did evidence some construct validity. Thus, the diverse numinous phenomena may coalesce around these two, unidimensional constructs; spirituality and religiosity may be core individual diﬀerence qualities that are aﬀected by diﬀerent psychological systems. Such a ﬁnding is consistent with research studies using other measures of spirituality and religiosity (e.g., Dy-Liacco, et al. 2005; Piedmont, et al. 2005). For now, though, individuals interested in measuring spiritual and religious qualities may be better served by employing established instruments. It may be premature for the MMRS to be used as a broadband measure of the numinous. More evidence is needed demonstrating that the scales are faithful reﬂections of the larger scales from which its items were harvested. It also needs to be determined whether the MMRS scales have suﬃcient predictive validity to be useful in both research and applied contexts. References Benson, P. L., Donahue, M. J., & Erikson, J. A. (1993). The Faith Maturity Scale: Conceptualization, measurement, and empirical validation. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 5, 1–26. Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO PI-R technical manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources. Dy-Liacco, G. S., Kennedy, M. C., Parker, D. J., & Piedmont, R. L. (2005). Spiritual transcendence as an unmediated causal predictor of psychological growth and worldview among Filipinos. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 16, 261–287. Exline, J. J., & Rose, E. (2005). Religious and spiritual struggles. In R. Paloutzian & C. Park (Eds.), The handbook of the psychology of religion (pp. 315–330). New York: Guilford.

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VARIANT USES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS TO JUSTIFY SOCIAL ATTITUDES Mark M. Leach, Jacob J. Levy, Lisa Denton* Abstract The purposes of this paper were to determine: (a) attitudinal valence of six social attitudes considered negative by many interpretations of the Bible, (b) which social attitudes participants considered religion as a primary motivator for their attitudinal valence, (c) which religious variables predicted the attitudinal valence and religious motivation, and (d) qualitative responses delineating their rationale for choosing or not choosing religion as their primary motivator. Using a mixed-methods design, participants included religion as a rationale for their attitudinal valence regarding some social topics but not others (e.g., homosexuality vs. lying). Thus, some individuals mix religious and secular attitudes depending on the topic under discussion. Religious fundamentalism accounted for the majority of the variance, though not for each social attitude. Results indicated that some social issues are motivated by religious attitudes whereas others are based within the secular realm. Reasons for participants’ decision-making justiﬁcations based on religious and nonreligious motivations are given.

Empirical research and attitude surveys have assessed personal views of a wide range of topics, many of which are speciﬁcally embedded within the Bible. However, no empirical studies have assessed individual reasoning behind many of these social attitudes. Thus, the current project was designed to delineate (a) attitudinal valence of six social attitudes considered negative by many interpretations of the Bible, (b) which social attitudes participants considered religion as a primary motivator for their attitudinal valence, (c) which religious variables predicted the attitudinal valence and religious motivation, and (d) qualitative responses delineating their rationale for choosing or not choosing religion as their primary motivator. The current project grew from discussions in various multicultural psychology courses where some students frequently indicated that they justify their negative beliefs toward the gay/lesbian/bisexual/

* Author Note: Send correspondence to Mark M. Leach, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi, 118 College Dr. #5025, Hattiesburg, MS 39406–0001 or via email to [email protected]. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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transgendered (glbt) community on religious grounds but make no such indication with other topics (e.g., premarital sex, lying). It appears that some peoples’ attitudes are justiﬁed based on a literal interpretation of the Bible whereas other attitudes are based in a historicalcritical context (Helminiak, 2002). Literalists believe that the Bible is the absolute word of God and must be followed closely, while historical-critical followers believe that the Bible may be the word of God but must be read and understood within the context of both the eras it was written and modern culture. Thus, the impetus for this study, grown from the classroom, was to determine what “types” of Christian attitudes were more strongly inﬂuenced by religious versus nonreligious motivations when discussing a variety of social topics. The researchers sought to determine why participants include religious beliefs as a rationale, or a motivator, for decisions regarding some social topics but not others, though all topics incorporated into this study are often considered equally negatively by some interpretations of the Bible. Religious individuals frequently discuss biblical passages with diﬀerent interpretations and relevancy. It would be expected that literalists would be less likely to show attitudinal deviance toward a variety of social and personal topics than historical-critical respondents. Unfortunately, there are no empirically supported instruments that measure literal and historical-critical interpretations of the Bible. However, recent work in fundamentalist beliefs approximate some of these interpretations, as these instruments often include questions such as, “The Bible is the inerrant word of God.” Conversely, those who consider the historical context embedded within the Bible and consider its continued relevance to modern social and personal issues would be more likely to demonstrate religiousness as their primary motivator for some social and personal issues while relying on other motivators for other issues. It could be argued that these biblical interpretations translate into cultural inﬂuence strength, where modern culture or other variables may have greater immediate strength than religious beliefs. Other well-established religious variables have been related to social attitudes, namely intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation. Since Allport’s thesis (1966) that intrinsic individuals wish for uniﬁcation of being and transcendence of selﬁsh needs in order to live more fully as God intended, and extrinsic individuals as those who use faith to endorse their way of life and is utilitarian, hundreds of stud-

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ies have utilized these constructs to assess a wide range of social and personal variables. For example, relevant to this study, Rowatt and Schmitt (2003) found that intrinsic individuals were less likely than extrinsic individuals to engage in more restricted sexuality and decreased sociosexuality. Batson, Floyd, Meyer, and Winner (1999) found instrinsic faith to be positively associated with anti-gay attitudes. The intrinsic religious orientation literature has been confounded with empirically associated constructs such as authoritarianism (e.g., Altmeyer, 1996) but still maintains a unique and informative variable within the ﬁeld, particularly when assessing social attitudes. Theoretically, it would be predicted that intrinsic individuals would be less likely than extrinsic individuals to use religious and secular motives for various social attitudes. For example, given topics contained within the Bible often considered “wrong” by many followers one would expect more consistent negative attitudes and greater religious motivations for these attitudes among intrinsic individuals. Recently there has been growing interest in faith maturity and religious problem-solving as variables tapping unique variance in the psychology of religion literature. Faith maturity is often deﬁned as the degree to which one’s life is motivated by a rewarding faith orientation (Benson, Donahue, & Erickson, 1993). It captures a spiritual dimension of individuals, aligned with other variables such as emotional maturity and prosocial behaviors (Piedmont & Nelson, 2001), and has been used across multiple faith groups (Leach, Piedmont, & Monteiro, 2001). Consistent with the tenets of this study, it would seem that individuals who report lower faith maturity would show greater consistent predictive attitudes across a range of social and personal issues than those reporting higher scores. It could be argued that motivations driving social attitudes are, in part, contingent upon the degree to which individuals rely on God for problem-solving assistance. Pargament’s (1997) well-developed work suggests that when faced with some decisions, people either defer to God, collaborate with God, or tend to be self-reliant. Those deferring to God would seem to be more religiously conservative and therefore be more consistent across their social and personal attitudes. An initial study into religiously-based decision making when determining social attitudes, this project went beyond simply correlating religious variables with social variables. Religious decision-making has often been examined with other variables speciﬁc to a particular

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study. For example, religious coping, perhaps a variant of religious decision-making, has a short but impressive history (see Pargament, 1997) that can be used in a variety of settings. A limitation of many of these studies is that they include established religious instruments measuring religious variables and social attitudes, and ﬁnd that religion does or does not signiﬁcantly inﬂuence the particular attitude. However, the rationale for individuals’ choosing religion over other alternative motivations or inﬂuences has not been determined. In essence, when determining the extent to which a particular religious variable inﬂuences a social attitude, the limited religious variable options are, by deﬁnition, restrictive. If researchers wish to determine the extent to which religion is inﬂuential then both religious and nonreligious options should be given. Individuals rely on a variety of people and experiences to shape their attitudes, such as friends, previous education, family, legal guidelines, a personal experience, the media, or an unknown inﬂuence. Perhaps religion motivates some social attitudes while other experiences (e.g., family beliefs, media) motivate other social attitudes. Because results are often restricted by methodology, empirical studies may not allow for the breadth of motivational experiences needed to fully assess attitudes. It is possible that religious variables may be more inﬂuential among some social attitudes than others, as anecdotally evidenced in the multicultural courses. Individuals are likely to mix religious and secular attitudes depending on the social topic presented, and a purpose of the study was to determine which social topics are likely to be primarily motivated by religious beliefs and which are likely to be primarily motivated by secular beliefs. These religious and secular motivators will help dictate the valence (positive, neutral, negative) of the topic attitudes. A means of assessing attitudes to determine whether religion inﬂuences decision-making is through qualitative methodologies and mixed methods designs. Recent calls for qualitative and mixed designs that increase nuanced understandings of attitudes have recently been made (e.g., Creswell, 2002; Hanson, Creswell, Plano Clark, Petski, & Creswell, 2005). For example, Fairrow, McCallum, and MessingerRapport (2004) recently reported preferences among African Americans for a speciﬁc medical procedure using focus groups. Thematic and latent content analyses were conducted and ﬁve themes were determined to inﬂuence the medical decisions, including religion. Iyer (2002), using a mixed method design, found religion to inﬂuence use

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of contraception in India. Though with disparate purposes, both of these studies provide valuable information because they tap previously unknown inﬂuential motivating variables. They allow researchers to determine underlying motivations from a participant-driven philosophy, meaning that crucial information could have been lost if a predetermined design were used. While these and other studies may help determine whether religion is an inﬂuential variable for a particular variable under study, they do not allow for comparisons across multiple simultaneous alternatives. When determining whether religion is inﬂuential, it could be that other factors are actually more inﬂuential for a particular social variable. For example, a strong relationship to God has been consistently inversely associated with sexual activity (e.g., Cotton, Zebracki, Rosenthal, Tsevat, & Drotar, 2006). Jenks & Christiansen (2002) found that marital status determined attitudes toward six topics, including three used in this study, premarital sex, homosexuality, and extramarital relations, among married and unmarried Catholics. However, alternative possible motivations for their decisions were not presented, thus limiting the determination of the strength of the religious decision-making. A similar argument could be made for the other three nonsexual topics used in this study (i.e., lying, drinking to excess, equal rights for women). It is diﬃcult to determine the primary motivations that individuals choose when considering social topics without the ability to choose among alternatives. Only with these alternatives can determinations be made as to which attitudinal motivations become most salient depending on social topic. Mixed qualitative and quantitative designs are needed to tap not only the factors that contribute to social attitudes, but the underlying motivation of those attitudes. Because of its unique purposes and exploratory nature, this study utilized a mixed method design. In order to determine the extent to which the religious variables account for diﬀering portions of variance across three sexually-based and three nonsexually-based topics, a series of multiple regression analyses was utilized to partial out unique eﬀects, followed by discriminant analyses to reduce multicollinearity concerns. It was expected that attitudinal valence would diﬀer based on topic, with the sexual topics perceived negatively among religiously motivated individuals. It was also expected that primary motivations for topics would diﬀer based on the topic, and that fundamental and conservative religious participants would focus

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on religion as their primary rationale for their sexually-based beliefs but not the nonsexually-based beliefs. Diﬀerences in religious importance among the six social attitude topics (premarital sex, homosexuality, extramarital relations, lying, drinking to excess, equal rights for women) would indicate that individuals rely on their faith to a greater extent for some topics more than others. It was expected that equal rights for women would not be inﬂuenced by religiousness due to modern equality cultural expectations in the United States, and that regardless of the primary motivator individuals would view women’s rights positively. Finally, this study determined themes that arise after participants were asked to report their reasons for choosing or not choosing religion as their primary inﬂuence. Overall, diﬀering attitudes regarding religious reliance may help indicate that biblical interpretations diﬀer not only among individuals but within individuals. Method Participants Data were collected from a sample of young adults at a midsized Southeastern university. Eighty-nine persons participated in the study (age mean = 20.2; range 18–24), 63 females and 26 males. The majority of participants self-identiﬁed as White (n = 72; 81%). The only other racial group represented was Black/African American (n = 17; 19%). All participants self-identiﬁed as “Christian” (speciﬁc denominations are unknown). Participants received course credit in exchange for their participation in the study. Procedure A sequential explanatory design was chosen as the appropriate method for conducting this investigation for several reasons: (a) the study included both quantitative and qualitative data; (b) due to the exploratory nature of the research questions, no explicit advocacy lens or theoretical position was being tested; and (c) qualitative data was used primarily to augment the quantitative data. This type of design is particularly useful for explaining relationship and/or study ﬁndings (Hanson, Creswell, Plano Clark, Petski, & Creswell, 2005). Thus, the quantitative data was collected ﬁrst by asking participants

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to complete the religious and spiritual measures. After participants completed those measures, they were asked to complete the devised measure which incorporates a qualitative component. Quantitative Religiosity Measures The Intrinsic/Extrinsic-Revised Scale (I/E-R; Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989) is a 14-item measure of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations. Using factor analysis Kirkpatrick (1989) reported that the extrinsic scale should be delineated into two factors, extrinsic-personal and extrinsic-social. Cronbach alpha levels of .83 have been reported for the intrinsic scale while the extrinsic scales have been found to range from .68–.71 (Salsman & Carlson, 2005). The instrument has been used widely in the literature and is considered a standard in the ﬁeld. Cronbach alphas for this study were as follows: intrinsic = .80; extrinsic-social = .65; and extrinsic-personal = .55. Due to the low reliability coeﬃcient for the extrinsic-personal scale, only intrinsic and extrinsic-social scales were included in subsequent analyses. The Faith Maturity Scale-Short Form (FMS; Benson, Donahue, & Erickson, 1993) is a 12-item instrument designed to determine the extent that spirituality experiences inﬂuences one’s life. The short form of the original 38-item instrument was used, with previous research reporting a correlation of r = .94 between the two forms (Benson et al., 1993). The FMS has two subscales that measure one’s commitment and closeness to God (Vertical) and one’s faith commitment to helping others (Horizontal), though only the total score was used in this study. Reliabilities of .81 or above have been reported in national and international samples (Piedmont & Leach, 2002), while the total score alpha coeﬃcient for the current study was .80. The Religious Problem-Solving Scale (RPSS; Pargament, Kennell, Hathaway, Grevengoed, Newman, & Jones, 1988) is a 36-item instrument that measures the role that religion plays in problem-solving processes. It is comprised of three subscales, Self-Directing, Collaborative, and Deferring. Recent research has found internal consistencies for these subscales to be .93, .91, and .89, respectively (e.g., Yangarber-Hicks, 2004). Similarly, coeﬃcient alphas of .91, .89, and .89 were found for the current study. The Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992) is a 20-item instrument that measures fundamentalist religious views.

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Previous research has found this scale to be positively correlated with authoritarianism, racial/ethic prejudice, and fundamental religious beliefs in Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus (Altemeyer, 1996; Hunsberger, Owusu, & Duck 1999). Internal consistency coeﬃcients for university students have been found to be .92 (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). In the current study, a coeﬃcient alpha of .85 was found. Qualitative Measure A qualitative measure was designed for this study to inquire about participants’ opinions about six social topics (three related to sexual behavior or sexuality: premarital sex, extramarital aﬀairs, and homosexuality; and three nonsexually based: lying, drinking to excess, and equal rights for women). These topics were originally conceived by the researchers as biblically-based and tap a variety of areas often considered uniformly taboo according to many proponents of conservative religious doctrine. The measure contained three sections for each of the six social topics. First, participants were asked to write about their beliefs about a social issue [responding to a question, “What are your beliefs about (lying)?”]. Second, they were asked to rank order their inﬂuences regarding their beliefs about the social issues on a scale of 1 to 8 (1 = most inﬂuenced belief to 8 = least inﬂuenced belief ), using eight categories (i.e., legal guidelines, a personal experience, compatibility with family/friends’ views, religious beliefs, what they have seen or read in the media, their academic education, something else, and don’t know). These inﬂuences were derived from the Religion and Politics Survey (1996) originally measuring social attitudes. In subsequent analyses, the choices were dichotomized as either (a) religion as the primary inﬂuence or (b) nonreligious primary inﬂuence. After responses to each of the six social topics were ﬁnalized, participants reviewed their initial rank-ordered responses for each topic and wrote responses to one of two questions: (a) “If you chose a religious reason as your primary answer, why?” or (b) “If you did not choose a religious reason as your primary answer, why not?” Two undergraduate psychology students were trained by the second author to code the qualitative data. First, they were asked to determine the attitudinal view (1 = positive, 2 = neutral, or 3 = negative the participants held about each of the six social topics. They completed their coding independently and their initial inter-rater

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agreement was over 90%. All disagreements were resolved following collaborative discussion moderated by the second author. A similar procedure was followed to develop themes of responses to the questions about why/why not the participant chose religion as their primary decision inﬂuence. Again, inter-rater agreement was slightly over 90%, with further discussion resulting in full agreement of categorical themes. Results Quantitative Analyses Attitudinal views A series of multiple regression analyses were conducted to evaluate the degree to which the seven religiosity measures—intrinsic orientation, extrinsic-social, religious fundamentalism, faith maturity, and self-directing, collaborative, and deferring religious problem solving— predicted attitudinal view (positive, negative, or neutral) for the six social topics. The linear combination of religiosity measures was signiﬁcantly related to the attitudinal views of two of the six social topics, speciﬁcally views of homosexuality, F(6, 82) = 6.60, p < .001, and premarital sex, F(6, 82) = 9.01, p < .001. The sample multiple correlation coeﬃcients for homosexual and premarital sex were .58 and .66, respectively, indicating that approximately 33% (homosexuality) and 40% (premarital sex) of the variance in for the respective attitudinal views can be accounted for by the religiosity measures. No signiﬁcant relationships were found for the other four social topics. In Table 1, we present indices to indicate the relative strength of the individual predictors (i.e., religiosity measures) of the attitudinal views of homosexuality. Six of the seven indices were statistically signiﬁcant (p ≤ .001). Only the extrinsic-social correlation was insigniﬁcant (r = .093), which was expected since that scale does not signiﬁcantly correlate with any of the other religiosity measures, and tends to measure a less devout religiousness. In addition, only the partial correlation between religious fundamentalism and view of homosexuality was signiﬁcant. On the basis of these correlational analyses, it is tempting to conclude that the only useful predictor is religious fundamentalism. It alone accounted for 27% of the variance of view of homosexuality, while the other measures contributed

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Table 1. The Bivariate and Partial Correlations of the Religiosity Measures and Attitudinal View of Homosexuality

Predictor

Correlation between each predictor and view of homosexuality

Intrinsic Extrinsic-social Religious fundamentalism Faith maturity RPS: Self-directing RPS: Collaborative RPS: Deferring

.45** .09 .52* .34* –.40* .42* .33*

Correlation between each predictor and view of homosexuality controlling for all other predictors .07 .11 .35* –.01 –.09 .15 –.09

*p < .05; **p < .01.

Table 2. The Bivariate and Partial Correlations of the Religiosity Measures and Attitudinal View of Premarital Sex

Predictor

Correlation between each predictor and view of homosexuality

Intrinsic Extrinsic-social Religious fundamentalism Faith maturity RPS: Self-directing RPS: Collaborative RPS: Deferring

.50** –.05 .52** .35** –.35** .34** .23*

Correlation between each predictor and view of homosexuality controlling for all other predictors .24* –.10 .35** .00 –.07 .03 –.17

*p < .05; **p < .01.

only an additional 6%. However, judgments about the relative importance of these predictors are diﬃcult because they are intercorrelated. The correlations among the religiosity measures, except extrinsic-social, ranged from .34 to .76. In Table 2, we present indices to indicate the relative strength of the individual predictors (i.e., religiosity measures) of the attitudinal views of premarital sex. Similar to the previous analysis regarding homosexuality, only the extrinsic-social correlation was not statistically signiﬁcant (r = –.051), which again was expected since that scale does not signiﬁcantly correlate with any of the other religiosity measures, and tends to measure a less devout religiousness. In addition, two of the partial correlations (religious fundamentalism

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and intrinsic orientation) were signiﬁcantly correlated with view of premarital sex. On the basis of these correlational analyses, it is again tempting to conclude that religious fundamentalism is the most useful predictor because it accounted for 32% of the variance of view of premarital sex, while the other measures contributed only an additional 8% (of which intrinsic orientation accounted for 5 of the 8%). As with the homosexuality analysis, judgments about the relative importance of these predictors are diﬃcult because they are moderately to highly intercorrelated. The correlations among the religiosity measures, except extrinsic-social, ranged from .23 to .76. Primary inﬂuence for view To reduce the inﬂuence of multicollinearity, a series of discriminant analyses were conducted to determine whether the seven predictors— intrinsic orientation, extrinsic-social, religious fundamentalism, faith maturity, and self-directing, collaborative, and deferring religious problem solving—could predict primary motivation or inﬂuence for attitudinal view (religious vs. nonreligious) for the six social topics. Signiﬁcant overall Wilks’s lambdas were found in ﬁve of the six analyses (all except equal rights for women) indicating that overall the predictors diﬀerentiated between the two inﬂuence groups: (a) lying: L = .72, x2(7, N = 89) = 26.52, p < .001; (b) drinking to excess: L = .73, x2(7, N = 89) = 25.74, p = .001; (c) homosexuality: L = .71, x2(7, N = 89) = 27.54, p < .001; (d) premarital sex: L = .74, x2(7, N = 89) = 25.12, p = .001; and (e) extramarital aﬀair: L = .72 , x2(7, N = 89) = 27.05, p < .001. Based on the within-group correlations between the predictors and the discriminant function as well as the standardized weights, the following demonstrated the two strongest relationships with the discriminant functions for each of the ﬁve social topics: (a) lying: religious fundamentalism (r = .76) and intrinsic orientation (r = .76); (b) drinking to excess: religious fundamentalism (r = .72) and intrinsic orientation (r = .81); (c) homosexuality: religious fundamentalism (r = .65) and intrinsic orientation (r = .72); (d) premarital sex: religious fundamentalism (r = .73) and intrinsic orientation (r = .87); and (e) extramarital aﬀair: religious fundamentalism (r = .78) and intrinsic orientation (r = .85). In trying to predict group membership (i.e., primary religious inﬂuence vs. other primary inﬂuenc(e) the following correct classiﬁcation percentages were found (including kappa coeﬃcient to take chance

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variance into account: (a) lying: 76% correctly classiﬁed (kappa = .49); (b) drinking to excess: 82% correctly classiﬁed (kappa = .50); (c) homosexuality: 72% correctly classiﬁed (kappa = .47); (d) premarital sex: 71% correctly classiﬁed (kappa = .40); and (e) extramarital aﬀair: 76% correctly classiﬁed (kappa = .47). Finally, to assess how well the classiﬁcation procedure would predict in a new sample, we estimated the percent of participants accurately classiﬁed by using the leave-one-out technique and obtained the following classiﬁcation percentage for the social topics: (a) lying: 69% correctly classiﬁed; (b) drinking to excess: 75% correctly classiﬁed; (c) homosexuality: 67% correctly classiﬁed; (d) premarital sex: 68% correctly classiﬁed; and (e) extramarital aﬀair: 72% correctly classiﬁed. Summary of Quantitative Analyses Religious fundamentalism was found to be the primary predictor of participants’ valenced attitudes about two social topics (homosexuality and premarital sex), often deemed taboo in biblical doctrine. However, for the four other socially taboo topics, one’s religiosity was not predictive of attitudinal view. In addition, for ﬁve of the six social topics under study (equal rights for women was the exception), religious fundamentalism and intrinsic religious orientation were most predictive of participants being primarily inﬂuenced by their religion developing their attitudinal view. Qualitative Analyses Participants were asked to supply open responses to the questions, (a) “If you chose a religious reason as your primary answer, why?” or (b) “If you did not choose a religious reason as your primary answer, why not?” for each of the six social topics investigated in this study. Below are explanatory qualitative themes from two of the topics (homosexuality and premarital sex) that emerged through quantitative analysis. These two topics will be used as examples, and readers are referred to Tables 3 and 4 for results of each of the six topics. Homosexuality For participants who indicated that religion was their primary inﬂuence for their beliefs about homosexuality, 68 independent responses were oﬀered and four themes emerged. The vast majority of these statements were oﬀered by participates who held a negative view of

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Table 3. Emergent Themes by Topic and Primary Inﬂuence (Religious vs. Nonreligious) for Sexual Behavior and Sexuality Topics Topic

Themes (# and % of responses)

Example statements that constituted theme

Homosexuality (Religion: Primary Inﬂuence) 81% of these participants held a negative view of this topic

1. Because God said so (34 responses—50%) 2. Because the Bible says so. (26 responses—38%) 3. Procreation (5 responses—7%) 4. Disgust (3 responses—4%) Total Responses: 68

1. “Because the Lord created a woman for a man and not another woman.” 2. “The Bible says it is wrong.” 3. “God made it so that people replenish the Earth. Same sex relationships under regular circumstances could not do it without some extra help.” 4. “This is gross and wrong. People should stick with the same sex.”

Homosexuality (Nonreligious Primary Inﬂuence) 61% of these participants held a negative view of this topic

1. Personal Choice 1. “Because I believe it is up to (16 responses—44%). the individual person.” 2. Personal Experience 2. “Because I know many gay (9 responses—25%) people because of where I 3. Refuting Religion work and they’re no diﬀerent (8 responses—22%) than us.” 4. Because you are born that 3. “I believe in modern time the way (3 responses—7%) Bible does not apply because Total Responses: 36 I do not believe in Satan, I believe God created homosexuals just like heterosexuals.” 4. “I think sexuality has nothing to do with religion and that all people are born to either to be hetero or homosexual.”

Extramarital Aﬀairs (Religion: Primary Inﬂuence) 87% of these participants held a negative view of this topic

1. Counter to Religious Doctrine (38 responses—54%) 2. Marriage is a Vow (16 responses—23%) 3. Because God said so (11 responses—15%) 4. It is wrong (6 responses—8%) Total Reponses: 71

1. “Because committing adultery is going against the Ten Commandments, and that is wrong.” 2. “Marriage is a vow made between a man and a woman under God. It is not to be broken.” 3. “God doesn’t want us to cheat on our wife.” 4. “It’s wrong to commit adultery.”

Extramarital Aﬀairs (Nonreligious Primary Inﬂuence) 96% of these participants held a negative view of this topic

1. Personal Beliefs (12 responses—46%) 2. Personal Experience (7 responses—27%) 3. Other Inﬂuences (7 responses—27%) Total Responses: 26

1. “I would not want to have my husband sleeping with another woman so this is just my personal opinion.” 2. “I have had a family member with bad problems due to an aﬀair.” 3. “Because other things aﬀected my decision more than my religious beliefs.”

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Table 3 (cont.) Topic

Themes (# and % of responses)

Example statements that constituted theme

Premarital Sex Religion: Primary Inﬂuence 77% of these participants held a negative view of this topic

1. Because the Bible says so (31 responses—57%) 2. Because God said so (10 responses—18%) 3. Non-speciﬁc religious teachings (13 responses—24%) Total Responses: 54

1. “The Bible states that this is wrong and discourages people from doing this.” 2. “I feel God intended for sex to be speciﬁcally with [your] husband/wife.” 3. “I feel that religious teachings emphasize that premarital sex is not right.”

Premarital Sex Nonreligious Primary Inﬂuence 69% of these participants held a neutral view of this topic

1. Personal Beliefs (26 responses—72%) 2. Personal Experiences (10 responses—28%) Total Responses: 36

1. “Because I don’t truly believe that premarital sex is wrong, even though that’s what I’ve been taught.” 2. “I have had premarital sex and as long as I am in control and responsible I believe it is okay.”

homosexuality (n = 55, 81%). The ﬁrst theme was labeled “Because God said so.” This theme accounted for 34 responses (50 %), and included such statements as, “Because the Lord created a woman for a man and not another woman,” and “God doesn’t want us to be gay.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was a speciﬁc reference to God (the Lord or some identiﬁed higher power). The second theme was labeled “Because the Bible says so.” This theme accounted for 26 responses (38%), and included such statements as, “The Bible says it is wrong,” and “In the Bible, God says that you should not marry of the same sex, that man and woman should be together.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was that responses included an explicit reference to the Bible. The third theme was labeled “Procreation” and accounted for 5 responses (7%), and included such statements as, “God made it so that people replenish the Earth. Same sex relationships under regular circumstances could not do it without some extra help.” The distinguishing feature of this theme related to biblical views on human reproduction. The ﬁnal theme was labeled “Disgust” and accounted for 3 responses (4%). An example was, “This is gross and wrong. People should stick

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Table 4. Emergent Themes by Topic and Primary Inﬂuence (Religious vs. Nonreligious) for Nonsexual Topic

Themes (# and % of responses)

Lying Religion: Primary Inﬂuence 70% of these participants held a negative view of this topic

1. Because the Bible says so. 1. “Because the Bible says lying is wrong.” (29 responses—66%) 2. “It is a sin and I learned in 2. Social Teaching: In church how wrong it is.” church or by family (15 responses—34%) Total Reponses: 44

1. Personal Experience Lying (15 responses—47%) Nonreligious Primary 2. Personal Beliefs Inﬂuence (7 responses—22%) 47% of these participants held a negative view of this 3. Family Values and other teachings topic, and 53% held neutral (6 responses—19%). views of lying 4. Refuting Religion (4 responses—13%) Total Reponses: 32

Example statements that constituted theme

1. “I tell little white lies. I’m not saying it is right, just something we all do.” 2. “ ‘I am religious, but I don’t base everything I do on religion. Lying is bad, and that’s a common sense thing.’ ” 3. “I have always been taught lying is wrong. So family values is my reason.” 4. “Because I lie and my religious beliefs says you shouldn’t.”

Drinking to Excess Religion: Primary Inﬂuence 55% of these participants held a negative view of this topic

1. The body is God’s temple 1. “We are a temple of God, (23 responses—79%) therefore our bodies should 2. Non-speciﬁc religious not be harmed on purpose.” teachings 2. “Religious beliefs dictate that (6 responses—21%) taking things to excess is Total Reponses: 29 wrong.”

Drinking to Excess Nonreligious Primary Inﬂuence 60% of these participants held a neutral view of this topic

1. Personal Beliefs (27 responses—40%) 2. Personal Experience (22 responses—33%) 3. Lack of Religious Focus (18 responses—27%) Total Reponses: 67

1. “I don’t see anything wrong with a few drinks.” 2. “I have drunk to excess before and it is good feeling.” 3. “Because drinking is not something God stressed”

Equal Rights for Women Religion Primary Inﬂuence 82% of these participants held a positive view of this topic

1. God made man and woman equal (17 responses—77%) 2. Non-speciﬁc religious teachings (5 responses—23%) Total Responses: 22

1. “Because God made everyone equal.” 2. “Because my religious beliefs, which are based on scripture, are more important that any other inﬂuential source in my life.”

Equal Rights for Women Non-Religious Primary Inﬂuence 96% of these participants held a positive view of this topic

1. Social Inﬂuences (15 responses—54%) 2. Political/Legal (7 responses—25%) 3. Educational Inﬂuences (6 responses—21%) Total Responses: 28

1. “I don’t feel that this is really a moral issue, it is more social and about control.” 2. “Equal rights for women is more of a legal issue than religious.” 3. “Rights for women were inﬂuenced by my educational background, no religion.”

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with the same sex.” The three responses in this theme all made reference to having a view of disgust for homosexuality. For participants who indicated that religion was not their primary inﬂuence for their beliefs about homosexuality, 36 independent responses were oﬀered and four themes emerged. The majority of these statements were oﬀered by participants who held a negative view of homosexuality (n = 22, 61%). The ﬁrst theme was labeled “Personal Choice.” This theme accounted for 16 responses (44%), and included such statements as, “Because I believe it is up to the individual person,” and “I base it on personal decision, not religion. I am not a religious person.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was that responses stated views on homosexuality should not be inﬂuenced by religion, but rather be made on the basis of personal opinion .The second theme was labeled “Personal Experience.” This theme accounted for 9 responses (25%), and included such statements as, “Because I know many gay people because of where I work and they’re no diﬀerent than us,” and “I have gays in my family and a few friends and as long as they are happy, then I am happy.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was a speciﬁc reference to having a personal/social relationship or experience with people who are homosexual. The third theme was labeled “Refuting Religion.” This theme accounted for 8 responses (22%), and included such statements as, “I believe in modern time the Bible does not apply because I do not believe in Satan, I believe God created homosexuals just like heterosexuals,” and “Because the bible says it is wrong is not fully true.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was that responses included an explicit reference to refuting the Bible or religious teachings. The ﬁnal theme was labeled “Because you are born that way.” It accounted for 3 responses (7%), and included such statements as, “I think sexuality has nothing to do with religion and that all people are born either to be hetero or homosexual.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was related to sexuality as a biological function. Premarital sex For participants indicating that religion was their primary inﬂuence for their beliefs about premarital sex, 54 independent responses were oﬀered and three themes emerged. The vast majority of these statements were oﬀered by participates who held a negative view of premarital sex (n = 42, 77%). The ﬁrst theme was labeled “Because

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the Bible says so.” This theme accounted for 31 responses (57%), and included such statements as, “The Bible states that this is wrong and discourages people from doing this and I try my best to live by God’s Word.” The second theme was labeled “Because God says so.” This theme accounted for 10 responses (18%), and included such statements as, “I feel God intended for sex to be speciﬁcally with [your] husband/wife.” The ﬁnal theme was labeled “Non-speciﬁc religious teachings” and accounted for 13 responses (24%). An example was, “I feel that religious teachings emphasize that premarital sex is not right.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was that the response did not specify the nature or sources of the religious teaching. For participants that indicated that religion was not their primary inﬂuence for their beliefs about homosexuality, 36 independent responses were oﬀered and two themes emerged. The majority of these statements were oﬀered by participates who held a neutral view of premarital sex (n = 25, 69%). The ﬁrst theme was labeled “Personal beliefs.” This theme accounted for 26 responses (72%), and included such statements as, “Because I don’t truly believe that premarital sex is wrong, even though that’s what I’ve been taught,” and “Because I do not have any problem with premarital sex, if it is with the right one.” The second theme was labeled “Personal experience.” This theme accounted for 10 responses (28%), and included such statements as, “I have premarital sex and as long as I am in control and responsible I believe it is okay.” The distinguishing feature of this theme was a speciﬁc reference to having a personal or vicarious experience with inﬁdelity. Discussion The purposes of this mixed method designed study were fourfold. First, the researchers wanted to delineate the attitudinal valence of six social attitudes considered negative by many interpretations of the Bible, three sexually-based and three nonsexually-based. Second, we wanted to determine for which social attitudes did participants consider religion as a primary motivator for their attitudinal valence. Third, which religious variables predicted the attitudinal valence and religious motivation, and fourth, what qualitative responses delineated their rationale for choosing or not choosing religion as their primary motivator for each of the six social attitude topics. Each

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topic was chosen because of its historical foundation in the Bible, and was designed to oﬀer insight into how individuals conceptualize social-based attitudes based on their faith commitment, and what motivates individuals to mix religious and secular attitudes depending on the topic under discussion. This study also suggests that the role of secular culture diﬀers depending on social attitudinal topics. General Attitudes It was expected that participants would perceive the sexually-based topics less positively than the nonsexually-based topics. Results from the regressions indicated that two of the three sexually-based social topics were viewed more negatively than the nonsexual topics, partially conﬁrming the hypothesis. The linear combination of religiosity instruments was signiﬁcantly related to attitudes of homosexuality and premarital sex, with the majority of the variance accounted for by the fundamentalism scale. Other research has found similar relationships between fundamentalist beliefs and homosexuality and general sexual attitudes (e.g., Bassett, Smith, Newell, & Richards, 1999; Schwartz & Lindley, 2005). For example, Bassett et al. found selective negativism toward various sexual scenarios among college age, religiously committed students. Therefore, the relationship between religious ideology and sexual attitudes is complex and not easily interpretable simply as “conservatively religious individuals have negative views toward sexual behaviors.” Both the degree of religiosity and the type of sexual topic must be considered. The present study was the ﬁrst to examine whether fundamentalist beliefs were a signiﬁcant predictor of general attitudes toward other less-studied sexual behaviors including extramarital aﬀairs, and nonsexually-based social topics, though all are also often considered negative by conservative biblical scholars. In essence, attitude valence toward sexual topics are viewed diﬀerently from other topics by participants holding fundamentalist beliefs and, to a lesser extent, the other predictors, particularly intrinsic orientation. Due to the high intercorrelations among the instruments it is diﬃcult to determine the relative importance of the other variables. The degree of one’s religiosity (deﬁned in multiple ways) was not a determining factor on four of the six social topic areas. One argument for the lack of signiﬁcant prediction for extramarital aﬀairs is related to the sample. Most university students have not been mar-

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ried and may have had diﬃculty envisioning scenarios where they may be capable of participating in or being the third party of an adulterous relationship. Interestingly, qualitative results indicated that most respondents considered extramarital aﬀairs as happening to them rather than with them, as discussed further below. Primary Motivation A series of discriminant analyses were conducted to determine whether the six religious predictors could predict participants’ primary motivation for attitudinal view (religious vs. nonreligious). The predictors were signiﬁcant in ﬁve of the six analyses (all except equal rights for women, conﬁrming the hypothesis) indicating that overall the predictors diﬀerentiated between the two motivation groups. Speciﬁcally, religious fundamentalism accounted for the majority of the variance in these ﬁve areas, with intrinsic faith contributing an additional small but signiﬁcant percentage of the variance. Finally, faith maturity and religious problem-solving, along with fundamentalism and religious orientation, were inﬂuential in predicting the primary motivation for participant decisions (religious vs. nonreligious) for ﬁve of the six social categories. Overall, these two variables were not as inﬂuential in prediction as fundamentalism and intrinsic orientation. Further research on the degree to which various forms of spirituality motivate attitudes could be a particularly fruitful and valuable area of study, since the overwhelming majority of studies include religious, and not spiritual, variables. Qualitative Responses Individuals reporting their faith as the primary motivator for their sexually-based topic attitudes reported signiﬁcantly more qualitative responses and overall held more negative attitudes than toward nonsexually-based topics. Therefore, individuals relying on their faith as a primary motivator were likely to report disparate social attitudes depending on topic. More themes were created from sexual-topic responses than nonsexual-topic responses, suggesting that while the majority of respondents held negative attitudes across topics, their conclusions for the sexual topics were derived from a greater number of religious teachings. This result is interesting given that all social topics were introduced in this study because of their inclusion in the Bible.

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It appeared that religiously motivated individuals had more to say about four of the topics than nonreligiously motivated individuals. Notable exceptions across topics included drinking to excess (though considered negative by religious individuals and neutral by nonreligiously motivated individuals) and equal rights for women. Both religiously motivated and nonreligiously motivated participants considered equal rights for women positively. Perhaps this result was due to the fact that approximately three-quarters of the participants were women, or that cultural norms focus on gender equality in the United States. Interestingly, while the majority of religiously motivated participants considered lying and drinking to excess negatively, the percentages were lower than for the sexual topics. In fact, just over half reported negative attitudes toward drinking to excess. This topic was carefully worded to indicate “in excess” because of biblical references to acting excessively, though it appears that university or age-based cultural norms may inﬂuence this behavior more than the inﬂuence of religion. Interesting ﬁndings emerged from participants’ not rating religion as their primary inﬂuence on their topic attitudes. Over two-thirds of respondents reported neutral attitudes toward premarital sex, instead of the over three-quarters of religiously motivated individuals who considered it negative. This result may be consistent with previous research indicating that religiously committed individuals are more likely to view a variety of sexual behaviors negatively (e.g., Bassett, Smith, Newell, & Richards, 1999), though the number of attitudes generated has not been studied in depth. Though not signiﬁcantly diﬀerent, a greater percentage of nonreligiously motivated participants viewed extramarital aﬀairs negatively than for religiously motivated participants. Extramarital aﬀairs were closely correlated with lying whereas the other two sexual topics were not. Qualitatively, participants consistently responded that they held negative attitudes toward extramarital aﬀairs because, for example, “I wouldn’t want it done to me.” Multiple responses considered how a behavior would aﬀect them instead of them being the controlling factor, as in homosexual and premarital behaviors. Participants also repeatedly mentioned that they would not want to be lied to, consistent with the analysis that a behavior is being done to them instead of them being a controlling participant in the behavior. Finally, a neutral rather than a negative attitude toward excessive drinking was found for almost two-thirds of the nonreligiously motivated individ-

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uals, and positive attitudes toward women’s rights were found for both motivation groups. Limitations The study was the ﬁrst of its type to compare attitudes toward a variety of topics based on type and valence of religious beliefs. The qualitative portion of the study was devised by the ﬁrst and third authors and utilized ranking and forced-choice formats. Though these formats were consistent with the intent of the study it is unclear how participants would have responded if given the opportunity to hold multiple motivations for their attitudes simultaneously. While the authors believe that using these formats allowed for greater distinction among motivations, oﬀering the opportunity for simultaneous attitudes may oﬀer beneﬁts. The use of traditional-age university students has always been an area of concern in psychological research, and may be even more evident in psychology of religion research. Given that this study assessed faith there may be some readers who question perceived confounds speciﬁc to this age group, namely moral and faith development. Kohlberg (1964, 1980) clearly distinguished between moral and religious development and other researchers (e.g., Cobb, Ong, & Tate, 2001) have found evidence for his arguments. There has been some speculation regarding how various levels of religiousness may inﬂuence moral beliefs (e.g., Gladding, 1989; Glover, 1997) but for the most part they seem to be fairly separate entities. Previous research in the moral development and religion arena does not preclude future research though. During the late teenage years and early 20s, many individuals begin to challenge previously learned religious and moral beliefs. The degree to which their challenges are related to moral and faith development and faith questioning was not assessed. While faith maturity was included in the current study it is not the same construct as faith development. It would be interesting to determine the extent to which the six social topics were motivated by moral arguments as well as religious arguments. The qualitative portion of this study can be further assessed to determine moral arguments both within and between religious/nonreligious motivated groups. Related, recent research in religious strain (Exline & Rose, 2005) may prove worthwhile.

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The results are evidence of diﬀering social views depending on topic and that individuals’ faiths are more inﬂuential as motivators for some social issues than others. Researchers (e.g., Helminiak, 2002) have discussed two approaches to interpreting the Bible, the Literal and the Socio-Historical reading, and the impetus for this study grew from classroom discussions regarding growing disparite attitudes between self-proclaimed Christians on a variety of social topics. It occurred to the ﬁrst author that these classroom disagreements may be due to interpretation diﬀerences of the Bible. Thus, the impetus for this study was to determine what types of Christian attitudes were more strongly inﬂuenced by religious versus nonreligious motivations. While this study could not directly evaluate the initial question derived from the classroom, it did approximate the question and does oﬀer an initial foray into this research area. This study indicates that though religious inﬂuences predicted general attitudes toward homosexuality and premarital sex, it may have had less of an inﬂuence in other areas. Additionally, fundamentalism was a strong predictor of views toward homosexuality and premarital sex, with intrinsic religious orientation predicting a smaller portion of the variance for premarital sex. Many of the participants considered themselves conservative, yet the degree to which religiously motivated individuals held negative views of the topics diﬀered signiﬁcantly. Participants whose primary motivator was not religion diﬀered even more widely according to the qualitative portion of the study. It is recommended that the ﬁeld move toward increased mixed methods designs in order to oﬀer more robust explanations for questions under study. Many of the subﬁelds within the psychology of religion have advanced to a place where more complex questions can be asked, and can be answered through more complex designs. It is hoped that researchers in many subﬁelds will begin or continue to incorporate mixed methods designs to answer these questions, particularly those around the assessment of social attitudes. References Allport, G. W. (1966). The religious context of prejudice. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 5, 447–457. Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal of Psychology and Religion, 2, 113–133. Bassett, R. L., Smith, H. L., & Newell, R. J. (1999). Thou shalt not like sex: Taking another look at religiousness and sexual attitudes. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 18, 205–216. Batson, C. D., Floyd, R. B., Meyer, J. M., & Winner, A. L. (1999). “And who is my neighbor?”: Intrinsic religion as a source of universal compassion. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 38, 445–457. Benson, P. L., Donahue, M. J., & Erickson, J. A. (1993). The Faith Maturity Scale: Conceptualization, measurement, and empirical validation. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 5, 1–26. Cobb, N. J., Ong, A. D., & Tate, J. (2001). Reason-based evaluations of wrongdoing in religious and moral narratives. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11, 259–276. Cotton, S., Zebracki, K. Rosenthal, S. L., Tsevat, J., & Drotar, D. (2006). Religion/ spirituality and adolescent health outcomes: A review. Journal of Adolescent Health, 38, 472–480. Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Exline, J. J., & Rose, E. (2005). Religious and spiritual struggles. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 315–330). New York: Guilford Press. Fairrow, A. M., McCallum, T. J., & Messinger-Rapport, B. J. (2004). Preferences of older African-Americans for long-term tube feeding at the end of life. Aging & Mental Health, 8, 530–534. Gladding, S. T., Lewis, E. L., & Adkins, L. (1981). Religious beliefs and positive mental health. Counseling and Values, 25, 206–215. Glover, R. J. (1997). Relationships in moral reasoning and religion among members of conservative, moderate, and liberal religious groups. Journal of Social Psychology, 137, 247–255. Gorsuch, R. L., & McPherson, S. E. (1989). Intrinsic/extrinsic measurement: I/E-Revised and single item scales. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 28, 348–354. Hanson, W. E., Creswell, J. W., Plano Clark, V. L., Creswell, J. D. (2005). Mixed methods research designs in counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52, 224–235. Helminiak, D. A. (2002). What the Bible really says about homosexuality. Alamo Press. Hunsberger, B., Owusu, V., & Duck, R. (1999). Religion and prejudice in Ghana and Canada: Religious fundamentalism, right-wing authoritarianism, and attitudes toward homosexuals and women. The International Journal of Psychology and Religion, 9, 181–194. Iyer, S. (2002). Religion and the decision to use contraception in India. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 41, 711–722. Jenks, R. J., & Christiansen, L. (2002). A comparison of three Catholic marital groups on sexual and gender issues. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, 38, 157–168. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1989). A psychometric analysis of the Allport-Ross and Feagin measures of intrinsic-extrinsic religious orientation. In D. O. Moberg & M. L. Lynn (Eds.), Research in the social scientiﬁc study of religion: A research annual, Vol. 1. (pp. 1–31). US: Elsevier Science/JAI Press. Kohlberg, L. (1964). Development of moral character and moral ideology. In M. L. Hoﬀman & L. W. Hoﬀman (Eds.), Review of child development research (pp. 383–431). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ——. (1980). Stages of moral development as a basis for moral education. In

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B. Munsey (Ed.), Moral development, moral education, and Kohlberg (pp. 15–98). Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. Leach, M. M., Piedmont, R. L., & Monteiro, D. (2001). Images of God among Christians, Hindus, and Muslims in India. Review in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 12, 207–225. Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Guilford. Pargament, K. I., Kennell, J., Hathaway, W., Grevengoed, N., Newman, J., & Jones, W. (1988). Religion and the problem-solving process: Three styles of coping. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 27, 90–105. Piedmont R. L., & Leach, M. M. (2002). Cross cultural generalizability of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale in India. American Behavioral Scientist, 45, 1888–1901. Piedmont, R. L., & Nelson, R. L. (2001). A psychometric evaluation of the short form of the Faith Maturity Scale. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 12, 165–183. Religion and Politics Survey. (1996). Research Project on Religion and Political Action, University of Notre Dame. Retrieved from http://www.nd.edu/~relpol/ data.htm. Rowatt, W. C., & Schmitt, D. P. (2003). Associations between religious orientation and varieties of sexual experience. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 42, 455–465. Salsman, J. M., & Carlson, C. R. (2005). Religious orientation, mature faith, and psychological distress: Elements of positive and negative associations. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 44, 201–209. Schwartz, J. P., & Lindley, L. D. (2005). Religious fundamentalism and attachment: Prediction of homophobia. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 145–157. Yangarber-Hicks, N. (2004). Religious coping styles and recovery from serious mental illness. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32, 305–317.

THE ROLE OF RELIGIOSITY IN PARENTING YOUNG CHILDREN Bonnie C. Nicholson and Leah McMorris* Abstract Cultural determinants of parenting have received recent empirical attention in the literature, however, religion as it relates to parenting practices has been a relatively neglected subject. Studies that do exist typically report between group diﬀerences based on religious aﬃliation, with conservative Protestants typically reporting reliance on corporal punishment. This study investigated within group diﬀerences on the role of religiosity in parenting, conceptualizing religiosity in terms of orientation, fundamentalism, and quest. Results suggest that greater incidence of verbal and corporal punishment is related to more fundamentalist beliefs. An intrinsic religious orientation was associated with greater use of positive, nurturing behaviors. Results of the study lend support to the importance of using more complex models of religiosity in determining the impact of this cultural variable on parenting.

Culture as a determinant of parenting has received recent attention in the literature, especially as it pertains to race (Baumrind, 1972; Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997; Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1998), socioeconomic status (Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1996) and sexual orientation (MacCallam & Gollombok, 2004). Religion as a cultural inﬂuence on parenting has received only minimal attention, despite the fact that 6 out of 10 Americans report involvement in religious organizations of some kind (Harper, 2004). The majority of the research which describes the connection between religion and parenting does so from a categorical perspective using religious aﬃliation as the independent variable, thus minimizing the importance of within group diﬀerences and maximizing the diﬀerences between religious groups and their parenting behaviors (Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001). The current study sought to examine the role of religiosity and parenting behaviors in a Christian sample of parents of young children using

* Author Note: All correspondence should be sent to Bonnie Nicholson, Department of Psychology, The University of Southern Mississippi, 118 College Drive #5025, Hattiesburg, MS 39406–5025 or via email to [email protected]. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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fundamentalism, religious orientation, and quest, rather than aﬃliation, to describe religious beliefs. In a meta-analytic review of the literature on parenting and religion, the most consistent ﬁnding described the positive relationship between Conservative Christians and corporal punishment (Mahoney et al., 2001). Those holding more literal views of the Bible were signiﬁcantly more inclined toward corporal punishment, even controlling for gender and education level (Wiehe, 1990). Literalists consider the Bible to be the absolute Word of God and to provide undeniable guidance for all life tasks, including parenting (Bartokowski & Ellison, 1995). According to various researchers (e.g., Bartokowski & Ellison, 1995; Ellison & Sherkat, 1993; Wiehe, 1990), two central components guide conservative Protestants’ views related to parenting: obedience and the belief in original sin. The focus on literalism negates any ﬂexibility in inﬂecting meaning or judgment into the teachings of the Bible. As such, literalists value God’s authority above all others, and subscribe to a similar hierarchical organization in other social interactions, including parenting. Coupled with the belief in original sin, literalists hold that because children are prone to sin and evil, strict obedience and respect for authority is the primary goal of parenting. In fact, Dobson (1976, 1996, 2004), a popular conservative parenting specialist, equates God’s authority with the role of parents, requiring parents to deliver immediate and swift penalties for sin. Obedience toward parents is considered a precursor for obedience to God and given children’s inherent predisposition toward sin, children require strict and unquestioned discipline. What is missing from much of this research is an appreciation for the within-group diﬀerences that likely exist. The use of “global markers” such as religious aﬃliation, church attendance, and frequency of prayer has been criticized for neglecting the complexity of the relationship between religion and family life (Mahoney, Pargament, Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001). Wilcox (1998) proposed a model whereby the connection between parenting and religion was associated less with aﬃliation and more a product of identiﬁcation with speciﬁc values inherent in certain religious aﬃliations. His model suggested that it is identiﬁcation with theological conservatism that best predicts parenting behavior, not religious aﬃliation alone. Studies investigating this premise, though encouraging, have been based on minimal information (Wilcox, 1998) or inadequate sampling procedures (Danso, Hunsberger, & Pratt, 1997).

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In the study of the psychology of religion, little uniformity exists with respect to the deﬁnition of the construct of “religiosity” (Underwood & Teresi, 2002). Religious orientation, and to some extent quest, has frequently been used to operationalize religiosity (Genia, 1996; Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990). Speciﬁcally, religious orientation refers to motivation and cognitive style associated with religious practices and beliefs (Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990) and includes both an intrinsic and extrinsic component (I-E). Intrinsic religious orientation, while debatably more heterogeneous than initially conceptualized, refers to religious commitment, or living out one’s religious ideologies. On the other hand, an extrinsic religious orientation refers to those who utilize their religion to achieve personal or social gains. An intrinsic religious orientation has been associated with psychological well-being (Donahue, 1985), spiritual well-being (Ellison, 1983), and religious fundamentalism (Kirkpatrick, 1993), while an extrinsic religious orientation tends to be unassociated with other measures of religiosity (Donahue, 1985). Debate continues over the legitimacy of the I-E paradigm (Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990). Of particular concern to many researchers was the ambiguity of the constructs and the validity of the common measures used to assess I-E orientation. Quest, which assesses a more open-minded, questioning approach to religiosity has also frequently been included with measures of orientation (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991). Quest has been shown to be negatively correlated with fundamentalism, religious and spiritual well-being, and an existentialpersonal religious orientation (Genia, 1996), but not correlated with an intrinsic religious orientation, suggesting it is indeed assessing a diﬀerent religious construct. The current study worked to expand the research base by utilizing a sample of actual parents of young children. The purpose of this study was to extend the current literature by describing the ways in which religiosity, operationalized as orientation, quest, and fundamentalism, was related to parenting practices—namely use of corporal punishment, nurturing and parental expectations of young children.

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bonnie c. nicholson and leah mcmorris Method Participants

One hundred-forty two parents of children ages one to ﬁve years from a midsize southeastern city participated in this study. One hundred ﬁfteen mothers, 22 fathers and four nonparental caregivers completed the survey. The average parents’ age was 26.8 (SD = 7.48); the average age of the child being reported on in this study was 2.86 (SD = 1.29). The majority of participants were African American (54.6%), with 41.8% Caucasian, one Hispanic participant, and the remaining participants of mixed ethnicity. The majority of this sample reported being single/never married (49.6%), with 41.8% married, and 8.5% either widowed or divorced. Only 5% of the sample reported a high school education or less; 87.3% of the sample reported at least some college education, and 7.8% of the sample reported some graduate education. Despite their education levels, 37% of the sample reported making less than $10,000 annually, 31.2% reported earning between $10,000–$30,000 annually, and 31.9% reported earnings exceeding $30,000. Ninety-eight percent of the sample indicated a Christian religious aﬃliation. Instruments Parent Behavior Checklist (PBC; Fox, 1994) The PBC is a 100-item rating scale that measures parenting behaviors and expectations of parents of young children. The PBC consists of three empirically derived subscales: (a) Expectations—50 items that measure parents’ developmental expectations, for example, “My child should be able to feed him/herself,” (b) Discipline—30 items that assess parental responses to children’s behavior problems, for example, “I yell at my child for spilling food,” and (c) Nurturing— 20 items that measure positive, nurturing parenting behaviors, for example, “I read to my child at bedtime.” More eﬀective parenting strategies are associated with lower scores on Discipline, higher scores on Nurturing, and midrange scores on Expectations. Parents rate each item using a 4-point frequency scale (4 = Almost always/always, 3 = Frequently, 2 = Sometimes, and 1 = Almost never/never). From a representative sample of 1,140 mothers, the following coeﬃcient alphas were reported: Expectations = .97; Discipline = .91; and Nurturing

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= .82. Test-retest reliabilities for each of the three subscales were: Expectations = .98; Discipline = .87; and Nurturing = .81. The PBC has been shown to discriminate between parents of diﬀerently aged children (Fox & Bentley, 1992) and is not subject to social desirability (Peters & Fox, 1993). All scores are converted into uniform T-scores based on a representative sample of 1,056 mothers from a large urban city (Fox, 1994) to allow for comparison across parents of diﬀerently aged children. For the purposes of this study, parenting behaviors were categorized into four speciﬁc parenting clusters as outlined by Brenner and Fox (1999). Based on Baumrind’s (1966, 1971, 1997) taxonomy, parenting can be theoretically divided into various subgroups depending on the relationships between warmth and control. Brenner and Fox (1999) were able to validate this model using the PBC. According to their model, Cluster 1 was deﬁned as scores within normal limits (T-scores between 45 and 65) on all three subscales of the PBC and referred to as “good enough” parenting. Cluster 2 was deﬁned by scores reﬂective of Authoritative parenting, which by deﬁnition involves parenting characterized by high levels of warmth combined with high levels of control (Baumrind, 1966, 1971, 1997). Cluster 2 was operationalized as Nurturing scores ﬁve points higher than Discipline scores with Expectations higher than average. Cluster 3, Permissive parenting involving low control and high levels of warmth, was deﬁned in this study as Nurturing scores ﬁve points higher than Discipline scores and Expectations that are lower than average. Finally, Cluster 4, Authoritarian parenting, which involves a combination of low warmth and high control, was reﬂected in this study by those parents with high Discipline scores, relatively high expectations and low levels of Nurturing. Religious Fundamentalism Scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992) The Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RF) assesses the degree to which one subscribes to the belief that there is one set of religious teachings which characterize an essential, inerrant truth that is “fundamentally opposed by forces of evil” (p. 118). The RF is comprised of 20 questions rated on a 9-point Likert scale from –4 (very strongly disagree) to +4 (very strongly agree). Half of the questions are negatively worded to control for a response set bias. A constant of 5 is added to all raw scores, so that total scores can range from 20 to 180 with 100 as a midpoint. Internal consistency for the norm group ranged

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from .93 to .95. The RF scale has been shown to correlate with right-wing authoritarianism and Christian orthodoxy. Further, conservative Protestants were found to have signiﬁcantly higher scores than other religious groups. Religious Orientation Scale—Revised (Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989) The Religious Orientation Scale—Revised (ROS) measures both the intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation. The scale consists of 14 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Higher scores are indicative of a greater orientation toward either intrinsic or extrinsic religious motivation. Separate subscales measure intrinsic orientation (range: 8–40), personal (range: 3–15), and social (range: 3–15) extrinsic orientation. Reliability coeﬃcients are .83 for the Intrinsic scale and .65 for the Extrinsic scale. Quest Scale (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991) The Quest Scale is used to further assess religiosity by measuring the degree to which religious beliefs involve a sense of doubt, ﬂexibility, and existential questioning. The scale consists of 12 items rated on a 9-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree), with higher scores being attributable toward ascribing a positive role to religious doubt and searching. Cronbach’s alphas of .75 and .81 have been reported by the authors. Procedure Parents were recruited through day care centers, places of worship, and through university research announcements and asked to complete a series of questionnaires assessing various inﬂuences on parenting behaviors as part of a larger study. Participation was voluntary, and all participants received a small monetary incentive following receipt of their completed research materials. In addition, those parents recruited through the university received class credit for having participated in this study. All parents received research packets containing a demographic form, the instruments described above, two university approved consent forms, and a cover letter stating the intent of the project and directions for completing and returning the research materials. The parent was instructed to retain one copy of the consent form for

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their records, however all other forms were to be completed and returned to the experimenter; a stamped envelope was provided. Results The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which religiosity was related to parenting practices in a sample of parents of young children ages one to ﬁve years. Table 1 lists the means and standard deviations of all dependent variables. Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations for Dependent Variables

Religious Fundamentalism Extrinsic Religious Orientation Intrinsic Religious Orientation Quest Parent Behavior Checklist Discipline Nurturing Expectations

N

M

SD

132 77 84 140

113.40 17.27 30.98 4.37

24.41 4.15 5.47 1.26

137 131 131

56.10 47.30 49.66

10.39 10.48 13.83

Bivariate correlations yielded a number of interesting signiﬁcant relationships (see Table 2). High discipline scores were signiﬁcantly positively correlated with religious fundamentalism (r = .20, p < .05), suggesting a greater propensity to rely on corporal punishment the more fundamentalist one’s beliefs. Maintaining an extrinsic religious orientation (r = .24, p < .05) was also signiﬁcantly correlated with increased use of verbal and corporal punishment. There was a signiﬁcant correlation between use of positive, nurturing behaviors and an intrinsic religious orientation (r = .30, p < .01). Further, a signiﬁcant positive correlation occurred between intrinsic religious orientation and developmental expectations (r = .33, p < .01). Expectations was also signiﬁcantly positively correlated with religious fundamentalism (r = .24, p < .01). Fundamentalism was signiﬁcantly positively correlated with an intrinsic religious orientation (r = .65, p < .001) and negatively correlated with Quest (r = –.22, p < .05). From this initial sample of 142 parents, 80 parents ﬁt the classiﬁcation scheme developed by Brenner and Fox (1999) described above

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bonnie c. nicholson and leah mcmorris Table 2. Correlations Among Dependent Measures Disc

Disc Nurt Exp RFS Extrinsic Intrinsic Quest

Nurt

Exp

1.0 –.10 1.0 .41** .12 1.0 .20* .14 .24** .24* .12 .17 .09 .30** .33** .16 –.11 –.11

RFS

1.0 .16 .65** –.22*

Extrinsic Intrinsic Quest

1.0 .22 .14

1.0 –.19

1.0

Disc = Discipline subscale, PBC; Nurt = Nurturing subscale, PBC; Exp = Expectations subscale, PBC; RFS = Religious Fundamentalism Scale. *p < .05 level (2–tailed); **p < .01 level (2–tailed).

and were included in further analysis (62 parents did not meet the criteria described above and were therefore excluded from further analyses). No signiﬁcant diﬀerences were found between the groups on any demographic variables or dependent measures. To ensure adequate sample size, Clusters 1 (good enough parenting) and 2 (Authoritative parenting) were combined and labeled Cluster A based on the theoretical and statistical similarity of their composition. Cluster 3 (Permissive parenting) was dropped from subsequent analysis due to small sample size. Cluster 4 (Authoritarian parenting) was retained and relabeled Cluster B. Fundamentalism and Religious Orientation (Intrinsic, Extrinsic) were explored by Cluster (A and B) using three separate analyses of variance (ANOVA) with Cluster as the independent variable and fundamentalism, intrinsic religious orientation, and extrinsic religious orientation as the dependent variables (see Table 3). Signiﬁcant main eﬀects were found for fundamentalism, F(1,52) = 4.27, p < .05, h2 = .076, with Cluster B (Authoritatian) parents scoring statistically higher (M = 120.29, SD = 22.48) than Cluster A (good enough and Authoritative) parents (M = 107.43, SD = 22.77). A second ANOVA with Intrinsic religious orientation as the dependent variable and Cluster as the independent variable found no signiﬁcant diﬀerences between groups, F(1,33) = .075, p > .05, h2 = .002 (Cluster A: M = 31.63, SD = 5.60; Cluster B: M = 31.16, SD = 4.62). Finally, no signiﬁcant diﬀerences were found between Clusters on Extrinsic Religious Orientation, F(1,31) = 1.56, p > .05, h2 = .048 (Cluster A: M = 16.56, SD = 4.41; Cluster B: M = 18.47, SD = 4.36).

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Table 3. Means, Standard Deviations, and Analysis of Variance Values for Comparisons of Parenting Clusters and Religiosity Cluster A1 M SD Religious Fundamentalism 107.43 Extrinsic Religious Orientation 16.56 Intrinsic Religious Orientation 31.63

Cluster B1 M SD

22.77

120.29

22.48

4.41

18.47

4.36

5.60

31.16

4.52

F

df

4.27* 1,52 1.56

1.31

.075 1,33

1

Cluster A refers to the combination of Cluster 1 (good enough parenting) and Cluster 2 (Authoritative); Cluster B is comprised on Cluster 4 (Authoritarian). *p < .05.

Discussion In a meta-analysis of the research connecting parenting with religiosity, Mahoney et al. (2001) suggested that “individual diﬀerences in the degree of Christian conservatism may be a more critical religious factor in predicting parents’ actual use of corporal punishment than their denominational preference” (p. 578). The purpose of the present study was to extend previous research by deﬁning religiosity not in terms of aﬃliation, but rather as an interaction between religious orientation, quest, and fundamentalism. Results of the current study further explain the connection between a conservative Christian religious aﬃliation and the use of corporal punishment. Results suggested that Authoritarian parenting practices marked by excessive use of verbal and corporal punishment, combined with minimal use of nurturing and moderate-to-high Expectations were associated with more fundamentalist beliefs. Further, an intrinsic religious orientation was association with a more authoritative style of parenting involving less reliance on verbal and corporal punishment, moderate Expectations and high levels of nurturing. While fundamentalist attitudes were found to be related to increased use of verbal and corporal punishment among parents of young children, an intrinsic religious orientation was not. Results of the current study extend previous research by describing the underlying religious beliefs associated with the increased use of corporal punishment regardless of aﬃliation. Moreover, the present

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study found that while fundamentalist beliefs were related to the use of verbal and corporal punishment, an Intrinsic religious orientation was associated with greater propensity to engage in positive, nurturing parenting. Paradoxically, fundamentalism and an intrinsic religious orientation are correlated but related to diﬀerent parenting behaviors. Theoretically, those with an intrinsic religious orientation may also have fundamentalist beliefs, and it is these fundamentalist beliefs that are tied to excessive use of verbal and corporal punishment rather than religiosity in general. This ﬁnding may account for the seemingly conﬂicting data presented earlier (e.g., Danso, Hunsberger, & Pratt, 1997; Gershoﬀ, Miler, & Holden, 1999). Conservative Protestants have been found to both rely on verbal and corporal punishment and have been found to engage in authoritative parenting practices (Wilcox, 1998); it may be that within group diﬀerences were actually responsible for these diﬀering ﬁndings. Future researchers are called to move beyond the reliance on aﬃliation in understanding the impact of religion on families, and rather to the diﬀerences associated with the impact of religious beliefs (e.g., fundamentalism, orientation) on parenting practices. The current study is limited in part by the lack of heterogeneity of religious perspectives. Virtually all respondents reported a Christian religious aﬃliation thereby limiting the generalizability of the ﬁndings to non-Christian individuals. Further, the majority of the sample included college educated, rather young parents who were either primarily Caucasian or African American. Individuals with other ethnic backgrounds, less education, or diﬀerently aged children may also have very diﬀerent perspectives about their parenting and religious beliefs. Additional research may beneﬁt from generalizing these ﬁndings to a much broader segment of the population to include parents of older children, a broader spectrum of religious aﬃliation and cultural diversity, as well as educational background. Further, research suggests that a variety of factors also contribute to parenting and child outcomes, such as maternal mental health, family discord, socioeconomic status, number of children, and history of abuse (Cummings & Davies, 1994; Webster-Stratton, 1998; Webster-Stratton & Hammond, 1990). Factors such as God image and attachment may also impact parent-child relationships (McDonald, Beck, Allison, & Norsworthy, 2005). Future research may want to explore a more complex model of factors which may be predictive of parenting behaviors, including religiosity.

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Given the connection between harsh parenting practices and poorer child outcomes (Gershoﬀ, 2002), future research will also need to assess the ways in which this relationship is characterized in a sample of more fundamentalist believers. Education programs designed to assist parents of young children have been shown to be eﬀective in reducing the frequency and intensity of verbal and corporal punishment (Nicholson, Anderson, Fox, & Brenner, 2003), thereby reducing negative child behavioral outcomes. Such programs work to assist parents in adopting a more authoritative approach to parenting by educating parents about developmentally appropriate and less damaging approaches to discipline. Despite the success of parent training in assisting parents in reducing the frequency of verbal and corporal punishment and increasing positive, nurturing behaviors (Nicholson, Anderson, Fox, & Brenner, 2003; Nicholson, Brenner & Fox, 1999; Brenner, Fox, & Nicholson, 1999), religious beliefs have not been systematically considered an integral assessment component within the broader treatment of families. Considering the ever increasing role that religious beliefs play in the adoption of particular parenting styles, fundamentalist ideology may actually work to hinder parents’ progress in making change. In fact, such parents may actually object to authoritative goals promoted by traditional parenting programs. Developing respectful and appropriate mechanisms for assessing the role that religious beliefs play in the development of speciﬁc parenting practices may become an important component to successfully enacting change in parents. Religious beliefs and attitudes are frequently neglected in typical psychoeducational assessment (Luftman, Veltkamp, Clark, Lannacone, & Snooks, 2005; McEvoy, Lee, & O’Neill, 2005); the reasons for this neglect are unclear. Sohr (1998), in investigating perceptions of abuse and neglect using a religious framework, found that aﬃliation inﬂuenced the way in which abuse and neglect were characterized, perceptions of what is appropriate behavior on both the part of the parent and the child, and appropriate responses to child misbehavior. He cautions professionals to consider the weight that religious beliefs may play in communicating eﬀectively with families (Sohr, 1998). Further, oversimpliﬁcation of religious values and practices ignores the potentially adaptive eﬀects that religiosity, speciﬁcally an intrinsic religious orientation, may serve troubled families. Mahoney et al. (2001) called for increased research in the area of religiosity as it inﬂuences the parenting practices of distressed families.

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Six out of 10 families consider religion very important to their lives (Harter, 2004), and yet psychologists continue to be reluctant to discuss issues of religiosity either in research or in practice as evidenced by the relative lack of empirical work being conducted on this topic as it applies to families (Mahoney et al., 2001). Developing a more respectful understanding of the mechanisms by which religion inﬂuences parenting and family life through collaborations between mental health agencies and religious institutions will surely beneﬁt both the ﬁeld as well as the families being served. References Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113–133. Bartokowski, J. P., & Ellison, C. G. (1995). Divergent models of childrearing in popular manuals: Conservative Protestants vs. the mainstream experts. Sociology of Religion, 56, 21–34. Bartkowski, J. P., & Wilcox, B. W. (2000). The conservative Protestant child discipline: The case of parental yelling. Social Forces, 79, 265–291. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as a quest: 1) Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 30, 416–429. Baumrind, D. (1966). Eﬀects of authoritative parental control on child behavior. Child Development, 37, 887–907. ——. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monographs, 4(1, Part 2). ——. (1997). Necessary distinctions. Psychological Inquiry, 8, 176–182. Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83–96. Brenner, V., Nicholson, B. C., & Fox, R. A. (1999). Evaluation of a communitybased parenting program with parents of young children. Early Child Development and Care, 148, 1–9. Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (1994). Maternal depression and child development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35, 73–112. Danso, H., Hunsberger, B. and Pratt, M. (1997). The role of parental religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism in child-rearing goals and practices. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 36, 496–511. Deater-Deckard, K., Dodge, K. A., Bates, J. E., & Petit, G. S. (1998). Multiplerisk factors in the development of externalizing behavior problems: Group and individual diﬀerences. Development and Psychopathology, 10, 469–493. Deater-Deckard, K., Dodge, K. A., Petit, G. S., & Bates, J. E. (1996). Discipline among African American and European American mothers: Links to children’s externalizing behavior problems. Developmental Psychology, 32, 1065–1072. Dobson, J. (1976). The strong-willed child: Birth through adolescence. Wheaton, IL: Living Books/Tyndale House. ——. (1996). The new dare to discipline. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House. ——. (2004). The new strong-willed child: Birth through adolescence. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House. Donahue, M. J. (1985). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness: Review and metaanalysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 400–419.

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Ellison, C. (1983). Spiritual well-being: Conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 11, 330–340. Ellison, C. G., & Sherkat, D. E. (1993). Obedience and autonomy: Religion and parental values reconsidered. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 32, 313–329. Fox, R. A. 1994. Parent Behavior Checklist. Formally published by ProEd., Austin, TX. (Currently available from the author Robert Fox, Marquette University, Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, P.O. Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201–1881, or email: [email protected]). Fox, R. A., & Bentley, K. S. 1992. Validity of the Parenting Inventory: Young children. Psychology in the Schools, 29, 101–107. Genia, V. (1996). I, E, quest and fundamentalism as predictors of psychological and spiritual well-being. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 35, 56–64. Gershoﬀ, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 539–579. Gershoﬀ, E. T., Miller, P. C., & Holden, G. W. (1999). Parenting inﬂuences from the pulpit: Religious aﬃliation as a determinant of parental corporal punishment. Journal of Family Psychology, 13, 307–320. Gorsuch, R., & McPherson, S. (1989). Intrinsic/extrinsic measuresments: I/E revised and single-item scales. Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 28, 348–354. Harper, J. (2004, June 25). Religion “very important” to most Americans. The Washington Times. Retrieved November 23, 2004, from http://www.washingtontimes.com. Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Hood, R. W. (1990). Intrinsic-extrinsic religious orientation: The boon or bane of contemporary psychology of religion? Journal for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, 29, 442–462. Luftman, V., Veltkamp, L., Clark, J., Lannacone, S., & Snooks, H. (2005). Practice guidelines in child custody evaluations for licensed clinical social workers. Clinical Social Work Journal, 33(3), 327–357. MacCallum, F., & Golombok, S. (2004). Children raised in fatherless families from infancy: A follow-up of children of lesbian and single heterosexual mothers at early adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 1407–1419. Mahoney, A., Pargament, K. I., Tarakeshwar, N., & Swank, A. B. (2001). Religion in the home in the 1980s and 1990s: A meta-analytic review and conceptual analysis of links between religion, marriage and parenting. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 559–596. McDonald, A., Beck, R., Allison, S., & Norsworthy, L. (2005). Attachment to God and parents: Testing the correspondence vs. compensation hypotheses. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 24(1), 21–28. McEvoy, M., Lee, C., O’Neill, A. (2005). Are there universal parenting concepts among culturally diverse families in an inner-city pediatric clinic? Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 19, 142–150. Nicholson, B. C., Anderson, M., Fox, R. A., & Brenner, V. (2002). One family at a time: A prevention program for at-risk parents. Journal of Counseling & Development, 80, 362–371. Nicholson, B. C., Brenner, V., & Fox, R. A. (1999). A community-based parenting program for low-income mothers of young children. Families in Society, 80, 247–253. Peters, C., & Fox, R. A. (1993). Parenting inventory: Validity and social desirability. Psychological Reports, 72, 683–689. Sohr, R. (1998). The signiﬁcance of religion in advancing a culturally sensitive approach towards child maltreatment. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 79, 400–409. Underwood, L. G., & Teresi, J. A. (2002). The daily spiritual experience scale: Development, theoretical description, reliability, exploratory factor analysis, and

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preliminary construct validity using health-related data. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 22–33. Webster-Stratton, C. (1998). Preventing conduct problems in head start children: Strengthening parenting competencies. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66, 715–730. Webster-Stratton, C., & Hammond, M. (1990). Predictors of treatment outcome in parent training for families with conduct problem children. Behavior Therapy, 21, 319–337. Wiehe, V. R. (1990). Religious inﬂuence on parental attitudes toward use of corporal punishment, Journal of Family Violence, 5, 1990. Wilcox, W. B. (1998). Conservative Protestant childrearing: Authoritarian or authoritative? American Sociological Review, 1998, 63, 796–809.

HEAVEN’S GATES AND HELL’S FLAMES: AFTERLIFE BELIEFS OF CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT UNDERGRADUATES Julie Juola Exline and Ann Marie Yali* Abstract Few studies have examined beliefs about hell—a place of punishment in the afterlife. We compared the afterlife beliefs of Catholics, nonevangelical Protestants, and evangelical Protestants in two samples of undergraduates. In Study 1, Catholic and Protestant students diverged in their beliefs about the nature of hell and their ideas about why a person would go to hell. Catholic students tended to focus on speciﬁc sins such as murder as predictors of hell, whereas Protestants were more likely to emphasize unbelief and a rejecting attitude toward God. Catholics estimated that less than ¼ of people would go to hell, whereas Protestant estimates were twice as high. Study 2 demonstrated that Catholic students were more likely than Protestants to believe in purgatory, a place of temporary punishment. Study 2 also demonstrated that relative to nonevangelicals, evangelicals reported greater belief in heaven and hell and estimated that a larger percentage of people would end up in hell. Psychological implications are discussed.

What happens to people after they die? If an afterlife exists, will it bring reward or punishment? Will punishment be eternal or temporary, common or reserved for rare evildoers? This article examines the ways that Catholic and Protestant undergraduates answer such questions. Although the prospect of an afterlife is a crucial existential issue, afterlife beliefs have rarely received focused empirical attention. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to anxiety about death (e.g., Alvarado, Templer, Bresler, & Thomas-Dobson, 1995; Thorson & Powell, 1990; for reviews, see Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997; Lonetto & Templer, 1986), and some death anxiety studies

* Author Notes : Julie Juola Exline, Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University. Ann Marie Yali, Department of Psychology, City College of the City University of New York. We are grateful to Todd Hall, Chris Long, David Myers, Diana Rice, Ray Paloutzian, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Julie Exline acknowledges support from the New Faculty Mentoring Program provided by Pew Charitable Trusts. Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

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assess belief in an afterlife (e.g., Aday, 1984; Littleﬁeld & Fleming, 1984; Powell & Thorson, 1991; Spilka, Minton, Sizemore, & Stout, 1977). The question of whether an afterlife exists has even made its way into laboratory experiments (e.g., Dechesne et al., 2003). Yet, even in studies that have focused speciﬁcally on afterlife beliefs (e.g., Dixon & Kinlaw, 1982; Greeley & Hout, 1999; Harley & Firebaugh, 1993; Holden, 1993; Hynson, 1975, 1978; Klenow & Bolin, 1989; Lundh & Radon, 1998; Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973; Schoenrade, 1989; Smith, Range, & Ulmer, 1992), the typical approach has been to assess whether people believe in an afterlife rather than speciﬁcally assessing what people believe. When the possibility of an afterlife is mentioned in a research study, it is usually framed in positive terms, as a source of hope that death does not mark the end of a person’s existence (e.g., Smith et al., 1992). A neglect of the dark side of the afterlife seems consistent with the widespread de-emphasis on evil forces and hell in the modern Western world (e.g., Aries, 1982; Delbanco, 1995). Although a few studies have asked participants whether they have positive versus negative expectations about the afterlife (Dixon & Kinlaw, 1982; Lester et al., 2001; Rose & O’Sullivan, 2002), the general lack of such information prompts a question: Do most people hold benign expectations about the afterlife? Many religious traditions emphasize the possibility of punishment after death, whether in the form of hell, purgatory, roaming the spirit world, or being reincarnated into a life of trouble and suﬀering. Although humanities scholars have explored beliefs about hell and other places of suﬀering in the afterlife (e.g., Himmelfarb, 1983; van Scott, 1988), the topic has received little attention from empirical social scientists. This neglect is not surprising given that social scientists have historically been wary of topics related to religion (Wulﬀ, 1996). Although religious and spiritual issues have been commanding greater attention during recent years, little attention has centered on the study of afterlife beliefs, particularly the negative side of such beliefs. If psychologists have neglected empirical study of the afterlife, this neglect seems unlikely to have stemmed from a lack of belief or interest within the general public. The majority of Americans believe in an afterlife, as shown in large-scale survey research (Harley & Firebaugh, 1993; Hynson, 1975; Klenow & Bolin, 1989), and among Catholics and Jews these numbers may be increasing (Greeley &

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Hout, 1999). Issues surrounding the afterlife appear to be a major concern for individuals, topping the list of death anxiety concerns for older adults in one study (Thorson & Powell, 1988). Given the empirical neglect of negative afterlife outcomes in the existing literature, a primary focus of the current study was to assess belief in the possibility of hell or a place of punishment in the afterlife. Catholic Versus Protestant: An Important Distinction in Terms of Afterlife Beliefs? Afterlife beliefs are likely to vary widely between world religions (Neusner, 2000). As a starting point for comparative research on afterlife beliefs, our primary aim in the current study was to compare the beliefs of two major religious groups: Catholics and Protestants. As Christians, Catholics and Protestants share considerable common ground in terms of doctrine. Both forms of Christianity proclaim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He came to Earth to fulﬁll the words of the Hebrew prophets, that He lived a sinless life, and that He was cruciﬁed and resurrected before ascending into heaven. Nonetheless, thorny issues arise when comparing Catholics and Protestants. One problem is that neither group is homogeneous. As stated by Martin Marty (1972), it is diﬃcult to identify common Protestant beliefs because there are so many Protestant denominations. Protestants range from the mainline to the highly conservative, and there are many sectarian diﬀerences to take into account. Catholics should also not be assumed to be unitary in their beliefs, as there are likely to be wide diﬀerences not only between parishes but also between individuals (McBrien, 1980). Although Catholic and Protestant beliefs are heterogeneous within each group and also overlap with each other, we nonetheless predicted divergent afterlife beliefs between members of these two groups. Why? One reason stems directly from prior research. Recent studies suggest that Protestants—particularly evangelicals—report slightly greater belief in heaven and hell than Catholics (Exline, 2004; Kearl, as cited in Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, & Gorsuch, 1996; Lester et al., 2001). Based on the small but consistent Catholic/Protestant diﬀerences revealed across these studies, we wanted to take a closer look at the beliefs of these two groups. A primary aim of the current research was to go beyond simply asking about the existence of heaven and hell. We wanted to learn

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more about people’s speciﬁc beliefs: What is hell like? How many people will end up in hell? What causes people to go to heaven versus hell? For reasons we review below, we expected to see Catholic/ Protestant diﬀerences in three conceptual categories: relative emphasis on belief versus action in avoiding hell, percentages of people likely to go to heaven versus hell, and afterlife punishment as eternal versus temporary. Relative emphasis on belief versus action Although Catholic and Protestant traditions both emphasize belief and action, scholarly descriptions suggest some distinctions between the two groups as well. Our reading of the literature suggested that Protestant doctrines and practices assign more weight to belief and less to behavior when compared to Catholic doctrines and practice. We present a brief summary of these diﬀerences in the following paragraphs. Broadly speaking, Protestants tend to place a heavy emphasis on the personal beliefs and thought lives of individuals. For example, a recent series of studies by Cohen and Rozin (2001) demonstrated clear diﬀerences between Jews and Protestants in their perceptions of moral transgressions. Relative to Jews, Protestants assigned more negative ratings to a target person who had simply thought about doing something wrong (e.g., harming an animal, having a sexual aﬀair). Cohen and Rozin found that Protestants were more likely than Jews to see mental states as controllable and thoughts as morally relevant. Within Protestantism, salvation is typically viewed as being based on faith alone (Luther, 1520/1957; Marty, 1972, 1987; von Rohr, 1969). In order to be saved from their sins, individuals must recognize their inherent sinfulness and their need for God’s forgiveness. They must then place their trust in Jesus Christ, whose atoning death and resurrection provide the only mechanism for forgiveness of sin. Protestants, starting with Luther, take an individualistic view of salvation that is based on personal conscience, belief in a certain set of doctrines, and an individual decision to approach Christ through prayer in order to request forgiveness (e.g., Luther, 1520/1957). Particularly within evangelical Protestantism, this decision is often viewed as a one-time act, a dividing line between one’s former, sinful life and one’s new life in Christ (thus the term born again used by many evangelical Protestants). Some Protestants also hold to the

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doctrine of eternal security, which implies that once a person is saved from sin, he or she is always saved. According to the doctrine of eternal security, it is impossible to lose one’s salvation after it has been granted through faith in Christ. Although the Catholic Church has consistently condemned the position that Catholics believe that people are saved by their own power (McBrien, 1987), the literature on Catholic doctrines and practices suggests that Catholicism places greater emphasis on action than does Protestantism. The Catholic emphasis includes both the practice of certain behaviors (e.g., partaking in Holy Communion or saying the Rosary, seeking social justice for the poor and oppressed) and the avoidance of speciﬁc, serious sins such as murder. In contrast to the Protestant tradition, which reﬂects Luther’s emphasis on the dangers of sin in general, the Catholic tradition more closely follows Thomas Aquinas and other early Church leaders who designated certain sins as worse than others (e.g., mortal versus venial sins). We thus predicted that Catholics would be more concerned than Protestants about avoiding speciﬁc, serious types of sin in order to avoid hell. Relative to Catholics, Protestants were expected to show more concern about the general presence of sin, regardless of severity or type. We expected that these emphases on belief versus action would lead to diﬀerences in afterlife beliefs between Catholics and Protestants. Speciﬁcally, we expected Protestants to believe that a person’s fate in the afterlife would be based on belief and one’s relationship with God. Catholics, in contrast, were expected to place more emphasis on behavior—particularly on the avoidance of speciﬁc, serious sins. Percentages of people destined for heaven versus hell Another likely diﬀerence between Catholics and Protestants is whether heaven versus hell is viewed as the default destination for human beings. Although beliefs about hell have varied widely during the history of Catholicism (Aries, 1981), current doctrine holds that hell is a real possibility. However, Catholic texts suggest that it is possible that no human being will actually end up in hell, due to Christ’s grace being extended to the whole world (McBrien, 1980, 1987; Tropman, 1995). In contrast to Catholic teaching, Protestant views (beginning with Luther) have focused on hell as a place where some people will certainly ﬁnd themselves. Granted, denominational diﬀerences do exist.

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Evangelicals are more likely than moderate and liberal Protestants to believe in hell (Exline, 2004), and we also predicted that evangelicals (compared to nonevangelicals) would see a larger proportion of people as being destined for hell. But consider the common theological heritage shared by Protestants: One of Luther’s fundamental notions was that in order to avoid hell, individuals need to take the proactive step of seeking and accepting Christ’s forgiveness (Luther, 1520/1957; Shelley, 1982). Based on the doctrinal diﬀerences just reviewed, we expected Catholics to make lower estimates than Protestants of the total percentage of people destined for hell. In other words, we predicted that Catholics would be more likely than Protestants to view heaven as the default—to believe that most people are going to heaven. Such ﬁndings would complement other recent ﬁndings among undergraduates (Lester et al., 2001) suggesting more positive views of the afterlife among Catholics than among Protestants. Suﬀering as eternal versus temporary We also predicted that Catholics and Protestants would diﬀer in the extent to which suﬀering in the afterlife was expected to be temporary versus eternal. Catholic doctrine holds that when individuals die with unconfessed sins on their souls, they enter a place called purgatory that entails temporary suﬀering for purposes of puriﬁcation (Hardon, 1975; McBrien, 1980, 1987; see Lester et al., 2001, for empirical data). When puriﬁcation is complete, the individual is admitted to heaven. Catholics who are alive may also be able to shorten the length of a person’s stay in purgatory by acts such as prayer, recitation of the rosary, or lighting candles on behalf of the person who has died. For the Catholic, the eternal suﬀering associated with hell may be seen as the destination of only a few: Satan, demons, and perhaps a small group of individuals who have committed especially heinous crimes for which they have not repented. Protestant teaching, in contrast, does not emphasize a middle ground of purgatory between heaven and hell. Once people die, their fate is sealed: They either go to heaven or to hell. (Ozment, 1992; Tober & Lusby, 1987). Summary of Major Predictions In summary, doctrinal diﬀerences between Catholicism and Protestantism led us to predict Catholic/Protestant diﬀerences in speciﬁc

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beliefs about the nature and predictors of afterlife consequences— particularly those related to hell. More speciﬁcally, we predicted that Protestants would emphasize belief and acceptance of Christ as the key to avoiding hell. Catholics, in contrast, were expected to emphasize avoidance of speciﬁc, serious sins as crucial for avoiding hell. Relative to Catholics, Protestants were predicted to estimate that a greater percentage of the population was destined for hell—which would presumably translate into concern that the self or close others could end up there. Finally, Catholics were expected to express greater belief than Protestants that suﬀering in hell would be temporary as opposed to eternal. We also expected to see diﬀerences between evangelical and nonevangelical Protestants, with evangelicals reporting higher percentages of people believed to be destined for hell. We predicted that all of these diﬀerences would remain signiﬁcant when religiosity levels were controlled. We did not predict denominational diﬀerences on students’ basic beliefs about the existence of an afterlife. Study 1 Method Participants Data were collected at a moderate-sized public university in the Eastern United States. Participants for the current study (n = 128) were selected from a larger sample of 200 introductory psychology students (140 women and 60 men; mean age 19.7 years) who took part in a questionnaire-based study of the psychological aspects of religion. (For other reports from the larger study, see Exline, Yali, & Lobel, 1999; Exline, Yali, & Sanderson, 2000). Students received partial course credit for participation. The full sample was 52% White or Caucasian, 23% Asian, 16% African American or Black, 8% Latino, 1% Native American, and 5% other or mixed race. (Summed percentages exceed 100% because participants selected multiple options where appropriate.) Procedure Our ﬁrst task was to create three groups of students: Catholic, evangelical Protestant, and nonevangelical Protestant. Pilot research revealed that some Protestants do not recognize their religious aﬃliation as

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Protestant. When presented with the Protestant category, some bypass it and check “other religion,” then list a Protestant denomination such as Baptist. We thus included a Protestant category and an “other Christian” category and asked those checking “other Christian” to report the type of Christianity. All but one of these participants listed Protestant denominations. Because we wanted to identify those who identiﬁed themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians, “born again” was included on the list as well. Within the full sample, 94 participants reported themselves to be Catholic, 27 Protestant, 25 born again, and 11 other Christian.1 There was some overlap between the groups, yielding a total of 146 participants in this subset. (This was 73% of the participants in the larger sample.) Among the Protestants, those who endorsed being born again were placed in the evangelical category (n = 22), while the remainder were placed in the nonevangelical category (n = 30). Three Catholics who endorsed being born again were retained in the Catholic group. The revised sample contained 38 men and 108 women. The average age was 19.7 years. The subsample was 55% White or Caucasian, 19% Asian, 19% African American or Black, 8% Latino, 1% Native American, and 3% other or mixed race. Measures Demographics Participants completed a background information page that included items pertaining to age, gender, ethnicity, and religious aﬃliation. Religiosity We included two measures of religiosity. First, we included a fouritem religious belief salience measure adapted from Blaine and Crocker (1995). Items were rated on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Sample items included “My religious beliefs provide

1 The remainder of participants identiﬁed themselves as Jewish (n = 12), Buddhist (n = 10), Hindu (n = 7), Muslim (n = 7), Eastern Orthodox (n = 1), New Age (n = 1), atheist/agnostic (n = 9), “none” (n = 9) or “unsure” (n = 10). We do not present analyses on the non-Christian groups for two reasons: First, our primary aim was to compare Catholics and Protestants, and we did not make speciﬁc predictions about members of other religious groups. Second, each of the non-Christian groups contained only a small number of participants, which would make it tenuous to draw any ﬁrm conclusions about the beliefs of these groups.

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meaning and purpose to life” and “I allow my religious beliefs to inﬂuence other areas of my life.” We also included a 17-item religious participation measure developed for the larger investigation. This measure asked participants to report how often they had participated in various activities within the past month, with ratings including 0 (not at all ), 1 (once or twice), 2 (about once a week), 3 (more than once a week), 4 (daily or almost daily), and 5 (more than once a day). Sample practices on the list included prayer, meditation, reading religious texts, attendance of services, and donation of time or money to a religious organization. (For additional results for both measures, see Exline et al., 2000.) We scored both scales by averaging across items. For belief salience, M = 4.6, SD = 1.7, a = .92. For participation, M = 1.0, SD = 0.8, a = .91. The two scales were highly correlated, r (146) = .65, p < .01. We standardized both measures and averaged the scores together to form an index of religiosity. General belief in life after death, heaven, and hell Participants used a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) to rate their agreement with the following statements: “I believe in life after death,” “I believe in heaven (or some good place where people go after they die),” and “I believe in hell (or some bad place where people go after they die).” Overall, participants reported greater belief in heaven (M = 6.2, SD = 1.42) than hell (M = 5.3, SD = 2.01), F(1, 123) = 38.10, p < .001, a ﬁnding consistent with largescale survey research (e.g., Exline, 2004). Participants were asked to complete all remaining measures only if they believed that hell (or, where appropriate, heaven) did exist or might exist. Percentage of people destined for heaven versus hell Participants read the prompt, “Take your best guess: What percentage of people will go to hell, where 0% = nobody and 100% = everybody?” (M = 30.9, SD = 26.1). The same prompt was then given regarding heaven (M = 68.6, SD = 25.8). Speciﬁc beliefs about hell Because we did not ﬁnd any published measures that assessed the speciﬁc afterlife beliefs of interest in this study, we devised a series of face valid questions in line with our hypotheses. Participants used a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) to rate their agreement with eight statements about hell, all of which are listed in Table 1.

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Table 1. Study 1: Afterlife Beliefs of Catholic, Nonevangelical Protestant, and Evangelical Protestant Students Catholic (n = 94) Range Religiosity index n/a I believe in life after death 1–7 I believe in heaven 1–7 I believe in hell 1–7 Percentage of people going to heaven 0–100 Percentage of people going going to hell 0–100 I sometimes worry that I might to go to hell 1–7 I sometimes worry that someone I care about might go to hell 1–7 Hell is probably more fun or exciting than heaven 1–7 I think that people have a “last chance” to avoid hell after they die or at the moment of death 1–7 I think that punishment in hell will be temporary 1–7 I believe that only really bad people will go to hell 1–7 If you live a good life, you won’t go to hell 1–7 I believe that the only way to avoid hell is to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior 1–7

M

SD

Nonevangelical Protestant (n = 30) M

SD 0.9 1.9 1.1 2.3

Evangelical Protestant (n = 22) M 0.7b 6.4a 6.6a 6.6b

SD 1.1 1.4 0.9 0.7

F

–0.1a 5.5a 6.1a 5.0a

0.6 1.8 1.5 2.0

0.1a 5.6a 6.5a 5.4ab

11.44** 2.14 1.69 6.52**

73.6a

23.3

58.8b 28.6

59.9ab 27.3

5.24**

23.9a

20.9

41.2b 30.3

50.3b

29.3

11.93**

3.0a

1.8

3.3a

1.7

3.9a

1.7

2.64+

3.2a

2.0

5.0b

1.9

5.1b

2.3

31.52**

1.2a

0.6

1.3a

0.7

1.4a

1.4

1.02

4.7a

1.9

3.2b

2.1

4.4ab

2.4

5.44**

3.3a

1.9

2.3b

1.8

2.7ab

2.2

3.54*

4.8a

2.3

3.4b

2.0

3.3b

2.0

6.67**

6.0a

1.5

3.9b

2.1

3.6b

2.2

25.65**

3.4a

2.1

5.4b

2.2

5.4b

2.413.73**

Note. Means with diﬀerent subscripts diﬀer at p < .05 using the Bonferroni correction. +p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01.

Determinants of going to hell Participants wrote answers to the question, “What do you think that people have to do in order to go to hell?”2 Responses were entered into a text ﬁle to ensure that coders were blind to participants’ reli2 Although participants also answered a parallel question regarding heaven (“What do you think that people have to do in order to get into heaven?”), preliminary coding revealed that the heaven-related responses were straightforward opposites of the hell-related responses. We chose to report only the hell-related responses in the current paper, both because our primary interest was in beliefs about hell and because the beliefs about heaven did not add much additional information.

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gious denomination. Based on prior theorizing and an initial reading of participant responses (blind to religious denomination), the ﬁrst author generated coding categories (see Table 2) and served as the ﬁrst coder. She then trained an independent rater (also blind to religious aﬃliation) in use of the coding system. As shown in Table 2, agreement between the two coders was good, yielding kappas ranging from .88 to 1.0. Results and Discussion Comparisons of Afterlife Beliefs Analysis of variance was used to test for diﬀerences between Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and nonevangelical Protestants. All results appear in Table 1. Means with diﬀerent subscripts diﬀer at p < .05 using the Bonferroni correction. Belief in life after death, heaven, and hell As shown in Table 1, the three groups reported similar levels of belief in heaven and life after death. Evangelicals reported greater belief in hell than Catholics, with nonevangelical Protestants showing intermediate scores. Hell as a likely destination: Percentages and personal concerns As shown in Table 1, Catholic students reported more benign afterlife beliefs than Protestant students across a number of domains. Catholics believed that about a quarter of the population (24%) was destined for hell, whereas Protestant estimates were about twice this high (41% for nonevangelicals, 50% for evangelicals). For Catholics, the modal response for percentage of people destined for hell was 20%, whereas the mode for Protestants was 70%. In keeping with their lower estimates of the number of people going to hell, Catholic students were much less likely than Protestants to report worry that someone they cared about might go to hell. Supplemental analyses revealed that the greater the percentage of people believed to be going to hell, the more likely people were to worry that someone they cared about might go to hell, r (131) = .26, p < .01. Seeing a large percentage of the population as destined for hell was also linked with more worry about being destined for hell oneself, r (133) = .23, p < .01.

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The nature of hell As shown in Table 1, both Catholics and Protestants seemed to take the prospect of hell seriously, with none of the groups reporting a belief that hell would be fun or exciting in comparison to heaven. However, Catholic students were more likely than nonevangelical Protestants to believe that people would have a last chance to avoid hell after they die or at the moment of death. Catholics also reported a greater belief than nonevangelical Protestants that punishment in hell would be temporary. Seeing hell as temporary and avoidable might reﬂect a more general belief in purgatory among Catholics, a belief that was assessed in Study 2. Contrary to predictions, Catholics did not diﬀer from evangelical students in their beliefs about the nature of hell. What determines whether someone will go to hell? As predicted, Catholic and Protestant students showed substantial diﬀerences in speciﬁc beliefs about how to avoid hell (see Table 1). Catholic students reported much greater belief that hell is reserved for “really bad people” and can be avoided through a good life. The eﬀect size on the good life item was particularly large (d = 1.43), suggesting that Catholics were much more likely than Protestants to emphasize living a moral life as a means of avoiding hell. Protestants, in contrast, were much more likely than Catholics to report that the only way to avoid hell is through accepting Christ as one’s Lord and Savior (d = 1.05; large eﬀect). Coding of the open-ended question regarding hell yielded complementary insights. Here we compared Catholic and Protestant students. Because Table 1 suggested that the two Protestant groups showed similar beliefs about hell, we combined them into one group to simplify these analyses. As shown by the frequencies and chisquare analyses in Table 2, Catholics were more likely than Protestants to suggest that only bad or evil individuals would go to hell (18% of Catholics, 4% of Protestants). Catholics were also far more likely than Protestants to endorse speciﬁc sins that would land a person in hell (54% of Catholics, 16% of Protestants). Murder, for example, was mentioned by 27% of Catholics but only 9% of Protestants. Catholics were also more likely than Protestants to suggest that oﬀenses that involved hurting other people (35% of Catholics, 11% of Protestants) would lead to punishment in hell. Protestants, in con-

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Table 2. Study 1: What Determines Whether a Person Will Go to Hell? Catholic and Protestant Responses Number and Percent Endorsing Response Catholic1 (n = 74) Categories

Kappa

n

%

Protestant (n = 45) n

Coded Categories Bad person .88 13 18 2 Sin in general .95 11 15 13 Some “bad sin(s)” .96 40 54 7 Killing/murder 1.0 20 27 4 Not believing in God .96 6 8 10 Rejecting God .90 6 8 11 No repentance/ remorse .91 16 22 5 Hurt other people .96 26 35 5 Composite Categories Alienation from God — 9 12 19 (combines rejecting God and not believing in God) Speciﬁc sins — 43 58 10 (combines killing/murder, hurting others, lists of “bad sins”)

% Pearson’s x2 4 30 16 9 23 25

4.22* 3.67+ 16.75** 5.48* 5.03* 6.38*

11 11

1.98 8.05**

43

14.67**

23

13.96**

1

Only those participants who had some belief in hell answered the questions described in Table 2. As such, sample sizes are smaller than those reported in Table 1. +p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01.

trast, were marginally more likely than Catholics (p < .10) to focus on the general presence of sin (15% of Catholics, 30% of Protestants) as a cause for going to hell. Protestants were also more likely than Catholics to report that people would go to hell if they did not believe in God (8% of Catholics, 23% of Protestants) or if they rejected God (8% of Catholics, 25% of Protestants). (Signiﬁcance tests for all of the above comparisons are reported as chi-squares in Table 2.) To summarize: When considering the factors that would send a person to hell, our results suggested that Catholics focused primarily on whether a person committed speciﬁc sins, whereas Protestants focused primarily on a person’s relationship with God (rejecting God or not believing in God). We created two composite coding categories to directly test this hypothesis. We called one category “alienation from God,” which was endorsed if participants endorsed either not believing in God or rejecting God. We called the other category “speciﬁc sins,” which was endorsed if participants endorsed murder, hurting others, or any other speciﬁc action that would send a

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person to hell. As shown in Table 2, Protestants were much more likely than Catholics to emphasize alienation from God (12% of Catholics, 43% of Protestants), whereas Catholics were much more likely than Protestants to endorse speciﬁc sins (58% of Catholics, 23% of Protestants). Does Religiosity Account for the Catholic/Protestant Diﬀerences? As shown in the top of Table 1, there were denominational diﬀerences in religiosity, with evangelical Protestants reporting greater religiosity than the other two groups. As such, we wanted to see whether the observed Catholic/Protestant diﬀerences in afterlife beliefs might be more simply explained by diﬀerences in religiosity. In another recent study that used large-scale survey data (Exline, 2004), religiosity was positively linked with belief in both heaven and hell, and religiosity partly explained denominational diﬀerences in afterlife beliefs. To see whether a similar pattern might exist in these data, we ran simultaneous multiple regressions using denomination and religiosity as predictors of afterlife beliefs. We used dummy coding to create two variables to represent the three groups, one for Catholics and one for evangelical Protestants. As shown in Table 3, both religiosity and denomination (Catholic versus Protestant) were found to play substantial, distinct roles in predicting beliefs about heaven and hell. Greater religiosity was associated with greater belief in heaven. Religiosity was also associated with less benign beliefs about the nature of hell. Speciﬁcally, greater religiosity was associated with seeing hell as less exciting, avoidable only through acceptance of Christ as savior, and not exclusively reserved for bad people or those who failed to live good lives. Yet, even when religiosity was taken into account, clear Catholic/Protestant diﬀerences remained. Regardless of religiosity levels, Catholics saw a smaller percentage of the population as destined for hell and were less worried that someone they cared about might go to hell. Catholic students were also less likely to emphasize acceptance of Christ as a prerequisite for avoiding hell, instead focusing on the importance of living a good life and not being a bad person. Catholics were also more likely than nonevangelical Protestants to see punishment in hell as temporary or avoidable through a “last chance” opportunity. In short, although religiosity did predict some beliefs about the afterlife, Catholic/Protestant diﬀerences could not be reduced to diﬀerences in religiosity.

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Table 3. Study 1: Prediction of Afterlife Beliefs Based on Religiosity and Denomination Religiosity Catholic1 b b I believe in life after death I believe in heaven I believe in hell Percentage of people going to heaven Percentage of people going to hell I sometimes worry that I might go to hell I sometimes worry that someone I care about might go to hell Hell is probably more fun or exciting than heaven I think that people have a “last chance” to avoid hell after they die or at the moment of death I think that punishment in hell will be temporary I believe that only really bad people will go to hell If you live a good life, you won’t go to hell I believe that the only way to avoid hell is to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior

.13 .26** .10

.00 –.11 –.08

Evangelical2 b

R2

.13 –.06 .20+

.04 .08** .09**

–.05

.27**

.03

.07*

.05

–.31**

.10

.16**

–.09

.14

.04

–.04 .10 –.23*

–.38** –.09

–.01

.17**

.14

.06*

–.10

.32**

.24*

.08**

–.16+

.24*

.11

.07*

–.24**

.26**

.04

.14**

–.22**

.45**

–.01

.32**

.34**

–.37**

–.10

.27**

1

Dummy coding was used for regression. Catholic = 1, both Protestant groups = 0. Evangelical = 1, Catholics and nonevangelical Protestants = 0. +p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01.

2

Study 2 Rationale and Overview One limitation of Study 1 was that due to the relatively small sample size, we did not have suﬃcient statistical power to distinguish between evangelical and nonevangelical Protestants. Another study using a national dataset (Exline, 2004) suggested that the distinction between evangelical and nonevangelical Protestants might be particularly important to consider when examining afterlife beliefs. The 2004 study, which used data from the General Social Survey, examined general beliefs about the existence of an afterlife, heaven, and

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hell. Evangelicals (termed fundamentalists in the 2004 paper) reported more belief in heaven and hell than Catholics and nonevangelical Protestants. In Study 2, then, we wanted to ensure that we had suﬃcient power to discriminate between evangelicals and nonevangelicals. For Study 2, we used a larger sample of students from a university in another region of the United States. Another limitation of both Study 1 and the Exline (2004) study was that neither study assessed belief in purgatory, an intermediate place in which people are punished for their sins before being admitted to heaven. We assessed belief in purgatory in Study 2, and we hypothesized that belief in purgatory would be greater among Catholic students than among Protestants. Study 2 was part of a larger study of individual diﬀerences. Because of space constraints, we could not include as many questions about afterlife beliefs as we did in Study 1. However, we were able to include questions about two forms of belief: (a) belief in the existence of various types of afterlife and (b) beliefs about the percentages of people destined for each type of afterlife. Method Participants Data were collected at a private, urban research university in the Midwestern United States. Participants were students in an introductory psychology course. As described below, Catholics and Protestants were selected from the larger sample of 673 participants, yielding a total of 362 (175 men, 187 women; 173 Catholics, 189 Protestants) for the current analyses. Mean age was 19.3 years (SD = 3.5). Ethnicities included Caucasian or European American (74%), Asian or Paciﬁc Islander (13%), African American (7%), Latin American or Hispanic (3%), Middle Eastern (1%), and other or mixed (2%). Procedure Participants received partial course credit for completing an Internetbased questionnaire containing measures of demographics, personality, and religious aﬃliations and beliefs. As in Study 1, we wanted to distinguish between evangelicals and nonevangelicals. It can be diﬃcult to distinguish evangelicals based on denomination alone, as some denominations (e.g., Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran) have both evangelical and nonevangelical branches. As such, we asked all

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Christian participants a separate question about whether or not they identiﬁed as a born again Christian. Seventy-ﬁve said yes, 233 said no, and 39 were unsure. Seven Catholics who identiﬁed as born again were retained in the Catholic group. The remaining participants were split into two Protestant groups: Those who endorsed being born again were categorized as evangelicals (n = 68) and the rest were categorized as nonevangelicals (n = 121). Measures Religiosity The same religious belief salience measure from Study 1 was used, although the scale was changed from 0 (strongly disagree) to 10 (strongly agree). For belief salience, M = 6.5, SD = 2.9, a = .96. An abbreviated version of the religious participation measure was used, with students rating their frequency of ﬁve behaviors in the past month: prayer, reading religious/spiritual texts, attending meetings, thinking about religious/spiritual issues, and talking to others about religious/spiritual issues. The scale was rated from 0 (not at all ) to 6 (more than once a day). For religious participation, M = 3.0, SD = 1.1, a = .86. Both scales were scored by averaging across items. The two scales were highly correlated, r (358) = .73, p < .01. As in Study 1, these two scales were standardized and merged to form an index of religiosity. General belief in life after death, heaven, and hell Participants used an 11-point scale (0 = strongly disagree, 10 = strongly agree) to rate their extent of belief in life after death (M = 8.0, SD = 2.8), heaven (M = 8.3, SD = 2.6), and hell (M = 7.3, SD = 3.3) using prompts similar to those from Study 1. We also added an additional item: “To what extent do you believe in Purgatory (or some intermediate place of punishment after death)?” (M = 4.0, SD = 3.7). Percentage of people destined for heaven versus hell Participants who believed in heaven, hell, and/or purgatory were given the same prompts from Study 1: They rated the percentage of people that they believed would go to each destination. For heaven, M = 61.7, SD = 29.7; for hell, M = 30.8, SD = 27.0; for purgatory, M = 27.4, SD = 32.1.

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julie juola exline and ann marie yali Results and Discussion

Comparisons of means appear in Table 4. As in Study 1, there were no denominational diﬀerences in belief in the existence of an afterlife. However, denominational diﬀerences did emerge among more speciﬁc beliefs. As in the earlier Exline (2004) study, the sharpest diﬀerences emerged between the evangelical Protestant group and the other two groups. Relative to Catholics and nonevangelical Protestants, evangelical Protestants reported greater belief in both heaven and hell, and they saw a smaller percentage of the population being destined for heaven. In terms of percentages of people being destined for hell, there were diﬀerences between all three groups. Catholics reported the lowest proportion of the population being destined for hell, followed by nonevangelical Protestants, who in turn reported lower percentages than evangelicals. Beliefs about purgatory were an important discriminator between the Catholic and Protestant groups. Catholics reported greater belief in purgatory than nonevangelical Protestants, who in turn reported greater belief than evangelicals. In keeping with their greater emphasis on purgatory, Catholic students (relative to evangelicals) believed that a greater number of people were destined for purgatory. As in Study 1, we wanted to see whether these denominational diﬀerences could be explained by diﬀerences in religiosity levels. As shown in Table 4, evangelicals showed higher levels of religiosity than the other two groups, which did not diﬀer from each other. Following Study 1, we conducted a series of multiple regressions to determine whether the denominational diﬀerences could be better explained by religiosity. We used dummy coding to create two denomination variables: One variable was scored 1 for Catholic and 0 for both Protestant groups. A second variable was scored 1 for evangelical Protestants and 0 for the other two groups. As shown in Table 5, religiosity correlated positively with belief in life after death, heaven, and hell. Denominational diﬀerences in these basic beliefs were not signiﬁcant when religiosity levels were considered, although there was a marginally signiﬁcant trend ( p = .06) for evangelicals to report greater belief in hell than nonevangelicals. However, denominational diﬀerences did remain signiﬁcant for the other types of afterlife beliefs when religiosity levels were controlled: Catholic students still reported more belief in purgatory than

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Table 4. Study 2: Afterlife Beliefs of Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, and Nonevangelical Protestants Catholic (n = 173) Range

M

Religiosity index I believe in life after death I believe in heaven

n/a 0–10 0–10

0.2a 7.8a 8.1a

I believe in hell I believe in purgatory Percentage of people going to heaven Percentage of people going to hell Percentage of people going to purgatory

0–10 0–10

7.0a 5.7a

Nonevangelical Evangelical Protestant Protestant (n = 121) (n = 68)

SD

M

SD

M

SD

F

0.8 2.8 2.6

0.3a 7.8a 8.2a

0.8 2.7 2.6

0.9b 0.8 8.4a 3.2 9.1b 2.4

21.82** 1.23 4.00*

3.3 3.4

6.9a 3.0b

3.4 3.3

8.9b 2.8 1.6c 2.8

9.22** 49.21**

0–100 67.3a 28.2 62.2a

30.4 43.4b 25.6

13.92**

0–100 21.2a 20.3 32.8b

28.5 54.9c 25.6

37.94**

0–100 33.8a 33.3 23.1ab

30.5

7.2b 16.6

9.57**

Note: Means with diﬀerent subscripts diﬀer at p < .05 using the Bonferroni correction. +p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01.

Table 5. Study 2: Prediction of Afterlife Beliefs Based on Religiosity and Denomination Religiosity Catholic1 Evangelical2 b

Belief in life after death Belief in heaven Belief in hell I believe in purgatory Percentage of people going to heaven Percentage of people going to hell Percentage of people going to purgatory

.46** .48** .40** .15* .04 –.04 .02

b

b

R2

.03 .02 .03

–.05 .00 .10+

.19** .23** .20**

.38** .07 –.22** .18*

–.20** –.26** .31** –.15*

.24** .08** .20** .08**

1

Dummy coding was used for regression. Catholic = 1, both Protestant groups = 0. Evangelical = 1, Catholics and nonevangelical Protestants = 0. +p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01.

2

the other two groups. Relative to nonevangelical Protestants and Catholics, evangelicals saw a lower percentage of people being destined for heaven and purgatory and a higher percentage destined for hell. And when compared to Protestants, Catholic students saw fewer people destined for hell but more destined for purgatory.

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julie juola exline and ann marie yali General Discussion

Taken together, these studies suggest that Catholic, evangelical Protestant, and nonevangelical Protestant students show diﬀerences in how they think about the afterlife. The data suggested Catholic/ Protestant divergence in three major conceptual categories: belief versus action as a means of avoiding hell, beliefs about the proportion of people going to heaven versus hell (or purgatory), and suﬀering in hell as eternal versus temporary. Furthermore, these diﬀerences remained signiﬁcant when religiosity levels were taken into account. Catholic/Protestant Diﬀerences in Beliefs about Hell Belief versus action We predicted that Protestant and Catholic undergraduates would diﬀer in the relative emphasis they placed on belief versus action as determinants of a person’s fate in the afterlife. Findings strongly supported this hypothesis. In Study 1, Catholic students were much more likely than Protestants to report that people could avoid hell by living a good life. Consistent with their emphasis on behavior, Catholics were more likely than Protestants to list speciﬁc sins that would send a person to hell. Such lists often included murder and other behaviors that involved hurting others. Relative to Protestants, Catholics were more likely to report that hell would be reserved for evil people who committed heinous acts. Protestants were much more likely than Catholics to focus directly on the idea of reconciliation with God, often reporting that hell could only be avoided through belief in Christ and personal acceptance of Christ as one’s savior. Study 2 replicated the ﬁnding that relative to Protestants, Catholic students believed that fewer people were going to hell. However, Catholic students were more likely than Protestants to see people as destined for purgatory, a place of temporary punishment for sins. Based on these ﬁndings, could one argue that either Catholic or Protestant beliefs about the afterlife seem more benign? It seems that both sets of beliefs have the potential to bring both comfort and distress. By emphasizing faith in Christ, Protestants would presumably be less likely than Catholics to view heaven as accessible to people who are morally upright but do not believe in God (or, more speciﬁcally, in the Christian God or a speciﬁc Protestant doctrine). Some Protestants might also worry that their faith is lacking or that

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their conversion experience was inadequate, and a lack in either area might be a cause for afterlife concern. For those Protestants who feel assured that their own faith in God is secure, however, the afterlife might be a comforting prospect. For Catholic students, the greater relative emphasis on behavior might create some ambiguity regarding afterlife outcomes. Some Catholics may feel safe if they avoid heinous crimes such as murder. However, many Catholics in Study 1 also listed more generic sins (e.g., hurting others) as predicting punishment in hell. Since humans all hurt others from time to time, some Catholics might wonder whether their own transgressions would be serious enough to warrant punishment in the afterlife. Also, for those who have committed serious sins such as murder, the Catholic belief system might be more likely than the Protestant system to result in feelings of hopelessness and despair (e.g., “I’ve just bought myself a ticket to hell”). A sense of calm might depend on where Catholics draw the dividing line, hoping that the weight of evidence will fall in their favor or that if they sincerely repent, even at the last moment, they will be forgiven. In short, a relative emphasis on faith versus action could be either calming or frightening, depending on how conﬁdent people are of their standing on these dimensions. (For an empirical look at Protestant/Jewish diﬀerences in ideas about unforgivable oﬀenses, see Cohen, Malka, Rozin, & Cherfas, 2006.) Percentages of people going to heaven, hell, and purgatory As predicted, Protestant and Catholic students diverged in their estimates about what proportion of the population was destined for heaven versus hell. On average, Catholic students reported that over two-thirds of the population would go to heaven and less than onefourth would go to hell. For Protestants—particularly evangelicals— the balance was more equal. In fact, evangelical students reported estimates that over half the population would end up in hell (Studies 1 and 2). Relative to Protestants, Catholic students estimated that a larger percentage of the population would go to purgatory. Belief about the percentage of people going to heaven versus hell could have important psychological implications, all of which await empirical testing. For example, to the extent that they see hell as the default, Protestants—particularly evangelicals—might be more likely than Catholics to view people of diﬀerent faiths as outgroup members. (To use evangelical terminology, a person might speak of

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“saved” versus “unsaved” individuals.) Such ingroup/outgroup distinctions might lead to negative outcomes such as prejudice and discrimination, stemming from a sense of one’s own group as entitled or superior. An ingroup/outgroup distinction might also facilitate outreach eﬀorts with a sense of urgency about converting nonbelievers. The premise would be that people need to take some speciﬁc action in order to avoid hell; thus Protestants might see acts of evangelism as acts of compassion and concern relating to another person’s fate in the afterlife. A “live and let live” attitude might well be seen as a failure to exercise concern about another person’s fate in the afterlife. However, such evangelistic eﬀorts might appear simply intolerant to others who view heaven as the default. Seeing hell as the default should also lead to more fear and sorrow surrounding the deaths of people not known to be fellow believers. A belief in purgatory would seem to be mixed in terms of comfort: It might not yield the same level of terror as the prospect of hell, but it could also dampen what might otherwise be a joyful anticipation of a person going straight to heaven. Suﬀering as eternal versus temporary In partial support of predictions, Catholic students were more likely than nonevangelical Protestants to report that suﬀering in hell would be temporary rather than eternal. Catholics were also more likely to report that people would have a last chance to avoid hell after they die or at the moment of death. The Protestant viewpoint would seem to predict greater urgency about issues surrounding salvation. One unexpected ﬁnding from Study 1 was that it was nonevangelicals, not evangelicals, who showed signiﬁcant diﬀerences from the Catholic students. Unfortunately, we did not include these speciﬁc items about hell in Study 2. Due to the post hoc nature of these ﬁndings and the relatively small number of evangelicals in Study 1, we hesitate to speculate about these unanticipated results unless they are replicated in another study. Limitations Because the current studies relied on samples of college students, we cannot be certain that the results presented here will generalize to the broader population. However, we are encouraged by the fact that the Catholic/Protestant diﬀerences in afterlife belief and reli-

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giosity paralleled those from other studies using national samples (e.g., Exline, 2004; Harley & Firebaugh, 1993; Klenow & Bolin, 1989). In future research, it would be interesting to see whether beliefs about the afterlife shift during the college years as people age (see for example, Heﬀernan, 1996) or as a result of certain life events (e.g., bereavement, near-death or mystical experiences, exposure to alternate worldviews). Because our aim in this initial study was to compare afterlife beliefs of Catholic and Protestant students, we chose a subsample that included only these two Christian groups. We did not report data on other religious groups (e.g., Eastern Orthodox Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews), some of which have been discussed in other empirical articles (e.g., Greeley & Hout, 1999; Harley & Firebaugh, 1993). We readily acknowledge that there are likely to be important diﬀerences in afterlife beliefs between the various world religions. However, in these initial studies our questions and terminology had a distinctly Christian slant. We used terms such as hell and did not ask about other afterlife-related beliefs such as reincarnation or entry into the spirit world. Religious diﬀerences can be explored more systematically in future studies that can provide better sampling from one or more of these religious aﬃliations. In this preliminary attempt to assess speciﬁc afterlife beliefs, we failed to assess some beliefs that would have been relevant to our arguments. For example, we did not do a detailed assessment of beliefs about confession and atonement, which would have allowed us to assess the extent to which Catholics fear dying with unconfessed sins on their souls (see Lester et al., 2001, for data on beliefs about last rites). We also did not assess some potentially comforting Protestant beliefs, such as belief in the eternal security doctrine. Finally, our primary focus in this preliminary study was on people’s general conceptions about hell. Our aim was to provide some balance to the existing literature by focusing on the darker side of the afterlife. As such, we did not include as many questions about heaven or a positive afterlife as we did about hell. Our decision to focus on hell might have thus painted a somewhat lopsided picture of people’s beliefs about the afterlife. In general, it seems that people typically see the afterlife in ways that are more positive than negative (e.g., Exline, 2004; Lester et al., 2001).

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julie juola exline and ann marie yali Conclusions and Future Directions

The research presented here suggests that for researchers interested in the afterlife, it may not be enough to simply ask participants whether they believe in an afterlife. It may be fruitful to go a level deeper, assessing speciﬁc beliefs. The current study suggested some consistent diﬀerences in afterlife beliefs between Catholic and Protestant undergraduates. However, most of the diﬀerences did not emerge at the level of general belief in heaven, hell, or life after death. Instead, the most striking comparisons centered on the reasons why people would go to hell and the percentages of people seen as destined for heaven versus hell. Catholics generally reported that people would have to avoid speciﬁc, serious sins in order to avoid hell, whereas Protestants emphasized a positive relationship with God. Relative to Protestants (particularly evangelicals), Catholics gave much lower estimates of the proportion of people destined for hell. However, Catholics were also more likely than Protestants to endorse belief in purgatory, a place of temporary punishment for sin. Having documented that afterlife beliefs can vary substantially even within Western Christian groups, a crucial next step will be to evaluate the social and psychological implications of such beliefs. Some data suggest that believing in an afterlife might have important links with societal integration (Hynson, 1978), responses to bereavement (Smith et al., 1992), and attitudes about euthanasia (Holden, 1993). It seems likely that speciﬁc afterlife beliefs could inﬂuence other outcomes as well. For example, seeing heaven versus hell as the default might aﬀect people’s attitudes about environmental or evangelistic concerns by prompting them to focus their energies either on this world or the next. The possibility that afterlife beliefs shape daily behavior is by no means a foregone conclusion, however. It remains possible that for most people, afterlife beliefs are too distal to substantially impact daily functioning and priorities. This remains an empirical question. References Alvarado, K. A., Templer, D. I., Bresler, C., & Thomas-Dobson, S. (1995). The relationship of religious variables to death depression and death anxiety. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 202–204. Aries, P. (1981). The hour of our death (H. Weaver, Trans.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Jennifer L. Acord is a practicing school psychologist at Wabash and Ohio Valley Special Education District in southern Illinois. She received her Specialist in School Psychology from Eastern Illinois University. Her research has focused on religious beliefs. Ronan S. Bernas is a professor in the Department of Psychology of Eastern Illinois University. He instructs the Advanced Statistics and Research Methods courses for the graduate programs in School Psychology and Clinical Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology (Committee on Human Development) from The University of Chicago in 1995. His substantive area of research is on learning and conceptual change in knowledge and belief structures. His research employs both quantitative and qualitative modes of analyses. Lisa Denton is a graduate student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary studying Christian counseling. Julie Juola Exline is associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research centers on connections between clinical psychology, social psychology, and the psychology of religion. She is particularly interested in studying spiritual struggles, forgiveness, and humility. Dr. Exline is currently pursuing licensure as a psychologist, and she is also working on a certiﬁcate in spiritual direction from the Ignatian Spirituality Institute at John Carroll University. Leslie J. Francis is professor of practical theology at the University of Wales, Bangor, United Kingdom. He received his Ph.D. and Sc.D. from the University of Cambridge, and his D.D. from the University of Oxford. He is an Anglican priest and Fellow of the British Psychological Society. His recent books include The Naked Parish Priest: What priests really think they are doing (2003), Faith and Psychology: personality, religion and the individual (2005), and British Methodism: What circuit ministers really think (2006). Maria R. Gear is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Bowling Green State University. Her research interests relate to spiritual growth following adverse life events. Her M.A. thesis identiﬁed positive and negative aspects of meaning and spirituality as they relate to recovery from traumatic events. Gear is currently researching factors that mediate spiritual change following traumatic events and will investigate how this may change longitudinally. Barbara Hendry is associate professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. She received a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida. Her research has focused on the construction and negotiation of ethnic, linguistic, and gender identities in Spain, Scotland, and among Irish Americans. She also directs community oral history projects. She has published articles in European Studies Journal, Language Problems and Language Planning, Names, and Southern Anthropologist.

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authors’ biographies

A native of Switzerland, Ines W. Jindra is assistant professor of sociology at Spring Arbor University in Michigan since 2001. In 2004, she defended her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Fribourg (on conversions to diﬀerent religions). Her research interests include religious conversion and biographical processes, religious development, gender and conversion, and qualitative research methods. Mark M. Leach is director of training of the counseling psychology program in at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the incoming program chair for Division 36 (Psychology of Religion) of the American Psychological Association and on the executive committee of Division 16 (Counseling Psychology) of the International Association of Applied Psychology. His main research interests include diversity issues, including religious and spiritual issues, racial consciousness, ethnicity and suicide, international professional issues, and international ethics. Jacob J. Levy is an assistant professor in the Counseling Psychology Program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His research interests include diversity issues and personality assessment. Anna Teresa Mapa is a doctoral student in the Pastoral Counseling Department at Loyola College in Maryland. Kelly McConnell is a clinical psychology doctoral student at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, OH. Her primary research interest is the eﬀects of confession and forgiveness on psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Her other research interests include spiritual struggles and religious prejudice. McConnell will be attending Wayne State University next year for her clinical internship. Leah McMorris received her Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi and is currently working as a professional counselor in southern Mississippi. Bonnie C. Nicholson is an assistant professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. She received her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Marquette University in 2001. Her research interests include parenting and the role of parenting on the development of behavior problems in young children. Speciﬁcally, Dr. Nicholson conducts community-based research on eﬀective parenting interventions and investigates predictors of parenting including religious and other cultural inﬂuences. Kenneth Pargament is professor of clinical psychology in the Ph.D. program at Bowling Green State University. Dr. Pargament has published extensively on the vital role of religion in coping with stress and trauma, perceptions of sacredness in life, and spiritually-integrated treatment. He is author of The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice and co-editor of Forgiveness: Theory, Research, and Practice. He is past president of Division 36 of the American Psychological Association. Ralph L. Piedmont is professor of pastoral counseling at Loyola College in Maryland as well as Director of Doctoral Research. He is the current editor of Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion as well as a consulting editor for a number of other journals in psychology and counseling, including Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development and Journal of Personality Assessment. His research interests include the ﬁve-factor model of personality and its relationship to spiritual

authors’ biographies

263

phenomena and the impact of spiritual transcendence on mental and physical health outcomes. Mandy Robbins is a teaching and research fellow at the University of Wales, Bangor, United Kingdom. She holds the degrees of M.Phil. and Ph.D. from the University of Wales. She is a member of the British Psychological Society. Her recent books include The Fourth R for the Third Millennium: Education in Religion and Values for the Global Future (2001), Religion, Education and Adolescence: International Empirical Perspectives (2005), Fragmented Faith? Exploring the Fault-lines in the Church of England (2005), Urban Hope and Spiritual Health: the Adolescent Voice (2005). William L. Smith is professor of sociology at Georgia Southern University. His current research interests include family life in intentional communities, Irish American identity, lay monastic groups, and the academic attitudes of college students. He is the author of Families and Communes: An Examination of Nontraditional Lifestyles (Sage Publications, 1999), Irish Priests in the United States: A Vanishing Subculture (UPA, 2004), and numerous articles in a variety of referred academic journals. Douglas W. Turton is a recently retired Anglican priest with over twenty years of experience in parish ministry in England. He also holds professional qualiﬁcations as a social worker and in counseling psychology. He holds the degrees of M.Sc. from the University of Surrey and Ph.D. from the University of Wales. He has recently completed a major project on the pastoral care of Anglican clergy. The Reverend Dr. Andrew Village worked as a research ornithologist in Scotland and England before training for the ordained Anglican ministry at Trinity College, Bristol. He now works as Director of the Centre for Ministry Studies at the University of Wales, Bangor. His research interests are centered on the Bible and lay people, and he has published several works in this ﬁeld. Joseph E. G. Williams is associate professor of psychology in the College of Sciences at Eastern Illinois University. Dr. Williams received his Ph.D. from Boston University and post-doctoral training at the University of Chicago, Abbot Laboratories, and the University of London, England. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Neurosciences, and the Society for the Stimulus Properties of Drugs. His research interests involve the study of issues related to addiction and the inﬂuence of religiosity on personal factors and motivation. Keith M. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Eastern Illinois University. He instructs in the M.A. Clinical Psychology program and teaches an undergraduate course on the relation between science, psychology, and society. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Georgia State University and is a licensed clinical psychologist. As of late his research has primarily pursued his interest in religion, while his clinical work centers on anxiety disorders. Ann Marie Yali is associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the City College of New York. She is a social and health psychologist with broad research interests in stress and coping theory, with a particular emphasis on spirituality and religion. Currently Dr. Yali is collaborating with researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to investigate the impact of religious comforts and strains on the psychological and physical well-being of cancer patients and survivors.

MANUSCRIPT REVIEWERS

In addition to the preceding authors, many scholars and scientists have made signiﬁcant contributions to the publication of this volume. They have anonymously screened the initial versions of these and other submitted manuscripts for methodological rigor and scientiﬁc signiﬁcance. They also have provided the authors with invaluable suggestions for improving their papers prior to the authors making their ﬁnal revisions. We, as editors, and the respective authors appreciate their expert services. Not only have they improved the quality of the research reported here, they also have contributed to the quality of the ﬁeld of the social scientiﬁc study of religion. Joseph W. Ciarrocchi, Ph.D. Gabriel S. Dy-Liacco, Ph.D. Rev. Jonathan Golden, Ph.D. Richard L. Gorsuch, Ph.D. Dean R. Hoge, Ph.D. Mark R. McMinn, Ph.D. Kelly M. Murray, Ph.D. K. Elizabeth Oakes, Ph.D.

Kenneth I. Pargament, Ph.D. Thomas E. Rodgerson, Ph.D. Jan D. Sinnott, Ph.D. William J. Sneck, SJ, Ph.D. Joseph A. Stewart-Sicking, Ed.D. Lynn Underwood, Ph.D. Joseph E. G. Williams, Ph.D. Gina M. Yanni-Brelsford, Ph.D.

Research in the Social Scientiﬁc Study of Religion, Volume 17 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006

NAME INDEX

Abeles, M. 148 Abraído-Lanza, A. F. 124, 148 Abramson, H. J. 82, 102 Abueg, F. R. 75 Acord, J. L. 39 Acree, M. 51, 77 Adam, A. K. M. 158, 175 Addad, M. 135, 142, 148 Adkins, L. 219 Ai, A. L. 127–128, 148 Ainlay, S. C. 129, 148 Alba, R. D. 79, 80–83, 102 Aldridge, M. 259 Alexander, F. 129, 148 Alfs, M. 5, 32 Allievi, S. 2 n. 1, 4, 32 Allison, S. 69, 230, 233 Altemeyer, B. 40–42, 48, 203–204, 218–219, 225, 232 Altmaier, E. M. 184, 196 Alvarado, K. A. 235, 258 Ammerman, N. T. 102, 332 Anchor, K. N. 149 Anderson, J. C. 175 Anderson, J. W. 102 Anderson, K. G. 196 Anderson, M. 233 Anson, O. 128, 148 Antoun, R. T. 30, 32 Appleby, S. R. 30, 34 Argyle, M. 135, 152 Aries, P. 236, 239, 258 Arndt, J. 259 Aspenberg, C. 259 Astley, J. 123, 150 Atkins, P. 158, 175 Aubert, C. 113, 122 Aviles, J. M. 125, 148 Babington, P. 133, 154 Bacaseta, P. E. 126, 149 Badro, S. 131, 152 Bainbridge, W. S. 80, 103 Baker, J. 175 Bankston, W. B. 32 Barker, E. 4, 32 Barrett, P. 116, 121

Bartokowski, J. P. 222, 232 Barton, J. M. T. 55, 74 Bassett, R. L. 158, 175, 214, 216, 219 Bates, J. E. 221, 232 Batson, C. D. 199, 219, 223, 226, 232 Baumrind, D. 221, 225, 232 Beardsley, M. 158, 176 Bearon, L. B. 124, 148 Beaupre, P. 152 Bechtel, G. A. 131, 148 Beck, R. 10, 25, 230, 233 Beck, U. 10, 25, 32 Beckett, J. O. 50, 74 Beckford, J. 1, 5, 12, 14–15, 30–32 Belavich, T. 196 Belsky, J. 232 Benore, E. 51, 64, 76 Benson, P. L. 116, 121, 182, 194, 199, 203, 219 Bentler, P. M. 131, 151 Bentley, K. S. 225, 233 Berg, G. E. 129, 148 Berger, B. 11, 32, 80, 102 Berger, P. 11, 32, 80, 102 Bergman, J. 4–5, 33 Berman, M. L. 121 Bernas, R. S. 39 Besier, G. 5, 33 Besier, R. M. 5, 33 Bigler, M. 132, 148 Bill-Harvey, D. 124, 148 Blaine, B. 242, 259 Blazer, D. G. 129, 151–152 Blumberg, E. 124, 149 Boardman, J. D. 129, 150 Boik, R. J. 134, 152 Bolger, J. 135, 150 Bolin, R. C. 236, 257, 259 Bolling, S. F. 128, 148 Bonneh, D. Y. 128, 148 Borysenko, J. 65, 70, 74 Bowman, P. J. 124, 153 Boyatzis, C. J. 1, 33 Boyle, K. 259 Brachel, U. 7, 34

268

name index

Bradburn, N. M. 108, 121 Brant, C. R. 63, 76 Bray, R. M. 54, 75 Brennan, J. M. 75 Brenner, V. 225, 227, 231–233 Bresler, C. 235, 258 Brierley, P. 162, 163, 175 Bromley, C. 124, 148, 153 Bromley, D. G. 152 Bross, L. S. 132, 154 Brown, E. 113, 117, 120, 148 Brown, G. K. 148 Brown, K. C. 154 Brown, L. B. 121–122, 148, 150–151 Brown, M. 154 Brown, P. M. 152 Brunkan, R. J. 114, 121 Bui, K. 80, 103 Burton, L. 130, 145, 151 Butler, M. H. 53–54, 61, 124, 149 Butler, P. 74 Butter, E. M. 76, 196 Byers, A. P. 113–114, 121 Byrd, R. C. 125, 149 Cadell, S. 51, 74 Caldwell, D. 152 Calhoun, L. G. 63, 76–77 Candler, A. G. 71, 74 Cann, A. 63, 76 Carlson, C. R. 13, 22, 126, 149, 203, 220 Carmel, S. 128, 148, 153 Carroll, S. 130, 149 Carson, V. B. 126–127, 149 Carter, M. 142, 151 Cayse, L. N. 124, 149 Cha, K. Y. 125, 149 Chamberlain, K. 132, 149, 155 Chandler, E. N. 128, 153 Chatters, L. M. 124, 149 Chen, J. J. 184, 196 Cherfas, L. 255, 259 Cheung, P. C. 132, 146, 154 Chong, K. H. 80, 102 Christiansen, L. 201, 219 Ciarrocchi, J. W. 115, 122, 183, 192, 195 Clancy, S. 124, 155 Clark, E. T. 74, 231 Clark, J. 233 Clines, D. J. A. 157, 159, 175 Coate, M. A. 106, 121 Cobb, N. J. 217, 219

Cohen, A. B. 259 Cohen, H. J. 152, 255 Cohen, L. H. 76 Cohen, R. D. 51, 129, 154, 238, 255 Cole, B. S. 66, 74 Coleman, S. 131, 149 Collins, R. L. 77 Collipp, P. J. 124, 149 Comer, S. 125, 155 Compton, W. C. 132, 149 Conn, W. 3 n. 2, 33 Conrad, C. F. 12, 33–34 Conti, J. M. 125, 153 Corbin, J. M. 12, 35 Cornblat, M. W. 50–51, 75 Costa, P. T. Jr. 136, 153, 183, 191, 194–195 Côté, P. 5, 33 Cotton, S. 201, 219 Countess, R. H. 5, 33 Coward, D. D. 132, 149 Cox, C. L. 128, 153, 183 Coyle, A. 62, 75 Creswell, J. D. 200, 202, 219 Creswell, J. W. 200, 202, 219 Crisson, J. 124, 152 Crites, J. O. 114, 121 Crocker, J. 242, 259 Cronan, T. A. 124, 149 Cronbach, L. J. 139, 149, 163, 166, 175, 203 Crowson, R. L. 11, 33 Cummings, E. M. 230, 232 Curtice, J. 148, 153 D’Antonio, W. V. 99, 102 Dalgleish, T. 75 Danso, H. 222, 230, 232 Davey, J. 106, 121 Davidson, J. D. 99, 102 Davies, M. 158, 175, 230 Davies, P. R. 160, 175, 230 Davies, P. T. 232 Davis, T. N. 230, 149 Dawson, L. L. 31, 33 de Fockert, J. 132, 152 de Hart, J. 123, 152 DeVellis, B. M. 124, 139, 149 DeVellis, R. F. 124, 139, 149 Deater-Deckard, K. 221, 232 Dechesne, M. 236, 259 DeGood, D. E. 124, 155 Delbanco, A. 46, 48, 236, 259 DeMarco, G. A. 61, 75

name index den Draak, C. 123, 152 Dencher, T. 5, 33 Denton, L. 197 Derogatis, L. R. 128, 149 Dillon, M. 102 Dirksen, H. 5, 33 Dixon, R. D. 236, 259 Dobson, J. 222, 232, 235, 258 Dodge, K. A. 221, 232 Donahue, M. J. 182, 194, 199, 203, 219, 223, 232 Downing, R. 131, 146, 149 Drotar, D. 201, 219 Duck, R. 204, 219 Dudley, M. 74, 77 Duﬀ, R. W. 129, 148 Dungee-Anderson, D. 50, 74 Dunkle, R. E. 127, 148 Dy-Liacco, G. S. 192, 194–195 Ebaugh, H. R. 80, 102 Edwards, A. L. 114, 121, 131, 146 Edwards, M. J. 114, 131, 146, 149 Eliade, M. 260 Elkins, D. 126, 149 Elliott, M. N. 77 Ellison, C. G. 60, 75, 124, 128–129, 149–150, 195, 222–223, 232–233 Elster, C. A. 174–175 Ensing, D. S. 76 Erikson, J. A. 194 Esser, F. 21, 37 Evans, T. E. 130, 134, 142, 145, 151 Exline, J. J. 60, 68, 74, 192, 194, 217, 219, 235, 235 n*, 237, 240–241, 243, 248–250, 252, 257, 259 Eysenck, H. J. 105, 116–117, 120–121, 135–137, 139, 142, 150, 153–154 Eysenck, S. B. G. 116, 121, 150 Fackre, G. 174–175 Fairrow, A. M. 200, 219 Falgout, K. 76 Fan, J. J. 62, 76 Farber, E. W. 64, 74 Fetzer/National Institute on Aging Working Group 177–178, 180–181, 195 Finke, R. 80, 102–103 Finkel, D. 47–48 Finlayson, D. S. 136, 150 Finney, J. R. 123, 126, 150

269

Firebaugh, G. 236, 257, 259 Fish, S. 158, 174–176 Fisher, J. W. 135, 152 Fitchett, G. 61, 75 Fleming, B. 67, 75, 236 Fleming, S. 67, 236 Fletcher, B. 13, 19–20, 109, 121 Flint, E. P. 129, 151 Floyd, H. H. 3, 32, 199 Floyd, R. B. 3, 199, 219 Folkman, S. 51, 52, 56, 61, 75–77 Follette, V. M. 75 Fonss, N. 129, 148 Ford, S. M. 129, 152 Forrest, G. G. 113–114, 121 Forsyth, C. J. 3, 32 Fossler, R. J. 132, 154 Fowl, S. E. 158, 175 Fowler, J. W. 1, 6, 33–34 Fox, R. A. 225, 227, 231–233, 244 Francis, L. J. 121–122, 150–154, 175–176 Frankl, V. E. 72, 75, 129, 151 Frazier, P. A. 50, 77 Freeman, A. 67, 75 Fry, P. S. 124, 151 Fu, M. 80, 103 Furlong, M. 162, 175 Furnham, A. 136, 151 Gadamer, H.-G. 158–159, 175 Gailitis, A. 158, 175 Gall, T. L. 50–51, 75 Gans, H. J. 80–82, 99, 102 Gardner, B. C. 124, 149 Garz, D. 33 Gay, D. A. 128–129, 150 Gear, M. R. 49 Gelberg, L. 127, 154 Genia, V. 223, 233 George, L. K. 124, 129, 152, 195 Gershoﬀ, E. T. 230–231, 233 Gibbs, D. 128, 151 Gibson, R. C. 124, 151 Giddens, A. 10, 25, 32 Gilden, D. 132, 154 Gillespie, V. B. 15, 33 Gillis, C. 99, 103 Gladding, S. T. 217, 219 Glass, J. C. 122 Glass, T. A. 150 Glazer, N. 80–82, 103 Glinka, H. J. 12, 14, 16, 33 Glover, R. J. 217, 219

270

name index

Gmünder, P. 2, 7, 15, 34, 37 Goetz, D. 109, 122 Golden, J. 115, 122 Golombok, S. 233 Golsworthy, R. 62, 75 Gordon, A. 4, 76 Gordon, D. F. 33 Gordon, M. 103 Gorski, P. S. 80, 103 Gorsuch, R. 177, 192, 195, 203, 219, 233, 237, 259 Gough, H. 183, 195 Gowda, M. 151 Graham, S. 58, 77 Greeley, A. M. 79–83, 101, 103, 236, 257, 259 Greenberg, J. 235, 259 Grevengoed, N. 203, 220 Griﬃth, J. L. 68–69, 75 Griﬃth, M. E. 68–69, 75 Gruner, L. 126, 151 Guba, E. G. 11, 34 Guier, C. 124, 148 Gupta, K. D. 127, 151 Gupta, R. 127, 151 Gupta, V. P. 127, 151 Gurin, G. 124, 153 Hadaway, C. K. 192, 195 Haddad, B. 159, 176 Hahn, J. 60, 76 Hammond, M. 82–83, 230, 234 Hammond, P. E. 82–83, 103, 230 Hanson, W. E. 200, 202, 219 Hardon, J. A. 240, 259 Harley, B. 236, 257, 259 Harlow, L. L. 131, 151, 153 Harper, J. 33, 221, 233 Harris, W. S. 125, 151 Harrison, B. G. 5, 33 Hathaway, W. 203, 220 Haupert, B. 12, 33 Haworth, J. G. 33–34 Haynes, S. N. 75 Hays, J. C. 129, 151–152 Hébert, G. 5, 33 Heelas, P. 4, 34 Heﬀernan, M. M. 257, 259 Heilbrum, A. 195 Heirich, M. 3–34 Helm, H. M. 129, 151 Helminiak, D. A. 198, 218–219 Hemsworth, D. 51, 74 Hendry, B. 79

Henning, G. 124, 152 Henry, P. J. 80, 103 Herberg, W. 80–81, 103 Herl, D. 121 Hernke, D. A. 148 Hill, P. C. 195 Himmelfarb, M. 236, 259 Hipp, K. M. 63, 76 Hoﬀman, L. W. 219 Hoﬀman, M. L. 219 Hoge, D. R. 99, 102 Holden, G. W. 131, 146, 233, 236, 258 Holden, J. 131, 146, 236, 258–259 Holden, R. R. 131, 146, 149, 230, 236, 258 Holland, N. 158, 175 Hollinger, D. P. 55, 75 Hood, R. W. Jr. 123, 152, 177, 195, 223, 233, 237, 259 Hoornaert, F. 112–113, 122 Hourani, L. L. 54, 75 House, J. 122 Hout, M. 236–237, 257, 259 Huber, W. 112, 122 Huﬀ, J. L. 40–41, 45–48 Hunsberger, B. 40, 42, 48, 203–204, 219, 222, 225, 230, 232, 237, 259 Huss, K. 126, 149 Hylson-Smith, K. 162, 175 Hymer, S. 55–59, 75 Hynson, L. M. 236, 258–259 Iannaccone, L. 4, 35 Iser, W. 158, 175 Iyer, S. 200, 219 Jackson, J. S. 107–108, 129, 150, 153 Jackson, S. 107–108, 122, 129 Jacobsson, L. 113, 120, 122 Janigian, A. S. 64, 77 Janoﬀ-Bulman, R. 62–64, 75 Janssen, J. 123, 152 Jaycox, L. H. 77 Jelen, T. G. 41, 48 Jenks, R. J. 201, 219 Jensen, G. H. 59, 67, 75 Jindra, I. W. 1, 1 n *, 2, 9, 34, 36 John, O. 195 Johnson, D. M. 62, 124, 135, 152 Johnson, L. C. 76, 124, 135 Johnson, P. 124, 135, 151 Jones, J. 13, 20, 22, 38, 75, 203 Jones, P. G. 13, 20, 22, 68, 151, 203

name index Jones, W. 13, 20, 22, 68, 203, 220 Joseph, S. 49, 77, 132, 152, 177 Joyce, C. R. B. 124, 152 Jubber, K. 5, 34 Jung, C. G. 53, 65, 75, 77 Kahlich, L. 125, 155 Kaldor, P. 135, 142, 151, 152 Kaminer, D. 59, 75 Kanouse, D. E. ?? Kaplan, G. A. 124, 129, 131, 154 Kaplan, J. 124, 129, 131, 149 Kaplan, R. M. 124, 129, 131, 149 Kashikar-Zuck, S. 152 Kaufman, G. 65, 75 Kay, W. K. 142, 151 Keefe, F. J. 124, 152, 154 Keﬀala, V. J. 184, 196 Keller, H. 11, 32 Kelly, M. C. 49, 98, 103 Kennedy M. C. 192, 194 Kennell, J. 203, 220 Kenny, K. E. 148 Kettunen, P. 53, 58, 66–67, 75 Kilbourne, B. 3, 34 Killian, L. M. 101, 103 Kim, J.-O. 166, 175 Kinlaw, B. J. R. 236, 259 Kinney, R. M. 124, 154 Kirkpatrick, L. A. 42, 47–48, 203, 219, 223, 233 Kitzberger, I. R. 158, 176 Kivisto, P. 81, 103 Klenow, D. J. 236, 257, 259 Knight, D. A., 34 Koenig, H. G., 60, 76, 124, 127, 129, 148, 151–152, 194, 195 Koenigsberg, J. 131, 146, 154 Kohlberg, L. 7, 217, 219–220 Kolb, J. W. 151 Koole, S. L. 75 Köse, A. 3, 4, 34 Kozin, F. 124, 149 Kraimer, K. 33 Krause, N. 60, 75, 195 Kubany, E. S. 54, 75 Landerman, L. R. 129, 152 Lanigan, C. 132, 152 Lannacone, S. 231, 233 Larson, D. B. 124, 129, 152 Lash, S. 10, 25, 32 Laythe, B. 47–48

271

Lazarus, R. S. 51–53, 56, 75 Leach, M. M. 182, 195, 199, 203, 220 Lee, C. 231, 233 Lester, D. 131, 135, 151–152, 236–237, 240, 257, 259 Letsoalo, J. L. 5, 34 Leung, M. C. 132, 153 Levenson, A. 128, 148 Levin, J. S. 124, 128, 152–153 Levy, J. J. 197 Lewis, C. A. 132, 152 Lewis, E. L. 135, 219 Licht, M. H. 167, 176 Lichtman, R. R. 63, 69, 77 Lieberson, S. 81, 103 Likert, R. 163, 176 Lilliston, L. 124, 152 Lincoln, Y. S. 11, 34 Lindley, L. D. 214, 220 Lindsay-Hartz, J. 54, 76 Lindstrom, H. 113, 120, 122 Linley, P. A. 49, 77 Linzey, S. 41, 48 Littleﬁeld, C. 236, 259 Lobel, M. 60, 74, 241, 259 Lobo, R. A. 125, 149 Loder, J. 3 n. 2, 34 Loﬂand, J. 35 Lohan, J. 62, 76 Lonetto, R. 235, 259 Long, K. A. 134, 152 Louden, S. H. 106–107, 115, 121 Luftman, V. 231, 233 Lundh, L. 236, 259 Lusby, F. S. 240, 260 Luther, M. 238–240, 260 Lynn, M. L. 219 Lyon, D. E. 131, 153 Lyons, J. S. 124, 152 Ma, H. K. 132, 146, 153–154 MacCallum, F. 200, 219, 233 Machalek, R. 2–3, 35 MacNutt, F. S. 125, 153 Magyar, G. M. 51, 64, 76 Mahoney, A. 51, 60, 64, 76, 221–222, 229, 231–233 Malka, A. 255, 259 Malony, N. H. 35, 123, 126, 150 Maltby, J. 135, 152–153 Manke, F. P. 75 Maoz, B. 128, 148 Mapa, A. T. 177

272

name index

Markides, K. S. 128, 153 Marler, P. L. 192, 195 Marlow, S. M. 125, 153 Marsden, G. M. 30 n. 8, 34 Marshall, G. N. 33, 77 Martin, A. 68, 74, 237 Marty, M. E. 30, 34, 237–238, 260 Maslach, C. 107–108, 122 Massey, A. 136, 153 Matthews, D. A. 125, 153 Matthews, W. J. 153 Mathewson, K. 158, 175 Mauss, A. L. 3, 35 Mbanga, I. 59, 75 McBrien, R. P. 237, 239–240, 260 McCallister, B. D. 00 McCallum, T. J. 219 McCarthy, D. M. 179, 196 McConnell, K. M. 49 n. *, 50, 58, 60, 76 McCrae, R. R. 136, 153, 183, 191, 194–195 McCullough, M. E. 123, 153 McDonald, A. 230, 233 McEvoy, M. 231, 233 McFarland, S. G. 40, 42, 47–48 McIntosh, D. N. 62, 76 McKennell, A. 166, 176 McKnight, E. V. 158, 176 McMinn, M. R. 55, 76 McMorris, L. 221 McPherson Frantz, C. 62–63, 75 McPherson, S. 226, 233 McPherson, S. E. 203, 219 Meador, K. G. 129, 152 Meagher, T. J. 98, 103 Meisenhelder, J. B. 128, 153 Melton, J. G. 4, 34 Messinger-Rapport, B. J. 200, 219 Mesters, C. 159, 176 Meyer, J. M. 199, 219 Meyer, K. 99, 102 Mickley, J. R. 63, 76 Miller, M. E. 13, 17, 20–21, 27–29, 35, 125 Miller, P. C. 233 Miller, W. R. 74, 155 Mills, C. W. 6 n. 3, 34 Minton, B. 236, 260 Mirsalimi, H. 64, 74 Moberg, D. O. 219 Monteiro, D. 199, 220 Montgomery, A 133, 142, 146, 153 Moomal, Z. 135, 142, 153

Moore, S. D. 157, 175 Moos, B. S. 49, 183, 195 Moos, R. H. 77, 183, 195 Morris, R. J. 123, 152 Morrison, J. L. 00 Moseley, R. M. 1, 3 n. 2, 6, 34 Moynihan, D. P. 80–82, 103 Mueller, C. 166, 175 Mull, C. S. 128, 153 Munsey, B. 220 Munz, D. C. 58, 76 Murch, L. R. 51, 76 Murphy, S. A. 62, 76 Murphy, S. P. 124, 154 Murray-Swank, A. 50, 76 Musick, M. A. 129, 153, 195 Nagel, J. 80, 103 Nee, V. 80, 102 Nefzger, B. 103 Neighbors, H. W. 95, 102, 124, 153 Neimeyer, G. J. 132, 148 Nelson, R. 182, 195, 199, 220 Neumann, A. J. 33–34 Neusner, J. 237, 260 Newcomb, M. D. 131, 146, 151, 153 Newell, R. J. 214, 216, 219 Newman, J. 203, 220 Nicassio, P. M. 124, 148 Nicholas, J. J. 61, 75 Nicholson, B. C. 221, 231–233 Nipkow, K. E. 1, 8, 33–34 Norsworthy, L. 230, 233 Norusis, M. 166, 176 Novotni, M. 76 O’Donovan, D. 136, 153 O’Fallon, M. 148 O’Keefe, J. H. 124, 152, 154 O’Laoire, S. 125, 153 O’Neill, A. 231, 233 O’Sullivan, M. J. 128, 153, 236, 260 Ochs, M. 5, 34 Oevermann, U. 11, 34 Olsen, H. 76 Ong, A.D. 217, 219 Osarchuk, M. 236, 260 Oser, F. K. 1 n. *, 2, 7–8, 12, 15, 34, 37 Otterbacher, J. R. 76 Overcash, W. S. 63, 76 Owusu, V. 204, 219 Ozment, S. E. 240, 260

name index Pagels, E. 39–40, 45–48 Paloutzian, R. F. 2, 33–35, 194–195, 219, 235 n. * Pargament, K. I. 3, 37, 49–50, 55–56, 60–64, 66, 70, 74, 76, 192, 194–196, 200, 203, 220–222, 233 Park, C. L. 33, 35, 51, 61, 76–77, 148, 153, 194–195, 219 Parker, D. J. 194 Parker, G. 113, 120, 122, 125 Parker, W. R. 153, 192 Pearson, P. R. 117, 132, 135, 137, 139, 142, 151, 153, 154 Pendleton, B. F. 123, 127, 147, 154 Penton, J. M. 5, 35 Perez, L. M. 194–195 Perris, C. 113, 120, 122 Perris, H. 122 Peter, O. 58, 70, 77 Peters, C. 225, 233 Petersen, R. 61, 76 Peterson, C. 128, 148 Petit, G. S. 232 Pfeiﬀer, C. A. 124, 148 Philipchalk, R. 117, 121, 135, 151 Phillips, M. 33, 148, 153 Piedmont, R. L. 115, 120, 122, 177, 177 n. *, 180, 182–183, 192, 194–195, 199, 203, 220 Pierloot, R. 112–113, 122 Piron, H. 112, 122 Plano Clark, V. L. 200, 202, 219 Poloma, M. M. 123, 127, 147, 154 Porter, J. E. 132, 155 Posner, L. 124, 149 Potvin, R. H. 114, 122 Powell, F. C. 260 Powell, L. H. 235–237 Power, M. J. 72, 75 Prakash H. 127, 151 Pratt, M. 222, 230, 232 Pretzer, J. 67, 75 Pritchett, J. T. 129, 152 Propst, L. R. 68, 76 Pyszczynski, T. 75, 235, 259 Radon, V. 236, 259 Radsniak, P. 259 Rambo, L. R. 3, 35, 64, 76 Randall, K. 162, 176 Range, L. M. 236, 260 Ransom, S. 259 Rappaport, H. 132, 159

273

Ray, L. A. 128, 153, 235 n. * Rebhun, U. 103 Reed, A. J. 129, 148 Regehr, C. 51, 74 Reilly, B. 76 Revenson, T. A. 124, 148 Richards, D. G. 130, 154 Richards, T. A. 77, 214, 216 Richardson, J. T. 3, 5, 33–34 Ricoeur, P. 159, 176 Rippentrop, A. E. 184, 186, 196 Rippey, R. M. 124, 148 Robbins, M. 2, 133, 135, 142, 150, 154 Robbins, T. 35, 148 Roberts, R. E. 129, 154 Robinson, E. 152 Rodger, R. 110, 121 Rodgerson, T. E. 115, 120, 122 Roe, A. 113–114, 122 Rogerson, A. 5, 35 Rose, B. M. 109, 260 Rose, E. 192, 194, 217, 219, 236 Rose, M. 122 Rosenstiel, A. K. 124, 154 Rosenthal, S. L. 201, 219 Rowatt, W. C. 199, 220 Rowell, G. 55, 77 Rozin, P. 238, 255, 259 Rutledge, C. J. F. 106–108, 115, 121–122 Ruzek, J. I. 75 Ryan, K. F. 3 n. 2, 35 Rybarczyk, B. D. 61, 75 Rye, M. S. 55, 76, 196 Sales, S. M. 109, 122 Salley, A. 152 Salsman, J. M. 203, 220 Sanderson, W. C. 241, 259 Sandler, H. M. 126, 149 Sandler, J. 112, 122 Sarteschi, L. M. 5, 35 Saudia, T. L. 124, 154 Saye, S. 174, 176 Scarlett, W. G. 34 Schaefer, J. A. 49, 77 Schlesinger, S. 131, 146, 154 Schmalz, M. 5, 35 Schmitt, D. P. 199, 220 Schnell, W. J. 5, 35 Schoenrade, P. A. 223, 226, 232, 236, 260 Schuster, M. A. 50, 54, 33, 77, 151

274

name index

Schütze, F. 12, 14, 35 Schwartz, J. P. 214, 220 Schweitzer, F. 1, 3 n. 2, 6, 33–35 Scott, A. B. 76 Scott, P. 33–34, 236 Sears, D. O. 80, 103 Segovia, F. F. 157–158, 174, 176 Shaw, A. 77, 124 Shaw, R. J. 49, 154 Sheﬃeld, B. 132, 135, 142, 154 Shek, D. T. L. 132, 146, 154 Sheldon, K. M. 259 Shelley, B. L. 240, 260 Shema, S. J. 129, 154 Sherkat, D. E. 222, 233 Shuler, P. A. 127, 154 Shupe, A. 124, 155 Shutty, M. S. 124, 155 Sibeko, M. 159, 176 Siegleman, M. 13, 122 Siegler, I. C. 124, 152 Silver, R. C. 34, 62, 76 Simanton, D. A. 126, 149 Simon, K. M. 67, 75 Singleton, R. 129, 148 Sireci, S. G. 125, 153 Sizemore, D. 236, 260 Smith, C. 5, 13, 23, 25, 35 Smith, D. L. 135, 154 Smith, G. T. 179, 196 Smith, H. L. 162, 175, 214, 216, 219 Smith, P. C. 236, 258, 260 Smith, T. L. 103 Smith, W. L. 79, 81–82 Snooks, H. 231, 233 Snow, D. 2–3, 35 Sohr, R. 231, 233 Solomon, S. 235, 259 Soper, D. W. 74 Southard, S. 35 Sparn, W. 35 Spector, P. E. 163, 166, 176 Spilka, B. 62, 77, 236–237, 259–260 Spilka, B. P. 116, 121 Spilsbury, J. C. 124, 149 St Johns, E. 125, 153 Stahura, C. 75 Stanik, P. 76 Stapel, D. A. 77 Staples, C. L. 3, 35 Starbuck, E. D. 71, 77 Stark, R. 4, 35, 80, 102–103 Stein, B. D. 77

Stein, D. J. 59, 75 Stout, J. A. 124, 149 Stout, L. 236, 260 Straus, R. A. 3, 35, 71, 77 Strauss, A. L. 12, 35 Strawbridge, W. J. 129, 154 Streib, H. 1, 6, 8, 35–36 Strickland, M. P. 65, 77 Stromberg, P. 4, 36 Strychacz, C. P. 151 Sullivan, J. A. 128, 153 Susman, M. 131, 146, 154 Sutton, T. D. 124, 154 Suziedelis, A. 114, 122 Swank, A. B. 50, 221–222, 233 Swigert, V. L. 129, 148 Tangney, J. P. 54, 77 Tarakeshwar, N. 60, 76, 221–222, 233 Tate, J. 217, 219 Tate, W. R. 157, 176 Tatz, S. J. 236, 260 Taylor, R. J. 124, 149–150 Taylor, S. E. 13, 28, 63, 69, 77 Tedeschi, R. G. 63, 76–77 Templer, D. I. 235, 258–259 Teresi, J. A. 194, 196, 223, 233 Tesser, A. 77 Thernstrom, S. 102 Thiselton, A. C. 157–159, 176 Thomas-Dobson, S. 235, 258 Thompson, S. C. 64, 77 Thomson, K. 148, 153 Thorson, J. A. 235–237, 260 Tillich, P. 129, 155 Tix, A. P. 50, 77 Tober, L. M. 240, 260 Todd, E. 57–58, 77, 235 n. * Tolbert, M. A. 158, 174, 176 Tonigan, J.S. 125, 155 Travisano, R. V. 3, 36 Trier, K. K. 124, 155 Tropman, J. E. 239, 260 Tsevat, J. 201, 219 Tupling, H. 113, 120, 122 Turner, J. A. 124, 155 Turton, D. 106–107, 111, 121–122 Tuttle, D. H. 124, 155 Ullman, C. 3–4, 36, 65, 77 Ulmer, A. 236, 260 Ulmer, B. 3, 6 n. 3, 14, 31, 36 Underwood, L. G. 193, 196, 223, 233 Urban, B. J. 124, 152

name index Vacek, J. L. 151 Van Haitsma, K. 76 van Knippenberg, A. 259 van Scott, M. 236, 260 VandeCreek, L. 129, 148 Vanhoozer, K. J. 158, 176 Veltkamp, L. 231, 233 Vergote, A. 112, 122 Village, A. 157 n. *, 158, 161–163, 165, 172, 176 von Knorring, L. 113, 120, 122 von Rohr, J. 238, 260 Wacker, G. 30, 30 n. 8, 36 Wah, C. R. 4–5, 36 Wahking, H. 61, 77 Waisberg, J. L. 132, 155 Waldron, C. 259 Walker, D. F. 192, 196 Walker, S. R. 13, 21, 125, 155 Warner, K. 80, 82–83, 103 Warner, R. S. 103 Warren, R. 106–107 Warren, Y. 122 Waters, M. C. 80–82, 103 Watson, P. J. 123, 152 Webster-Stratton, C. 230, 234 Weddle, D. L. 5, 36 Weinberg, M. S. 54, 77 Weiner, B. 58, 77 Welldon, R. M. C. 124, 152 Wenger Jindra, I. 2, 4, 9, 36 Whelan, E. 148 Whitty, M. T. 132, 155 Wiehe, V. R. 222, 234 Wilcox, B. W. 222, 230, 232 Wilcox, C. 41, 48, 135, 151 Wilcox, W. B. 234 Williams, B. A. 124, 129, 148 Williams, C. J. 77 Williams, D. A. 152 Williams, D. R. 150 Williams, J. E. G. 183, 192, 195 Williams J. S. 152

275

Williams, K. A. 54, 64, 74 Wilson, B. 1, 5, 36 Wilson, F. R. 105, 122 Wilson, K. M. 39 n. *, 40–41, 45–48 Wimsatt, W. K. 158, 176 Winner, A. L. 199, 219 Winter, J. A. 103 Wirth, D. P. 125, 149 Wise, R. T. 53–54, 58, 66, 77 Wohlrab-Sahr, M. 2–4, 6 nn. 3–4; 14, 31, 34, 36–37 Wood, J. V. 63, 69, 77 Woods, R. H. 34 Worthington, E. L., Jr. 74, 76 Wortman, C. B. 62, 76 Wu, L. 62, 76 Wulﬀ, D. M. 236, 260 Yale University Press. 35, 75–76, 102, 155, 175 Yali, A. M. 60, 74, 235 n. *, 241, 259 Yalom, I. D. 131, 155 Yamane, D. 11, 37 Yangarber-Hicks, N. 203, 220 Yonan, G. 5, 37 Yopyk, D. J. 64, 75 Young-Eisendrath, P. 35 Young-Ward, L. 124, 154 Younger, J. B. 131, 153 Yuan, H. 54, 75 Zaccaria, J. S. 113–114, 121 Zebracki, K. 201, 219 Zerowin, J. 76 Zhou, A. J. 00 Zika, S. 132, 149, 155 Zinn, J. 21, 37 Zinnbauer, B. J. 3, 37, 76, 192, 196 Zmuidinas, M. 58, 77 Zungu-Dirwayi, N. 59, 75 Zygmunt, J. F. 5, 37

SUBJECT INDEX

AA. See Alcoholica Anonymous Adjective Check List 183, 195 Aﬃrming parents. See parental ﬁgures African Americans 39, 41–47, 50, 150, 200, 219 afterlife beliefs 235–237, 239, 243–245, 248–250, 252–253, 256–260 Agreeableness. See personality Alcoholics Anonymous 65, 67, 70, 72, 75, 130 Anglican. See Christianity Anglican Church 157 Anglican clergy 107–108, 110–111, 122 attitudinal valence 197, 201, 213 authoritarianism 39–45, 47–48, 199, 204, 219, 226, 232 Baptist. See Christianity Belief in an Active Satan Scale 40–41, 43–44, 48 biblical conservatism 161, 165, 167 biblical hermeneutics 157–158, 160, 175 biblical literalism 157, 165, 167, 173–174, 176 biblical study 157, 160 biographical interviews 1, 14 Catholic. See Catholicism Catholicism 17–18, 20, 30, 55, 57, 82, 86, 92, 94, 96, 98, 101, 103, 239–40, 260 charismatic practice 158, 162, 167, 172 Charles T. Russell. See Jehovah’s Witnesses Christian service. See Christianity Christianity 2, 4, 8–10, 20 n. 6, 40, 55, 64, 74, 77, 122, 175, 195, 219, 233, 237, 242 church attendance 51, 91, 93, 99–100, 130, 134, 137, 150–154, 163, 222 Church of England 107, 109, 111, 115, 121, 162–163, 175–176

clergy work-related stress 105–106, 112, 114, 121 Confession. See Catholicism Connectedness. See Spiritual Transcendence Scale Conscientiousness. See personality conversion 1–3, 3 n. 2, 4–5, 5 n. 3, 6, 6 n. 3, 8–13, 15–16, 18–23, 25–26, 26 n. 7, 29–37, 49, 64–66, 70–73, 76–77, 255 deﬁning 2, 173, 179, 229 coping 49, 50–51, 54, 56, 62, 64, 69–70, 75–77, 124, 132, 148–155, 178, 181, 185–186, 192–195, 200, 220 coping resources. See coping criticising parents. See parental ﬁgures death anxiety 127, 132, 154, 235, 237, 258–260 education 13–14, 17–18, 21, 26, 30, 33–35, 84, 87, 94–96, 105 n *, 120, 122, 123 n *, 133, 148, 150–151, 154, 157, 161, 165–166, 168–174, 195, 200, 204, 219–220, 222, 224, 230–231 English Church Attendance Survey 163 EPPS 114 Edwards Personal Preference Schedule 114, 121 ethnic identity. See ethnicity ethnicity 79–93, 95–96, 97–103, 158, 224, 242 extraversion. See personality extrinsic. See religious orientation faith maturity 189, 199, 205–207, 215, 217 Faith Maturity Scale, Short Form (FMS) 182, 188–189, 194–195, 203, 219–220 Family Environment Scale (FES) 183, 188, 195 Fetzer/NIA Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (MMRS) 177

subject index FFM. See ﬁve-factor model ﬁve-factor model (FFM) 180, 183, 190, 195 forgiveness 49, 55–56, 58–61, 68–69, 70, 74–77, 178, 181, 184–185, 189, 192, 194, 238, 240 forgiving God. See forgiveness FRI Family Relations Inventory 114 fundamentalism 30, 30 n. 8, 31–32, 34, 36, 39–45, 47–48, 197, 205–208, 215, 218–220, 222–223, 227–230, 232–233 Fundamentalism Scale 40–44, 203, 214, 225, 228 God image 70, 115, 121, 183, 230 Grace 61–62, 77, 185, 189, 239 guilt 53–54, 58, 65, 70, 74–77, 259 guilt-proneness. See guilt healing 76, 124, 149, 152, 155, 157, 161, 162–165, 167–172, 174, 176 hell 4, 97, 235–241, 243–244, 244 n. 2, 245–260 horizon preference. See interpretive horizons horizon separation. See interpretive horizons horizons. See interpretive horizons intercessory prayer. See Prayer interpretative horizons 157 intolerance 39–45, 46–47 Intolerance Scale 42 intrinsic. See religious orientation introversion. See personality Irish Americans 79, 82, 86, 99, 102 Islam 2, 4, 8–10, 26 n. 7, 32, 36–37, 64 Jehovah’s Witnesses 1, 2, 4–6, 8–13, 15–20, 20 n. 6, 31–26, 26 n. 7, 29–37 Jews 55–56, 80–81, 95, 101, 103, 204, 236, 238, 257 job satisfaction 105, 107–112, 114, 116–122 literalism 157, 161, 165, 167–170, 173–174, 176, 222 Maslach Burnout Inventory 107–108, 122

277

meaning-making 49, 61–64, 69–70, 129 Methodist. See Christianity Methodist ministers 111 ministerial job satisfaction 105, 108, 110–112, 116–122 MMRS. See Fetzer/NIA Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (MMRS) moral development 7, 217, 219–220 NEO PI-R 191, 194 neuroticism. See personality numinous. See spirituality Openness. See personality Parent Behavior Checklist 224, 227, 233 parental ﬁgures 112–113 parental images. See parental ﬁgures personal devotion. See Prayer personal identity 3, 113 personal prayer. See Prayer personal transgressions 49–51, 53–60, 62–66, 69, 73 personality 3 n. 2, 105, 115–123, 127, 135–137, 139–140, 142–143, 145, 147, 150–155, 177, 179–180, 183, 186, 189–196, 250 personality constructs. See personality positive religious coping 51, 186 posttraumatic growth 49, 51, 64, 74, 77 Prayer 51, 68–69, 94, 123–131, 133–135, 137–139, 141–147, 157, 162, 164–165, 182, 184–190, 222, 238, 240, 243, 251 Prayer Fulﬁllment. See Spiritual Transcendence Scale prosocial attitudes 123, 146–147 Protestant. See Christianity psychological well-being 75, 127, 129, 132, 154–155, 223, 259 psychoticism. See personality purpose in life 63, 123, 129–135, 137–140, 142–145, 155 quest 6 n. 4, 48, 219, 221–223, 226, 227–229, 232–233 Quest Scale 226 Religion 1, 2 n. 1, 6 n. 4, 7–8, 10–11, 16–18, 20 n. 6, 21, 23, 29, 35–37, 40, 50, 55, 64, 69, 71,

278

subject index

75–77, 79–83, 85–88, 90, 92–93, 97–103, 106, 123, 129, 133–134, 136, 150–154, 184–185, 187, 190, 192, 195–197, 199–205, 208–213, 216–223, 230, 232–233, 236, 241–242, 259–260 Religiosity 8, 34, 45, 81–82, 99, 102–103, 129, 142, 148–155, 177–180, 186–194, 203, 205–208, 214, 221, 223, 226–227, 229–232, 241–244, 248–249, 251–254 Religious aﬃliation 73, 83, 137–138, 181, 221–222, 224, 229–230, 233, 241–242, 245, 250, 257 Religious appraisals 62–63 Religious conversions. See conversion Religious decision-making 199–201 Religious development 1, 4, 7, 32, 35, 217 Religious fundamentalism 39–42, 45, 47–48, 197, 203, 205–208, 215, 219–220, 223, 225, 227–229, 232 Religious motivation 197–199, 213, 218, 226, 260 Religious orientation 48, 66, 152, 188–189, 198–199, 203, 208, 215, 219–223, 226–231, 233 Religious Orientation Scale-Revised 226 Religious problem-solving 122, 199, 203, 215 research qualitative 6–7, 11–12, 33, 36, 50, 53–54, 58–59, 61, 73, 75, 102, 197, 200–204, 208, 213, 215–218 retrospective designs 73 Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire 105, 116–117, 121 Revised Glass Ministerial Job Satisfaction Scale 116–117, 120 right wing authoritarianism 39–45, 47–48, 219, 226, 232 Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale 42

sacrament of penance 55, 57–58 Satan 27, 39–48, 209, 212, 240 sexually-based beliefs 202 social attitudes 46, 123, 132, 134–135, 139–140, 142–143, 145–148, 150, 154, 197–201, 204, 213, 215, 218 spiritual conversion. See conversion spiritual resources 49–51, 54–57, 64, 66–68, 71, 73–74 Spiritual Transcendence Scale 182, 188, 190, 194–195, 220 spiritual well-being 223, 233 spirituality 49–51, 53, 56, 62, 66, 69, 77, 122, 149, 152, 177–181, 183, 186–196, 203, 215, 219 stages of religious judgment 2, 4, 7–8, 11, 26, 29, 31 STS. See Spiritual Transcendence Scale supernatural healing. See healing symbolic ethnicity thesis 81 Symptom Checklist-90-R 128 text horizon. See interpretive horizons The Daily Experiences Scale 193 The Intrinsic/Extrinsic-Revised Scale 203 the reader horizon. See interpretive horizon The Religious Coping Scale 194 The Religious Fundamentalism Scale 40, 42, 203, 225, 228–229 The Religious Problem-Solving Scale 122, 203 Unitarians 10, 20 n. 6 Universality. See Spiritual Transcendence Scale Watchtower Bible and Tract Society See Jehovah’s Witnesses Watchtower Society. See Jehovah’s Witnesses