Relationships Between Religious Orientation Religious Beliefs And Social Justice

Download or read book Relationships Between Religious Orientation, Religious Beliefs, and Social Justice written by Rebecca A. Eldredge and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current study explored the religious predictors of social justice beliefs and social justice actions among a sample of religious, Midwestern adults. Two-hundred ninety-six adults (187 female, 107 male) who generally reported attending church once per week or more completed measures including Religious Orientation Scale (Allport & Ross, 1967), Quest Scale (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991a, b), Love and Guilt-Oriented Dimensions of Christian Belief (McConahay & Hough, 1973), and two measures of social justice developed for the current study. Social Justice - Beliefs was based on items combined and modified from the Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Religiosity - Social Consequences Dimension (DeJong, Faulkner, & Warland, 1976) and the Value Profile - Equalitarianism Subscale (Bales & Couch, 1969). Social Justice - Actions was based on items combined from the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire - Social Activities Section (Moberg, 1984), Missionary Kids' Value Scales - Justice Commitment (Sharp, 1990), and four items created for the current study. Participants were sampled from Black Protestant, evangelical Protestant, or mainline Protestant congregations. Results showed that these church groups differed meaningfully from one another on the variables studied and that religious beliefs generally contributed to the prediction of social justice beliefs and actions beyond religious orientation alone. Love-other beliefs significantly predicted social justice beliefs in the evangelical sample ( p