Toward an Understanding of Religious Tolerance: Quest Religiousness and Positive Attitudes Toward Religiously Dissimilar Others

ABSTRACT

We interact frequently with individuals with religious beliefs that vary from our own. Although we may naturally prefer interacting with religiously similar others, individuals vary in their attitudes toward religiously dissimilar others. In the present set of studies, we examined how variability in quest religiousness affects religious tolerance. In Study 1 (N = 159), we found that quest religiousness in Christian undergraduates was associated with positive attitudes toward both non-Christian religious groups and atheists. In Study 2, 118 Christian undergraduates evaluated vignettes regarding a devout moral or an average morality Christian (ingroup) or Muslim (outgroup). Participants preferred moral targets relative to less moral targets. However, when rating moral targets, participants high in quest religiousness preferred the Muslim target (religious outgroup member), whereas those low in quest religiousness preferred the Christian target (religious ingroup member). We discuss implications for the links between quest religiousness and religious tolerance.

Acknowledgments

We thank Abigail Bohler, Paige Garwood, and Joshua Stafford for their assistance in data collection.

Funding

This work was funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation (#40136) to Daryl R. Van Tongeren and the Fuller Theological Seminary/Thrive Center in concert with the John Templeton Foundation (#IH 108) to Joshua N. Hook. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Fuller Thrive Center or the John Templeton Foundation.

Notes

¹ Examining the association between quest religiousness and the other subscales of the New Indices of Religious Orientation in this sample revealed that quest religiousness was negatively related to intrinsic religiousness (r = –.21, p < .001) and positively related to extrinsic religiousness (r = .29, p < .001).

² We also included other measures of religious orientation, which revealed that in this sample, quest religion was not significantly related to intrinsic (r = –.16, p = .092), extrinsic-coping (r = .06, p = .537), or extrinsic-social (r = .06, p = .510) religiousness, though it was inversely related to religious fundamentalism (r = –.31, p = .001).

³ The interaction between quest religiousness and morality was not significant for either target group (ingroup: β = –.26, p = .100; outgroup: β = .25, p = .130). In addition, the interaction between Quest Religiousness × Target Religious group was not significant for targets of average morality (β = –.03, p = .891).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation (#40136) to Daryl R. Van Tongeren and the Fuller Theological Seminary/Thrive Center in concert with the John Templeton Foundation (#IH 108) to Joshua N. Hook. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Fuller Thrive Center or the John Templeton Foundation.