Religious experience and religious motivation among Catholic and mainstream Protestant churchgoers in Australia: testing and applying five short measures

ABSTRACT

The present study draws on two sets of theories developed within the psychology of religion (concerning religious experience and religious motivation) to test three six-item measures of religious orientation (intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest) and to develop two seven-item measures of religious experience (mystical and charismatic) among Catholic (N = 626) and Mainstream Protestant (N = 505) churchgoers participating in the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey. The data demonstrated satisfactory levels of internal consistency reliability for all five scales. The mean scale scores revealed higher levels of intrinsic religiosity among Mainstream Protestants and higher levels of extrinsic religiosity among Catholics; but little variation between the two groups in terms of quest religious orientation, mystical orientation, or charismatic orientation.

KEYWORDS:

• Congregation studies
• mystical experience
• charismatic experience
• religious orientation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Andrew Village http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2174-8822