Biblical Conservatism and Psychological Type

Abstract

The Village Bible Scale, a measure of biblical conservatism, was completed by 3,243 Church of England readers of the Church Times in 2013 alongside a measure of psychological type. Overall, biblical conservatism was higher for men than women, for those under 60 than those over 60, for those with school-level than those with university-level qualifications, for laity than clergy, and higher among evangelicals and charismatics than among those in Anglo-catholic or broad-church traditions. For the sample as a whole, the perceiving process was the only dimension of psychological type to predict biblical conservatism, which was positively correlated with sensing and negatively correlated with intuition. Within church traditions, sensing scores predicted biblical conservatism in Anglo-catholic and broad-church traditions, but not for evangelicals. Thinking function scores were positively correlated with biblical conservatism among evangelicals, but negatively correlated among Anglo-catholics. The findings point to the possible roles of psychological preferences in influencing predispositions for retaining or changing theological convictions.