Boundary Maintenance, Social-Political Views, and Presidential Preference among High and Low Fundamentalists

Abstract

Scientific claims to a positive relationship between religious fundamentalism and conservative social and political beliefs are argued to be generally unwarranted on both conceptual and empirical grounds. A conceptualization of fundamentalism in terms of Biblical commitment largely uninformed by modem critical Biblical scholarship leads to identification of conditions under which fundamentalist religious beliefs ought to be differentially associated with other social and political beliefs generally identified as conservative. A sample of high and low fundamentalists were compared in terms of identified boundary maintenance beliefs on which high fundamentalists and low fundamentalists predictably differed. However, on a variety of other social and political views, not identified as boundary maintenance beliefs, high and low fundamentalists did not differ. High fundamentalists were more likely to select as a presidential candidate the person seen as most near their own religious beliefs even though religious beliefs per se do not significantly predict presidential preference.