Religious Orthodoxy and Emotionality

Abstract

The relationship between religious orthodoxy and emotional feeling and expression is examined. Data are from questionnaires administered to a sample of Georgia high school students (N=1092). The principal findings are these: Religious orthodoxy is positively related to self-reported feeling and expression of love and happiness, and also to the importance the person attributes to institutionally based socio-emotional values. On the other hand, religious orthodoxy is negatively related to selfreported feeling and expression of hate, and it is unrelated to self-reported feeling and expression of sadness. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that persons of high religious ortho? doxy are more likely than those of low religious orthodoxy to be influenced by biblically based norms encouraging the feeling and expression of approval/positive emotions and discouraging the feeling and expression of rejection/negative emotions. Possible approaches to integrating the present findings into a larger theoretical framework are noted. Although sixteenth century Calvinism held emotional experience to be illusory, and discouraged its expression, most forms of ascetic Protestantism were unlike Calvinism in this respect. Indeed, among the early Baptists and Methodists, a "feeling of grace," a highly emotion-laden experiencing of God's forgiveness, was considered to be absolutely essential (Weber, 1958). Today in the United States, orthodox Christianity has roots in both Calvinist and non-Calvinist forms of ascetic Protestantism; however, its main roots are nonCalvinist. In terms of sheer numbers, we find that Baptists and Methodists outnumber Presbyterians and Episcopalians by more than four to one (NORC, 1976). Moreover, it seems likely that, if only the most orthodox individuals were considered, the ratio would be higher still. But does the emotionality of the early churches remain? Or was it merely a peripheral, transient feature? Many attempts to analyze religious experience have acknowledged -or perhaps posited-the importance of the emotional dimension (see, for example, Fukuyama, 1961; Glock and Stark, 1965; Keene, 1967; Dittes, 1969). Religious experience and emotionality often are assumed to go hand in hand. Surprisingly, little, if any, systematic empirical study of the relationship between religious orthodoxy and emotionality has been carried out. While religious orthodoxy