Reply to Greeley

Abstract

comments of Dr. Greeley are welcome, and I appreciate the opportunity which both he and the Editor have provided for me to reply to these types of concerns. Dr. Greeley expands on my statement in the original LAM Scales article that undoubtedly there are other types of mythological-symbolic-secular religious commitment in addition to that represented in this questionnaire. Not only are there other mythological interpretations than those which are apparent in the M alternatives of the LAM Scales, but there probably are other Literal and Anti-Literal interpretations also. In fact, two alternate mythological choices are included in items 5 and 13 of the scales. chief purpose of my article was to provide some preliminary evidence that the same theological statement (or statement of religious belief) may be interpreted in a variety of ways. LAM Scales are intended merely to allow for more than one type of religiosity. purpose was not to describe how heterogeneous groups of Palestinian Christians, authors of the Pentateuch, or most New Testament scholars would interpret these statements, although that is certainly a proper type of theological study. Survey researchers may build upon this approach, for example, by replacing in public opinion polls the usual question, Do you believe in God? with a series of alternatives in the Allport tradition (see Allport, G. W., et al., The religion of the postwar college student. Journal of Psychology, 1948, 25, 3-33). This series of alternatives would allow for several descriptions of the interpretation of God (or other theological statement) and then permit the respondent to choose one alternative as representative of his position. There are three types of problems which Dr. Greeley addresses: form, hermeneutics, and exegesis (if we may borrow these terms from our colleagues in the Biblical disciplines). 1. Form: At the methodological level, the author of a set of items must determine the desirable type of answer format, the wording of the alternatives, and other details of item construction. These must be considered in the context of the types of respondents who will be answering the items. Item analysis of the pool of potential alternatives or scale items will eliminate many items which fail to discriminate among groups for various reasons. stems of the LAM Scales are taken verbatim from McLean's Religious World Views in order to build upon a well validated conservative-liberal scale. answer format differs from his in providing sets of reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with the