Reanalysis within a Christian Ideological Surround: Relationships of Intrinsic Religious Orientation with Fundamentalism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism

This study examined whether ideology influenced the correlations of the Intrinsic Religious Orientation Scale with Religious Fundamentalism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism. A sample of 407 undergraduates responded to these instruments along with measures of Christian Fundamentalist Beliefs, Intolerance of Ambiguity, and religious extrinsicness. Empirical procedures were used to translate Religious Fundamentalism into a more adaptive Biblical Foundationalism. Formal evaluations of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale uncovered some ideologically pro-religious items, but an even larger number of ambiguous and anti-religious statements. Partial correlations controlling for Religious Fundamentalism documented the basically adaptive potentials of a biblical intrinsicness. The Intrinsic association with authoritarianism was attributable to the ambiguous and anti-religious ideological content of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale. Ideological factors, therefore, did seem to underlie empirical suggestions that traditional Christian commitments necessarily reflect a narrow-minded authoritarian fundamentalism.