Concepts of Religiosity and Forgiveness: Review of Literature

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Charles Y. Glock, an American sociologist made a fundamental contribution to the sociological study of religion in order to operationalize the concept of religion. He distinguished five major dimensions of religiosity belief, experience, practice, theology and ethics. Glock has also contributed to the discussions on the conceptualization of religious orientation by proposing a five-dimensional model of conceptual framework for the systematic study of differential commitment to religion.Glock argues that despite the great variety of details, all world religions share general areas in which religiosity is manifested. These are the five core dimensions of religiosity: ‘the experiential’, ‘the ritualistic’, ‘the ideological’, ‘the intellectual’, and ‘the consequential’. According to him, the ‘experiential dimension’ of religiosity refers to the achievement of direct knowledge of the ultimate reality or to the experience of religious emotions in the form of exaltation, fear, humility, joyfulness and peace. The ‘ideological dimension’ gives recognition to the fact that all religions expect that the religious person should hold certain beliefs to which followers are expected to adhere. The ‘ritualistic dimension’ includes specific religious practices expected of religious followers to perform either individually or communally. Among them prayer, worship, pilgrimage and feasting can be mentioned. The ‘intellectual dimension’, in Glock’s framework, is constituted by the expectation that the religious person should have some knowledge about the basic tenets of his or her faith and its religious scriptures. The ‘consequential dimension’, on the other hand, encompasses man’s relation to man. This means that the ‘consequential dimension’ includes religious prescriptions, which determine the attitudes of the adherents as a consequence of their religious belief. Glock argues that these are the core dimensions of religious commitment being shared by different religions of the world.

Inspired by ideas of Allport and Ross and Kelly, Huber suggested the concept of the personal religious construct-system as the unifying psychological entity in which the core dimensions merge. Referring to Kelly‘s personality theory a personal construct is a pattern for the anticipation of events. Accordingly, the personal system of religious constructs can be defined as a superstructure in personality that consists of all personal constructs which are related to the individually defined realm of religion and religiosity. A personal religious construct is activated when the individual anticipates something with religious meaning.

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In the theory explained by Thompson and her colleagues (Thompson 2005) forgiveness is a freeing from a negative attachment to the source that has transgressed against a person. The process of forgiveness transforms a person’s responses to the transgressor, transgression, and the negative consequences of the transgression. Responses are a person’s transgression and transgressor-related thoughts, feelings and behaviors. The concept of responses has two components, valence and strength. Valence refers to whether the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are negative, neutral, or positive. Strength refers to the intensity and intrusiveness of the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, and it can vary as a result of factors such as the perceived harm caused by the transgression.A person who forgives may transform his or her negative responses by changing the valence from negative to either neutral or positive or changing both the valence and strength of the responses.

According to McCullough (1998) forgiveness reflects increase in prosocial motivation toward another such that there is less desire to avoid the transgressing person and to harm or seek revenge toward that individual and an increased desire to act positively toward the transgressing person. Changes in motivation are viewed as being at the core of this theory (McCullough et al.,2000), with the person becoming more benevolent over time. moreover, forgiveness is seen as applicable only when there is another person who has engaged in a transgression.

Review of Literature

Thomas (2008) conducted a study to analyse the link between Religiosity and Forgiveness among Christian, Muslim, Jewish and secular affiliations. The title of the study was the impact of religious affiliation and religiosity on forgiveness and the sample size was four hundred and seventy-five, 293 female and 182 male participants. The study approached senior management and leaders from large religious and educational Australian organizations. An internet-based questionnaire was conducted on the samples. One-way, between-subjects, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used for the study. Results showed that religiosity positively correlated with forgiveness. The study suggested that faith is the strongest religiosity predictor of forgiveness.

Pavica Sheldon (2011) aimed to study how religiosity and gender are related to forgiving communication. Research has examined gender differences in forgiveness. A sample size of the study was 147 married adults,55% were women and 45% were men. Husbands ranged in age from 21 to 71 years and wives 19 to 56 years. Participants were recruited using network sampling techniques. discriminant analysis, and multivariate analysis of variance were used for the study. The result showed a positive association between religiosity and a nonverbal strategy of expressing forgiveness, regardless of gender.

Stoycheva (2018) conducted a study to investigate the relationship among forgiveness, religiosity, and lack of religion. It was a survey study and distributed to 334 participants. Which were including Muslims, Christians and atheists. The number of participants in the three groups was not identical but was closely matched.The research design was causal-comparative with cross-sectional survey methodology and included three measures like Enright’s Forgiveness Inventory, Forgiveness Likelihood Scale, and Religious Orientation Scale with a number of scales. The results suggested that Christian participants reported greater commitment to their beliefs, and more advances towards completed forgiveness process.

Calvin B. Gardner (2019) aimed to study the relationship between religiosity, humility and dispositional forgiveness. It was a quantitative correlational study with 54 samples. Those samples were taken from three Christian churches in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between religiosity, self-forgetting, openness, and forgiveness of situations.The result showed a positive correlational relationship between religiosity, self-forgetting and forgiveness of situations.It also found that religiosity to be the greater predictor variable for forgiveness of situations when God is perceived as the transgressor.

Tripathi (2008) Indian study aimed to understand Interpersonal Forgiveness in relation to Personality, Religiosity, Spiritual Well Being, Positive and Negative Emotions, Health and Well Being measures viz Mental Health, Perceived Health Status, Psychological Well Being and Subjective Well Being.the samples were 200 males and 200 females. the age range was from 16 to 20 years. For measuring the Forgiveness Enright Forgiveness Inventory and Heartland Forgiveness scale were used. Religiosity was assessed by using the Religious Commitment Inventory.The raw scores were analyzed using Descriptive statistics, Discriminant Functional Analysis, Intercorrelations and Regression analysis.result indicated that Trait Forgiveness was positively and significantly correlated with all the dimensions of Spiritual Well Being, Hope, Optimism, Gratitude, Happiness, Positive Affect, Satisfaction with Life, Subjective Well Being, Extraversion, Social Desirability, Anger Control, all the dimensions of Mental Health and Psychological Well Being.

Mohammad Anas (2017) The study follows a correlational research design and intended to examine the association among variables included in the study. This study investigates about the relationship between Forgiveness and Spiritual Personality and Religiosity and Spiritual Personality among the religious devotes of Aligarh City, U.P. India. The initial sample consisted of 500 participants. The age range of the sample was from 21 to 45 years. The data was collected using a purposive sampling method. The measures used for this study were Heartland Forgiveness Scale and Religious Commitment Inventory-10.The results indicate that religiosity and forgiveness correlated significantly with spiritual personality. Forgiveness self and forgiveness others were found as significant predictors of goodness for religious devotees.

Conceptual Framework

Based on the theoretical framework and overall review of related literature, the following conceptual framework is developed. In the present study Religiosity has been taken as predictor variable while Forgiveness has been considered as criterion variable. Forgiveness includes three dimensions such as forgiveness self, the forgiveness of others and forgiveness. Religiosity measures include public practice, private practice, experience, ideology and intellectual.

Research Gap

There is insufficient literature in the public domain to understand the role of Religiosity as a Predictor of forgiveness among Christian religious formations. In context to this there are no research studies conducted on the sample Christian religious formation (Postulancy, Novitiate). Therefore, this study aims to fill the gap.

Research Questions

  • Does religiosity predict forgiveness among girls undergoing postulancy Christian religious formation?
  • Does religiosity predict forgiveness among girls undergoing novitiate Christian religious formation?

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