Process of Forgiveness: Theoretical Framework and Review of Literature

Charles Y. Glock, the American sociologist, made a fundamental contribution to the sociological study of religion. It included five dimensions and those are religious belief, experience, practice, theology and ethics. To study the differential commitment to religion Glock had also contributed to the discussions on the conceptualization of religious orientation by proposing a five-dimensional model of a conceptual framework. These five core dimensions of religiosity are experiential, ritualistic, ideological, intellectual, and consequential. The experiential dimension of religiosity according to Glock is 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 explains that all religions expect the religious person to 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 and it also adds prayer, worship, pilgrimage and feasting. The intellectual dimension expects the religious person to 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 different religions of the world share core dimensions of religious commitment. .

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. When the individual anticipates something with a religious meaning a personal religious construct is activated.

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 include 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 thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.It can vary as a result of factors for example 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) Prosocial motivation increases once the forgiveness reflects on it. Then there is less desire to harm or seek revenge on a transgressing person and an increased desire to act positively to the transgressing individual. Motivation is viewed as being at the core of this theory and understood in terms of changes. This leads to more benevolent over time (McCullough et al.,2000) the applicability of forgiveness is seen only when there is another person who has engaged in 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 impact of religious affiliation and religiosity on forgiveness was the title of the study. The sample size was four hundred and seventy-five, 293 female and 182 male participants. senior management and leaders from large religious and educational Australian organizations. An internet-based questionnaire was conducted on senior management and leaders from large religious and educational Australian organisations. Results showed that religiosity positively correlated with forgiveness and suggested 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. the study consisted 55% women and 45% men. Husbands ranged in age from 21 to 71 years and wives from 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 indicated a positive association between religiosity and a nonverbal strategy of expressing forgiveness, regardless of gender.

Stoycheva (2018) conducted a study to investigate the relationship between forgiveness, religiosity, and lack of religion. The survey study was conducted on 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 the 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. 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 the 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 Mental Health, Perceived Health Status, Psychological Well Being and Subjective Well Being. The study was conducted on 200 males and 200 females. The age ranged between 16 to 20 years.For measuring the Forgiveness Enright Forgiveness Inventory and Heartland Forgiveness scale were used. Religious Commitment Inventory was used for the Religiosity assessment. Descriptive statistics, Discriminant Functional Analysis, Intercorrelations and Regression analysis were used to analyze the raw score. Results 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 the relation between Forgiveness and Spiritual Personality and Religiosity and Spiritual Personality among the religious devotees 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. A purposive sampling method was used for the data collection. The measures used for this study were Heartland Forgiveness Scale and Religious Commitment Inventory-10.The results indicated that religiosity and forgiveness correlated significantly with spiritual personality. Forgiveness of self and forgiveness of 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 are insufficient literature in the public domain to understand the role of Religiosity as a Predictor of forgiveness among Christian religious formation.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 Christian religious formation?
• Does religiosity predict forgiveness among girls undergoing postulancy Christian religious formation?
• Does religiosity predict forgiveness among girls undergoing novitiate Christian religious formation?