Hellfire and Delinquency

Religious training is assumed to prevent delinquency by promoting the development of moral values, acceptance of conventional authority, and belief in the existence of supernatural sanctions. The relations between church attendance and these presumed consequences are examined. Children who attend church are no more likely than non-attenders to accept ethical principles; they are only slightly more likely than non-attenders to respect conventional authority; they are much more likely to believe in the literal existence of the Devil and a life after death. Those variables affected by church attendance, however, are unrelated to the commission of delinquent acts, while those variables strongly related to delinquency are unaffected by church attendance. The lack of a relation between church attendance and delinquency is thus “explained.”