The Effect of Religiosity on Secular and Ascetic Deviance

Basing their ideas on the distinction between ascetic and secular ethical standards as originally suggested by Middleton and Putney (1962), Burkett and White (1974) claim that only where secular values are ambiguous in defining an activity as wrong is the effect of religiosity expected to have any salient impact on inhibiting deviance. That is, non-ascetic behaviors such as premarital sex and substance use, which are not consistently disapproved of in secular settings, are more likely than personal or property crimes to be affected by religiosity. This paper explores Burkett and White's (1974) ideas with survey data on self-reported delinquency and substance use from a sample of 3,065 male and female adolescents in grades seven through twelve in three midwestern states. The results, based on a logistic regression analysis, indicate that the deviance inhibiting impact of religiosity is more generalizeid than Burkett and White (1974) suggest.