Religious Orientation, Identity, and the Quest for Meaning in Ethics Within an Ideological Surround

Controversies in the religious orientation literature may reflect the unavoidable influences of ideology in the psychology of religion. Support for this possibility was observed when religious intrinsicness was associated with the idealism and antirela- tivism of an absolutist ethical position. Quest Scales, in contrast, were incompatible with this absolutist search for meaning in ethics. Quest Scales also predicted identity confusion, were associated with a disinterest in religion, and included items that were evaluated as antireligious by individuals with an intrinsic religious comrnit- ment. In short, intrinsicness defined an idealistic and antirelativistic religious iden- tity, whereas Quest pointed toward other ethical and antireligious ideologies that were more vulnerable to identity confusion. Overall, these data confirmed once again that ideological factors may play a crucial role in the contemporary social scientific study of religion.