The Fear of Death and Religious Attitudes and Behavior

The relationship of fear of death to selected religious attitudes was studied as a preliminary test of hypotheses that fear of death may motivate religious faith and may be allayed by some but not all religious orientations. Subjects were 70 members of 2 Protestant and 1 Catholic congregations in a small mid-South town. Death concern was negatively related to intrinsic religion and self-rated religious concern in the total sample. Patterns among fear of death, dogmatism, extrinsic religion, and age in the Protestant congregations suggested that particular denominational traditions or doctrines make some religious attitudes particularly salient to the fear of death.