On Conceptualizing Salience in Religious Commitment

Two alternative approaches to the conceptualization and analysis of salience in religious commitment are examined: specification and linear, additive models. Using data from a North Carolina sample of Episcopalians, little evidence is found in support of a specification effect. Considerably more support is obtained, however, for a linear, additive formulation in which salience is conceptualized as intervening between localistic world view and orthodoxy, as independent variables, and four consequential dimension measures. Salience is shown to have a counter effect to that of orthodoxy in the cases of church activism, political conservatism, antiblack prejudice, and racism. Issues pertinent to further research on religious salience are raised.