Quest-Religious Orientation Among Church Leaders in Australia: A Function of Psychological Predisposition or Openness to Mystical Experience?
Leslie J. Francis, A. Village, R. Powell
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality April 27, 2017 DOI: 10.1037/rel0000125 (opens in new tab) via Semantic Scholar
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractChurch leaders who prioritize religious exploration over certainty are shaped by both their psychological predispositions and their mystical experiences. Among 1,265 Australian church leaders, those with higher quest-religious orientation tended to have psychological preferences for extraversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving, and also reported higher levels of mystical experience. Mystical orientation partly explained the link between intuition and quest orientation, but both psychological preferences and mystical experiences independently contributed to a questing style of leadership.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Cross-sectional survey Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 1,265 |
| Population | Religious church leaders in Australia who participated in the 2011 National Church Life Survey |
| Keywords | Psychology |
| Key finding | Higher quest-religious orientation among church leaders was independently associated with both psychological preferences (intuition and perceiving) and higher levels of mystical experience. |
Abstract
Quest-religious orientation among church leaders signifies a style of leadership committed to religious explorations more than to religious certainties. For this study, we set out to explore the extent to which quest orientation among a sample of 1,265 religious church leaders who participated in the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey was a function of psychological predisposition, conceptualized in terms of psychological type theory, or a function of distinctive forms of religious experience, conceptualized in terms of Happold’s (1963) model of mysticism. The data demonstrated that higher levels of mystical orientation were associated with psychological predisposition, involving extraversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving. After controlling for sex, age, education, denominational groups, and psychological type, higher levels of mystical orientation were also associated with higher levels of quest-religious orientation. Mystical orientation partly mediated the effect of intuition on question orientation, but psychological preferences (for intuition and perceiving) and mystical orientation seemed independently to promote quest orientation. Thus, church leaders committed to religious explorations rather than to religious certainties seemed to have been shaped both by psychological predisposition and by distinctive forms of religious experience.