Religiosity and Secular Attitudes: The Case of Catholic Pentecostals

In spite of extensive assumptions to the contrary, there is little theoretical or empirical justification for expecting some type of systematic and unvarying relationship between religiosity and secular attitudes. Beliefs and attitudes are a social product. If a given attitude object is not receiving ongoing attention in religious social networks, then attitudes toward that issue will be a result of other nonreligious, personal-social characteristics. To investigate this question indices of religiosity, of personal-motivational attitudes, of attitudes toward social activism, and a variety of social-demographic variables were examined for their relative impact on a number of social attitudes for Roman Catholic Pentecostals. The results indicate that religiosity indices are associated only with those social attitudes having direct implications for ongoing doctrinal or church-related considerations.