QUEST AND IDENTITY WITHIN A RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGICAL SURROUND

Current controversies over religious orientation center on issues that appear to be partially nonempirical, normative, and sociological. The se issues, in other words, may be ideological. In exploring this possi bility, the present study had different religious orientation types ev aluate items from the Quest Scale. For a group with an intrinsic commi tment, a number of items proved to be antireligious in their implicati ons while one was proreligious. This intrinsic interpretation of Quest also predicted relative mental health, including superior identity fo rmation; and this was especially true for intrinsic subjects themselve s. For no other type was the self-definition of Quest as robustly or a s discriminatively linked to psychological well-being. The original Qu est Scale was tied to poorer self-functioning. Overall, these data dem onstrated the importance of measuring not just personal beliefs, but t he personal meaning of those beliefs as well.