RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT DIMENSIONS AND ALIENATION VARIETIES

Abstract

The relationship between religion and alienation was investigated using a more detailed definition of religion and a more encompassing definition of alienation than had previously appeared in the literature which investigated this question. It was postulated that exploring the relationship between nine dimensions of religious involvement and four dimensions of alienation would open up the possibility for clarifying the controversy that exists in the literature.;One hundred and twenty Jewish young adults between the ages of 15 and 23 were administered a 41 item religious involvement scale developed by Himmelfarb (1975) and a 27 item alienation scale developed by Zeller, Neal and Groat (1980).;Zero-order correlations between nine religious involvement scales and four alienation scales revealed no relationship between religion and alienation. Multiple regression analysis of the alienation and religious involvement scales with age, sex and SES revealed no relationship between religion and alienation when the multiple and partial correlations were examined. Significant interactions were found for age and SES with alienation. Additionally, separate principal component factor analyses of the 41 religious involvement items and the 27 alienation items, identified two distinct types of religious involvement and two closely related varieties of alienation. Religious involvement was dichotomized into generalist and traditionalist dimensions while alienation was divided by the degree of hopelessness which the factors represented. New scales were computed to represent the new factor structure of religious involvement and alienation. These scales were correlated and no relationship was found between religious involvement and alienation.;The theoretical issues regarding Durkheim's original work as well as some practical issues regarding the value of this type of research was dicussed. In addition some implications for exploring this issue further were discussed.