RELIGIOUS MATURITY SCALE

Abstract

The Religious Maturity Scale (RMS) is an 11-item, self-report instrument developed by Dudley and Cruise (1990) to measure religious orientation as a psychological process, rather than focusing on theological content. It was created in response to controversies surrounding the operationalization of Gordon Allport’s classic description of religious maturity, particularly in contrast to the perceived shortcomings of measures of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Religiousness and the later Quest Scale. The RMS aims to capture a creative tension between sincere commitment to a belief system and a tentative open-mindedness toward new understanding. The scale is designed to be appropriate for use across diverse religious traditions, including those outside the Judeo-Christian framework, as it emphasizes the process of searching for meaning and commitment.

The RMS items were derived from an extensive analysis of Allport’s criteria for mature religion, which included characteristics such as being well differentiated, dynamic, productive of consistent morality, comprehensive, integral, and fundamentally heuristic. The 11 items comprising the final scale emerged as a distinct factor from a larger 54-item Personal Religion Inventory administered primarily to university students. Scores range from 11 to 55, reflecting the level of religious maturity.

Keywords

Religious maturity, psychology of religion, Allport, Batson, Quest Scale, intrinsic religiousness, extrinsic religiousness, open-mindedness, sincere commitment, psychological assessment.

Authors

Dudley, R. L., & Cruise, R. J.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Religious Maturity Scale (RMS) is to provide a conceptually robust and empirically defensible index of personal religious searching and commitment. The authors sought to refine the measurement of religious maturity by addressing perceived logical inconsistencies found in competing scales, specifically Batson’s Quest Scale. Dudley and Cruise criticized the Quest conceptualization for requiring respondents to simultaneously agree with statements stressing sincere commitment and those stressing religious doubts, which they deemed illogical.

The RMS was designed to circumvent this problem by operationalizing maturity not as faith wedded to doubt, but as a commitment tempered by tentative open-mindedness. The goal was to measure an individual’s readiness to progress in understanding while maintaining a sincere commitment to their current beliefs, thereby aligning more closely with Allport’s original emphasis on open-mindedness as an aspect of mature religion.

Construct

The construct measured by the Religious Maturity Scale is Religious Maturity, which Dudley and Cruise define from a psychological standpoint, separate from theological dogma. This construct focuses on the process of being religious—the manner in which an individual engages with faith and meaning—rather than the specific content of their theological beliefs.

High scores on the RMS theoretically reflect a dynamic and creative tension characterized by two core elements: sincere commitment to one’s current belief system and a tentative open-mindedness concerning future revelations or new information. The religiously mature individual, according to this scale, maintains conviction while acknowledging the complexity of life’s meaning and remaining flexible enough to incorporate new truths as they emerge.

Validity

Dudley and Cruise explicitly presented the RMS as a “proposed scale” in their foundational article, thus providing limited initial supportive validity evidence. However, they did report initial findings regarding its relationship with other established religious orientation scales.

The instrument demonstrated expected relationships with the Quest orientation, yielding a positive correlation (r = .37). This suggests that religious maturity, as defined by the RMS, shares variance with the existential struggle for meaning captured by the Quest Scale. Crucially, the RMS showed virtually no correlation with the Intrinsic (r = .10) or Extrinsic (r = .02) religious orientations, supporting the argument that the RMS measures a distinct aspect of religious experience separate from traditional intrinsic devotion or extrinsic utility.

Reliability

The initial internal reliability of the Religious Maturity Scale, as measured by coefficient alpha, was relatively low at .55. The authors attributed this lower figure to the inherent difficulty of operationalizing the complex construct of religious maturity—specifically, the challenge of combining intelligent, informed commitment with open-minded tentativeness into a single index.

However, Dudley and Cruise noted that a subsequent investigation involving a larger national sample of over 400 participants yielded a more acceptable coefficient alpha of .68, suggesting improved reliability across a more diverse population sample.

Factor Analysis

The development of the Religious Maturity Scale relied on a comprehensive Personal Religion Inventory consisting of 54 items, including 26 statements designed to measure maturity alongside 28 items drawn from existing Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Quest scales. This inventory was administered to the initial sample.

A factor analysis of the entire 54-item inventory was performed, which successfully uncovered three orthogonal dimensions. The third factor extracted was identified as Religious Maturity. The 11 statements that loaded significantly onto this third factor were subsequently combined to form the final Religious Maturity Scale. Of these 11 items, three were identified as negatively scored, articulating religious immaturity, while the remaining eight expressed maturity.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report psychological scale (Process Measure)

Format: 11 statements using a 5-point Likert-style agreement scale.

Language Available: English (as published in 1990).

Population Group: General religious population; suitable for use across various religious traditions, including those outside the Judeo-Christian framework.

Age Group: Older adolescents and adults.

Population Details: The initial standardization sample (N=491) consisted primarily of Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist university students, supplemented by 70 older adolescents and a smaller group of adults attending religious functions. Mean and standard deviation data were not reported for this sample.

Test Methodology: Respondents indicate their level of agreement with each statement using a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Total scores are computed by summing across the 11 items (with three items reverse-scored), resulting in a possible score range of 11 to 55.

Keywords

Religious orientation, psychological assessment, scale development, commitment, open-mindedness, self-report, university students, factor analysis, scale validation.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not specified in source material.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not specified in source material.

Correspondence Address: Not specified in source material.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was published in 1990. Permissions for use should be sought from the journal, Review of Religious Research, and the authors, R. L. Dudley and R. J. Cruise. Fee information is not provided in the source material, but the scale items were published in the original article.

Reference’s

The primary article presenting the scale is:

• Dudley, R. L., & Cruise, R. J. (1990). Measuring religious maturity: A proposed scale. Review of Religious Research, 32, 97-109.

Supporting references cited in the development and context of the RMS include:

• Allport, G. W. (1950). The individual and his religion. New York: Macmillan.
• Batson, C. D., & Ventis, W. L. (1982). The religious experience: A social-psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

Related research utilizing or discussing the construct:

• Dudley, M. G., & Kosinski, F. A., Jr. (1990). Religiosity and marital satisfaction: A research note. Review of Religious Research, 32, 78-86.
• Dudley, R. L., Hernandez, E. I., & Terian, S. M. K. (1992). Religiosity and public issues among Seventh-day Adventists. Review of Religious Research, 33, 330-348.

Items of the RELIGIOUS MATURITY SCALE

Here are some statements that show how some people feel about religion. Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each by circling a number on a 5-point scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree.

1. My religious beliefs provide me with satisfying answers at this stage of my develop ment, but I am prepared to alter them as new information becomes available.
2. I am happy with my present religion but wish to be open to new insights and ways of understanding the meaning of life.
3. As best as I can determine, my religion is true, but I recognize that I could be mistaken on some points.
4. Important questions about the meaning of life do not have simple or easy answers; therefore faith is a developmental process.
5. *I could not commit myself to a religion unless I was certain that it is completely true.
6. I have struggled in trying to understand the problems of evil, suffering, and death that mark this world.
7. *Churches should concentrate on proclaiming the gospel and not become involved in trying to change society through social or political action.
8. While we can never be quite sure that what we believe is absolutely true, it is worth acting on the probability that it may be.
9. I have found many religious questions to be difficult and complex so I am hesitant to be dogmatic or final in my assertions.
10. In my religion my relationships with other people are as fundamental as my relation- ship with God.
11. * My religious beliefs are pretty much the same today as they were five years ago.

An asterisk (*) identifies a negatively scored item for which 1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, and 5 = 1.