BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONALISM AND RELIGIOUS REFLECTION: POLARIZATION OF FAITH AND INTELLECT ORIENTED EPISTEMOLOGIES WITHIN A CHRISTIAN IDEOLOGICAL SURROUND

Among other things, the Ideological Surround Model (ISM) argues that greater objectivity can be achieved through an empiricism that brings emic religious and etic social scientific perspectives into formal dialog. In this project, 421 undergraduates responded to a Christian Religious Reflection Scale along with an etic Religious Fundamentalism and an emic Biblical Foundationalism scale. Christian Religious Reflection proved to be polarized with Faith and Intellect Oriented factors correlating negatively. Faith Oriented Reflection, Religious Fundamentalism, and Biblical Foundationalism displayed negative linkages with Quest and Openness to Experience. Intellect Oriented Reflection was incompatible with Christian commitments and predicted higher Quest and Openness to Experiences. Statistical controls for the etic language of Religious Fundamentalism demonstrated that the emic language of Biblical Foundationalism could support both Faith and Intellect Oriented epistemologies and was not incompatible with Quest or Openness to Experience. Participants displayed higher scores on Biblical Foundationalism than on Religious Fundamentalism. These data illustrated how a dialogical empiricism can promote objectivity.