Religious Openness Hypothesis: II. Religious Reflection and Orientations, Mystical Experience, and Psychological Openness of Christians in Iran

According to the Religious Openness Hypothesis, a negative relationship between Faith and Intellect Oriented Religious Reflection in American Christians reveals a defensive fundamentalist response to Western secularization that inhibits religious and psychological openness. The present study offered one test of that hypothesis by examining Christians living in Iran, a formally theocratic society where defensiveness toward secularization should not be prominent. A sample of 250 Iranian members of the Armenian Apostolic Church responded to the Christian Religious Reflection Scale along with indices of religious openness as made evident in self-reported mystical experience and of psychological openness as assessed by measures of Openness to Experience, Need for Cognition, and Integrative Self-Knowledge. Faith and Intellect Oriented Reflection correlated positively in Iranian Christians and displayed at least some linkages with mystical experience and psychological openness. These data supported the Religious Openness Hypothesis.Whether Christianity and other traditional religions promote or interfere with psychological openness is a contentious question within the psychology of religion (e.g., Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; Hood, Hill, & Williamson, 2005). The Ideological Surround Model (ISM) of the relationship between religion and the social sciences (Watson, 2011) essentially argues that it is not whether religions promote openness, but rather how they do so (Kamble, Watson, Marigoudar, & Chen, 2014b). Central to this claim is the assumption that openness for sincerely religious individuals necessarily "operates within a faith tradition, and for the purpose of finding religious truth" (Dover, Miner, & Dowson, 2007, p. 204). Research instruments like the Quest Scale valorize doubt and a willingness to move away from foundational religious commitments as a sign of openness (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991a, b). The original Quest Scale, therefore, appears to operate outside a faith tradition and for the purpose of questioning the truth about religion based upon some unspecified standard of evaluation. Hence, the Quest Scale may reflect (a potentially agnostic) openness about religion rather than (a potentially faithful) religious openness. Undoubtedly, openness about religion is an important psychological process, and the Quest Scale is an invaluable tool for evaluating it. However, according to the Religious Openness Hypothesis associated with the ISM, a truly comprehensive psychology of religion should supplement measures of openness about religion with measures of religious openness (Beck & Jessup, 2004; Watson, Chen, & Morris, 2014).Critical evidence supporting the Religious Openness Hypothesis rests upon use of the Religious Reflection Scale (Dover et al., 2007). This instrument includes Faith and Intellect Oriented Reflection factors that assess efforts of the individual to pursue truth within the framework of a specific religious tradition (Watson, Chen, & Hood, 2011). Positive correlations between these two factors in Iranian Muslims (Ghorbani, Watson, Chen, & Dover, 2013; Ghorbani, Watson, Geranmayepour, & Chen, 2014) and Indian Hindus (Ramble et al., 2014b) confirm the ability of these religious traditions to wed the intellect of believers with their faith.In American Christians, however, Faith and Intellect Oriented Reflection display a sometimes significant tendency to correlate negatively (Watson et al. 2011; Watson, Chen, Ghorbani, & Vartanian, 2015; Watson, Chen, & Morris, 2014). The Religious Openness Hypothesis argues that this negative relationship reflects a fundamentalist ghettoization of faith that walls out the intellect in response to what some Christians perceive to be the inhospitality of an increasingly influential Western secularism (Ramble et al., 2014b). Seen in defensive fundamentalist terms, Western secularism divorces intellect from faith and defines the former as "rational" and the latter as "irrational. …