Research on forgiveness has been expanding rapidly in the last decade with a subset of studies looking at how religious people forgive. A discrepancy persists between Christians’ level of valuing forgiveness and forgiveness of actual transgressions. Several methodological issues and offense-specific variables have been presented as explanations. This present thesis examines the role of the congregation as a group identity, and applies it to a theory of relational spirituality, as a measure of the relationship between a victim and the Sacred. No existing research has polled congregants about offense-specific forgiveness of church peers. I collected data from members of Christian congregations throughout the United States (Study 1, N = 63) and college students belonging to Christian congregations (Study 2, N = 387) concerning group identity and within group forgiveness. In the present studies, group identification with a congregation predicted lower unforgiving and higher forgiving motivations towards an in-group offender.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-3369 |
Date | 06 April 2011 |
Creators | Greer, Chelsea |
Publisher | VCU Scholars Compass |
Source Sets | Virginia Commonwealth University |
Detected Language | English |
Type | text |
Format | application/pdf |
Source | Theses and Dissertations |
Rights | © The Author |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds