Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-29-2022
Abstract
Previous research suggests that religious service attendance, biblical literalism, images of God, and other measures of religion are related to moral beliefs (i.e., that certain behaviors are wrong or deviant). Given previous theory and research on spiritual appraisals (particularly demonization and desecration), we argue that belief in Satan should also predict moral beliefs. Using the first four waves of the Baylor Religion Survey, we tested the association between belief in Satan and belief in the wrongfulness of twelve different behaviors related to abortion, family matters, sexuality, and substance use. Although religious service attendance and biblical literalism were consistently related to moral beliefs, belief in Satan was significantly related to six of the twelve moral beliefs. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction effect between religious service attendance and belief in Satan for ten of the twelve moral beliefs, suggesting that religious service attendance has little or no effect on moral beliefs when people do not also believe in Satan.
Recommended Citation
Desmond, S. A., Clark, T., & Bader, C. D. (2022). Sympathy for the Devil: Belief in Satan and Moral Beliefs. Deviant Behavior, 44(5), 752–767. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2022.2092786
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
Taylor & Francis
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Included in
Christianity Commons, Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons
Comments
This is an Accepted Manuscript version of an article accepted for publication in Deviant Behavior, volume 44, issue 5, in 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2022.2092786. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.