Implicit Religion, Explicit Religion and Attitude Toward Substances

Abstract

A recent research tradition has employed Bailey's (1997Bailey's ( , 1998 notion of implicit religion to explore the ways in which Christian believing in the UK may be persisting in spite of declining levels of church attendance. Working within this framework the first aim of this study is to explore the prevalence of implicit religion, operationalized as attachment to traditional Christian rites of passage, among young people living within the UK. The second aim of this study, following the analytic model proposed by Francis (2013aFrancis ( , 2013b exploring the psychological functions served by explicit religion and implicit religion, is to test the hypothesis that explicit religiosity (operationalized as church attendance) and implicit religiosity (operationalized as attachment to Christian rites of passage) are both associated with proscriptive attitudes toward substances among young people. Data provided by a sample of 12,252 13-to 15-year-old young people support this hypothesis.

Implicit Religion and Psychological Wellbeing

“…Building on the studies reported by Francis (2013a), Francis (2013b) and Penny and Francis (2015) the present study intends to sharpen the research question concerning the correlates of implicit religiosity among young people by studying a group of young people who claim no formal religious affiliation and no public engagement with the churches. Such a group can be defined within the Teenage Religion and Values Survey by selecting out those participants who check the religious affiliation category 'none' and the religious attendance category 'never'.…”

“…Here are young people who for all intents and purposes are living and growing up wholly outside the sphere of explicit religion. The research question then reapplies the three-item measure developed by Penny and Francis (2015) concerning attachment to Christian rites of passage in order to test how well this measure works among a group of young people living and growing up wholly outside the sphere of explicit religion.…”

“…Building on the two studies reported by Francis (2013a) and Francis (2013b), Penny andFrancis (2015) tried to access and operationalise Bailey's notion of implicit religion by a different measure, this time focusing on attachment to traditional Christian rites of passage in terms of baptism, marriage and death. They found that among their sample of 12, 252 13-to 15-year old students the following three items generated an alpha coefficient of .72: I want to get married in church; I want my children to be baptised, christened, or dedicated in church; I want a church funeral after my death.…”

“…In this new study, Penny and Francis (2015) selected as their dependent variable a nine-item scale of attitude toward substances. They chose this dependent variable because empirical studies exploring the relationship between explicit religiosity and substance use tend to demonstrate that higher levels of church attendance are associated with lower levels of alcohol consumption, drunkenness and alcohol-related problems among young people and adults (Cosper, Okraku, & Neumann, 1987;Lubben, Chi, & Kitano, 1988;Clarke, Beeghley, & Cochran, 1990;Cochran, Beeghley & Bock, 1992;Toussaint, 2009;Brechting, Brown, Salsman, Sauer, & Holeman, 2010;Rasic, Kisely, & Langille, 2011;Fawcett, Francis, Linkletter, & Robbins, 2012), as well as lower levels of drug use (including cannabis, tranquilizers, LSD, cocaine and heroin) among young people and adults (Sloane & Potvin, 1986;Francis & Mullen, 1993;Mullen & Francis, 1995;Cook, Goddard, & Westall, 1997;Regnerus & Elder, 2003;Chu, 2007;Steinman, Ferketich, & Sahr, 2008;Mellor & Freeborn, 2011).…”

“…The series of studies reported by Francis (2013a), Francis (2013b) and Penny and Francis (2015) have all taken into account the potentially contaminating effect of individual differences in personality, drawing on the three dimensional model proposed by Hans Eysenck and his associates and operationalised in a series of self-completion instruments for application both among adults, including the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985), and among young people, including the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975) and the Junior Eysenck Questionnaire Revised (Corulla, 1990). …”