Religiosity and conservatism revisited: Relating a new religiosity measure to the two main conservative political ideologies.

The relation between the two religiosity dimensions which Wulff (1997) described (Exclusion vs. Inclusion of Transcendence and Literal vs. Symbolic) and two conservative political ideologies (Cultural and Economic Conservatism) was investigated in a sample of 714 students, a heterogeneous sample of 262 adults and a sample of 301 religiously affiliated adults gathered in Flanders (Belgium). Both Exclusion vs. Inclusion of Transcendence and Literal vs. Symbolic were expected to relate only to Cultural Conservatism. Results suppored these hypotheses, providing further evidence for the close association between religiosity and Cultural Conservatism and the validity of the Post-Critical Belief scale (Duriez, Fontaine & Hutsebaut, 2000) as a measure of Wulff's religiosity dimensions.