Christian Liberalism Scale

Abstract

The Christian Liberalism Scale (CLS), developed by sociologist Richard J. Stellway in 1973, is an early psychometric instrument designed to measure individual adherence to the theological, epistemological, and anthropological tenets of liberal Protestant Christianity. Historically, empirical research in the sociology of religion and the psychology of religion conceptualized religious liberalism as a merely residual category—defined essentially by the absence of fundamentalist or orthodox beliefs. Stellway challenged this operational deficiency by establishing a direct, six-item, self-administered measure capturing affirmative liberal theological commitments, including theological naturalism, empirical epistemologies, ethical humanism, and demythologized hermeneutics.

Administered via a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), the instrument produces a composite score from 6 to 30 or a mean item score from 1.0 to 5.0. In its initial validation on a sample of 322 male heads-of-households in west-central Illinois, the scale demonstrated substantial construct validity, exhibiting a negative correlation with Christian conservatism (r = -.48) and significant positive partial correlations with structural sociopolitical attitudes, such as state regulation of private enterprise (r = .22) and legislative intervention for disadvantaged groups (r = .19). Although formal reliability estimates (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha) were omitted in the original 1973 publication, subsequent psychometric literature has recognized the scale as a pioneering effort to capture liberal religiosity as a substantive ideological system rather than a cognitive deficit or low-orthodoxy artifact.

Keywords

Christian Liberalism Scale, religious liberalism, liberal Christianity, theological naturalism, sociology of religion, religious orthodoxy, Christian conservatism, religious measurement, social gospel, Richard J. Stellway

Authors

The Christian Liberalism Scale was developed and validated by Richard J. Stellway. At the time of the instrument’s publication in 1973, Stellway conducted his empirical investigations within the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, focusing on the intersection of religious orientation, social stratification, and sociopolitical ideologies. He later served as Professor of Sociology at institutions including Northwest Nazarene University, publishing widely on social problems, family sociology, and empirical measures of religious commitment.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Christian Liberalism Scale is to provide an affirmative, substantively grounded measurement of liberal Christian theology. Prior to Stellway’s formulation, social scientists routinely investigated the sociopolitical correlates of religion through a unidimensional continuum, wherein high scores indicated Christian fundamentalism or strict traditional orthodoxy, and low scores were assumed to represent religious liberalism. Stellway (1973) criticized this conceptualization, arguing that religious liberalism constitutes far more than a residual category of non-belief or weak orthodoxy; it is a coherent worldview characterized by distinct theological, epistemological, and anthropological doctrines.

In both research and practical contexts, the scale fulfills several critical functions:

• De-coupling Orthodoxy from Liberalism: It allows researchers to distinguish between individuals who are genuinely secular, religiously indifferent, or religiously liberal. A person who rejects biblical literalism may be an atheist, an agnostic, or a devout liberal Christian who grounds their faith in ethical humanism and divine immanence. The CLS directly captures this affirmative liberal stance.
• Investigating the Religion-Politics Nexus: The scale was engineered specifically to assess whether theological liberalism intrinsically predisposes adherents toward sociopolitical progressivism, state welfare intervention, and structural economic reform, independent of educational attainment and occupational prestige.
• Cross-Disciplinary Religious Assessment: In pastoral counseling, seminary admissions, and ecumenical research, the scale provides a rapid, accessible metric for mapping ideological leanings and understanding how theological worldviews influence interpersonal values, tolerance, and civic engagement.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the Christian Liberalism Scale is Christian Theological Liberalism, operationalized as an integrated cognitive schema that reframes historic Christian doctrines through rationalist epistemology, divine immanence, naturalistic hermeneutics, and ethical humanism. Rather than conceptualizing Christian faith through supernatural intervention and dogmatic revelation, the construct emphasizes five central dimensions:

1. Epistemological Parity Between Reason and Revelation

Liberal Christianity posits that empirical science and theological reflection represent equally valid epistemological pathways to truth. Item 1 (“Science and religion are both equally good ways to find truth”) assesses the rejection of traditional epistemic authoritarianism—in which biblical revelation holds absolute primacy over human reason—and embraces methodological integration or cognitive accommodation.

2. Demythologization and Metaphorical Hermeneutics

Rather than asserting the historical, physical veracity of miraculous accounts, liberal Christianity interprets biblical miracles through a hermeneutic of symbolic, moral, or naturalistic meaning. Item 2 (“Biblical miracles did not happen as the Bible says they did but have been used as examples”) and Item 5 (“Some Biblical miracles really happened as the Bible says they did but others can be explained by natural causes”) measure the degree to which an individual rejects literal supernaturalism in favor of allegorical or scientifically compatible explanations.

3. Theological Naturalism and Divine Immanence

Classical Christian orthodoxy maintains a strict ontological dualism between a transcendent Creator and created nature. In contrast, theological liberalism leans toward panentheism or naturalism. Item 3 (“‘God’ and ‘Nature’ are in some ways the same thing”) operationalizes this reduction of ontological distance between divinity and the physical universe, reflecting theological traditions pioneered by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Baruch Spinoza.

4. Exemplary Christology

Orthodox Christology emphasizes the ontological deity of Christ, substitutionary atonement, and Jesus as the uniquely begotten Son of God. The liberal framework shifts toward an exemplary or prophetic Christology. Item 4 (“It is more important that we believe that Jesus was a great prophet than that he was God’s only son”) captures this transition from dogmatic soteriology to moral-prophetic emulation.

5. Ethical Humanism and Moral Soteriology

Classical Protestantism holds that salvation is received through divine grace via faith alone (sola fide), viewing human moral efforts as fallen. The liberal paradigm elevates human dignity, creative potential, and moral action as the essential markers of spiritual communion. Item 6 (“If a man does good for others, he will enjoy fellowship with God”) measures this deed-centered, anthropologically optimistic understanding of divine fellowship.

Theoretical Framework

The Christian Liberalism Scale is conceptually anchored in 19th- and 20th-century Protestant modernism, the Social Gospel movement, and sociological theories of religious secularization and cognitive adaptation.

Theological Modernism and Cultural Accommodation

The philosophical roots of liberal theology emerged as an explicit attempt to reconcile the Christian faith with modern post-Enlightenment thought, Darwinian evolutionary biology, and historical-critical biblical scholarship. Figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) repositioned religious faith from assent to dogmatic propositions to human subjective experience and ethical responsibility. Later, Rudolf Bultmann advocated for the “demythologization” of the New Testament, contending that modern thinkers cannot honestly accept both the physical reality of ancient miracles and the modern scientific understanding of the natural order. Stellway’s instrument directly operationalizes Bultmannian and Schleiermacherian themes through items addressing nature, miracles, and the authority of science.

The Social Gospel and Structural Morality

Sociologically, liberal Christianity in the United States was codified during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by leaders like Walter Rauschenbusch. The Social Gospel redirected religious focus from individualistic salvation and the afterlife toward the transformation of social, political, and economic structures on Earth. This theological orientation emphasizes human cooperation with the divine to achieve social justice, directly informing Stellway’s hypothesis that theological liberalism acts as an independent cognitive driver of sociopolitical progressivism, civil rights advocacy, and market regulation.

Sociological Multidimensionality

The scale also builds upon the multidimensional religious frameworks established by sociologists like Charles Glock and Rodney Stark (1965). Glock and Stark argued that religiosity cannot be treated as a monolithic, unidimensional phenomenon. By demonstrating that liberal religious ideology is not simply the mathematical inverse of orthodoxy, Stellway’s work aligned with the broader psychometric shift toward developing domain-specific, content-valid scales of theological belief.

Validity

Empirical evidence for the validity of the Christian Liberalism Scale was originally established by Stellway (1973) utilizing a cross-sectional community sample of 322 white male heads-of-households residing in rural and small-town settings in west-central Illinois.

Construct and Convergent Validity

To establish construct validity, Stellway administered the CLS alongside a corresponding measure of Christian theological conservatism (measuring biblical inerrancy, creationism, and traditional christological doctrines). The resulting Pearson product-moment correlation between Christian liberalism and Christian conservatism was robust and negative:

r = -.48 (p < .001)

While this substantial negative correlation confirms that theological liberalism and conservatism represent divergent belief systems, the magnitude of the coefficient (accounting for approximately 23% shared variance) underscores Stellway’s theoretical premise: Christian liberalism is not merely the exact mirror opposite of conservatism, but possesses unique variance associated with distinct cognitive and social orientations.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

Stellway tested the predictive power of the CLS against three core sociopolitical dimensions, computing partial correlations to control for respondents’ level of education and occupational status:

• Belief in Controlling Free Enterprise: r_partial = .22 (p < .01)
• Support for Legal Intervention for Disadvantaged Groups: r_partial = .19 (p < .01)
• Self-Identified Liberal Sociopolitical Preference: r_partial = .18 (p < .01)

These partial correlations confirm that theological liberalism independently predicts support for economic regulation, social welfare legislation, and progressive political identification, even when controlling for socioeconomic stratification.

Moderation and Subgroup Validity

Drawing on sociological theories of relative deprivation and blocked mobility, Stellway hypothesized that the relationship between theological liberalism and progressive political ideology would be significantly stronger among individuals experiencing unfulfilled occupational aspirations. Among this subgroup of respondents, the predictive validity of the scale increased markedly:

• Correlation with belief in controlling free enterprise rose to r = .49.
• Correlation with progressive sociopolitical preference rose to r = .35.
• An inverse correlation emerged with conservative defense of the societal status quo: r = -.34.

These findings substantiate the scale’s construct validity by demonstrating its sensitivity to theoretical interaction effects between ideological belief systems and social structural strains.

Reliability

A notable limitation of Stellway’s original 1973 study was the complete omission of formal internal consistency or temporal stability statistics. Stellway did not report a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, split-half reliability, or test-retest reliability data for the six-item composite.

Subsequent psychometric commentary (e.g., Hunter, 1981; Pyle, 1993) has evaluated the scale’s theoretical composition. Although brief six-item instruments often exhibit acceptable internal consistency if items are tightly intercorrelated, Item 5 (“Some Biblical miracles really happened as the Bible says they did but others can be explained by natural causes”) reflects a moderate or transitional posture toward naturalism, whereas Item 2 (“Biblical miracles did not happen as the Bible says they did…”) represents a more definitive demythologizing stance. This conceptual heterogeneity may introduce minor measurement error, leading modern psychometricians to estimate the scale’s likely internal consistency at moderate levels (α ≈ .65 to .75). Future research utilizing the scale requires full psychometric re-evaluation, including modern internal consistency estimation (α and McDonald’s ω) and longitudinal stability analysis.

Factor Analysis

Stellway did not conduct exploratory factor analysis (EFA) or confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) during the initial 1973 scale development, relying instead on face validity and sum-score aggregations across the six items.

From a theoretical perspective, contemporary structural equation modeling would conceptualize the Christian Liberalism Scale either as a unidimensional construct or as a two-factor oblique model:

• Factor 1: Epistemological & Hermeneutical Naturalism (Items 1, 2, 3, 5), reflecting empirical openness, scientific integration, and naturalistic miracle interpretation.
• Factor 2: Anthropocentric Moral Christology (Items 4, 6), reflecting the transition from classical substitutionary theology to prophetic role-modeling and salvation through ethical service.

Modern applications of the scale should apply CFA to confirm whether a single higher-order factor adequately accounts for item variance, or whether multidimensional scoring provides superior fit across fit indices such as the Comparative Fit Index (CFI ≥ .95), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI ≥ .95), and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA ≤ .06).

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Christian Liberalism Scale (CLS)
• Author: Richard J. Stellway (1973)
• Construct Measured: Personal commitment to the theological, epistemological, and anthropological doctrines of liberal Christianity.
• Assessment Type: Self-report questionnaire (originally administered via structured interview).
• Number of Items: 6 items.
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Neutral or No Opinion
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Procedures:
  • All six items are scored in a positive direction (no reverse-scored items).
  • Summed Score: Responses across all six statements are summed to yield a total score ranging from 6 to 30. Higher scores indicate greater adherence to Christian theological liberalism.
  • Mean Score: Alternatively, an average item score can be computed by dividing the total score by 6, yielding a range from 1.0 to 5.0.
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
• Target Population: Adult general populations, religious adherents, and sociopolitical survey respondents.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Christian Liberalism Scale was developed and published in 1973 by Richard J. Stellway in the peer-reviewed journal The Sociological Quarterly (Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 430–439), copyrighted by the Midwest Sociological Society (published by Wiley-Blackwell).

The six scale items were published directly within the main text and appendix of the original 1973 article for open academic evaluation. In accordance with academic fair dealing and standard research conventions, the scale may be utilized without licensing fees for non-commercial educational, psychological, and sociological research, provided that formal academic citation is given to the original author and journal. Researchers intending to incorporate the instrument into commercial assessments or proprietary testing platforms should consult the copyright holders (Midwest Sociological Society / Wiley).

References

Berger, P. L. (1967). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. Doubleday. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1839818W/The_sacred_canopy

Bultmann, R. (1958). Jesus Christ and mythology. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Glock, C. Y., & Stark, R. (1965). Religion and society in tension. Rand McNally.

Hunter, J. D. (1981). Operationalizing evangelicalism: A review, critique and proposal. Sociological Analysis, 42(4), 363–372. https://doi.org/10.2307/3711142

Pyle, R. E. (1993). Faith and commitment to the poor: Theological orientation and support for government assistance measures. Sociology of Religion, 54(4), 385–401. https://doi.org/10.2307/3711802

Rauschenbusch, W. (1917). A theology for the social gospel. Macmillan.

Stellway, R. J. (1973). The correspondence between religious orientation and sociopolitical liberalism and conservatism. The Sociological Quarterly, 14(3), 430–439. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1973.tb00868.x

Items of the Scale