Abstract
The Rejection of Christianity Scale (RCS) is a specialized psychometric assessment developed by John E. Greer and Leslie J. Francis to measure explicit negative attitudes, disaffiliation tendencies, and ideological opposition toward Christian doctrine, ecclesiastical institutions, and religious practices. Originally conceptualized within the socio-religious milieu of Northern Ireland, the RCS emerged in response to structural psychometric limitations inherent in traditional measures of religious sentiment, such as the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity (FSAC), which relied exclusively on positively valenced items and remained structurally vulnerable to acquiescence response bias. Comprising negatively formulated items evaluated along a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree), the instrument captures multi-faceted dimensions of religious disaffection across core theological tenets (e.g., disbelief in a personal God, skepticism regarding the resurrection and miracles), institutional critique (e.g., clerical disconnect, moral authoritarianism, liturgical dissatisfaction), and secular-rationalist philosophical worldviews (e.g., cosmic chance, materialism, the problem of innocent suffering). Psychometric evaluations across diverse adolescent cohorts demonstrated exceptional internal consistency, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .90 among Roman Catholic pupils, .94 among Protestant pupils, and .93 in large composite normative samples (N = 1,177). Construct and concurrent validities have been robustly verified via strong inverse correlations with positive indices of religiosity and consistent inter-confessional differentiations. The scale serves as an indispensable methodological tool for empirical theologians, developmental psychologists, and sociologists of religion investigating secularization, religious deconversion, and anti-religious sentiments during adolescent identity formation.
Keywords
Rejection of Christianity Scale, religious attitudes, psychometrics, deconversion, adolescent secularization, acquiescence response bias, empirical theology, religious disaffiliation, sociology of religion, Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity
Authors
The Rejection of Christianity Scale was formulated and empirically validated through the collaborative scholarship of two prominent figures in empirical theology and the psychology of religion:
- John E. Greer, Ph.D.: Former Reader in Religious Education at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Dr. Greer’s extensive empirical work centered on the developmental trajectory of religious thought, moral judgment, and denominational attitudes among Catholic and Protestant youth during the socio-political conflict in Northern Ireland (The Troubles).
- Leslie J. Francis, Ph.D., Sc.D., D.D.: Professor of Religions and Psychology at the Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR), University of Warwick, United Kingdom, and Canon Theologian at St Albans Cathedral. Professor Francis is an internationally renowned psychometrician in the empirical study of religion, recognized for authoring the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity (FSAC) and conducting foundational cross-national investigations into religious individual differences, personality profiles (Eysenckian and Jungian typologies), and adolescent value systems.
Purpose
The development of the Rejection of Christianity Scale was driven by both methodological necessities and theoretical impasses within the quantitative study of religion. Historically, the dominant psychometric tradition assessing Christian orientation—exemplified by the work of Leslie J. Francis and contemporary psychometricians—depended almost entirely on unipolar, positively phrased statements (e.g., “God helps me lead a better life” or “I find it helpful to pray to God”). Although these positive attitude metrics exhibited elevated internal consistency reliabilities, their exclusive reliance on positive valence exposed them to severe psychometric hazards, most notably acquiescence response bias (the tendency of respondents to agree with survey items irrespective of their actual beliefs or experiential reality).
In high-salience cultural environments characterized by intense confessional identity, such as Northern Ireland during late 20th-century geopolitical tensions, social desirability pressures often compounded acquiescent responding. Adolescents embedded within denominational schooling environments (maintained Catholic schools and controlled Protestant schools) frequently endorsed affirmative theological statements out of institutional compliance, cultural loyalty, or reflexive acquiescence, thereby masking growing internal disengagement, active secularization, or cognitive dissent. The RCS was deliberately engineered to provide a countervailing, negatively valenced psychometric instrument designed to establish whether passive detachment was psychometrically distinct from active ideological and affective rejection of Christianity.
Beyond resolving response biases, the scale serves critical research and clinical purposes:
- Deconversion and Secularization Research: It enables sociologists and developmental psychologists to quantify the trajectories through which young individuals actively disengage from inherited religious paradigms, differentiating between religious apathy, cognitive skepticism, and explicit antagonism.
- Cross-Confessional Comparative Analysis: It provides a balanced diagnostic framework to examine whether the socio-political dynamics of denominational segregation differentially influence the velocity and structural expression of religious rejection between historically polarized communities.
- Theoretical Refinement of Motivational Constructs: In clinical and counseling psychology, the instrument facilitates the exploration of religious trauma, moral alienation from institutional church bodies, and the psychological sequelae of prescriptive religious upbringings, allowing practitioners to operationalize anti-religious sentiment separately from generalized existential anxiety.
Psychological Construct
The psychological construct captured by the Rejection of Christianity Scale is active negative attitude toward Christianity. Rather than assessing mere non-belief, religious indifference, or zero-level practice, the RCS captures a dimensional spectrum of cognitive opposition, affective revulsion, and institutional repudiation. The instrument taps several primary thematic sub-domains that collectively coalesce into a unified rejection dimension:
1. Epistemic and Supernatural Skepticism
This component operationalizes cognitive dissonance with foundational Christian metaphysics. It assesses an individual’s inability to reconcile personal worldviews with supernatural tenets, such as the efficacy of miracles, bodily resurrection, and post-mortem existence. Rather than expressing mild agnosticism, items capture an active intellectual invalidation of the core historic claims of orthodox Christian theology (e.g., viewing miracles as implausible historical artifacts and recognizing the finality of biological death).
2. Institutional Alienation and Clerical Disconnect
This facet assesses the relational and generational chasm separating modern youth from the institutional apparatus of the church. It reflects the perception that church hierarchies, ecclesiastical sermons, and parish clergy are anachronistic, unresponsive to adolescent developmental realities, and socially irrelevant. The liturgy is experienced not merely as neutral or unengaging, but as an explicitly boring, redundant, and dull ritual devoid of personal meaning.
3. Moral Hegemony and Perceived Hypocrisy
The construct captures sharp ethical objections to the church’s prescriptive authority. Respondents who score high on this dimension express resentment toward ecclesiastical moralizing, arguing that church bodies have no legitimate mandate to dictate private lifestyles, ethical choices, or societal legislation. Furthermore, this component evaluates perceptions of moral hypocrisy among church members, framing religious adherents as individuals who fail to embody their proclaimed ethical mandates in practical affairs.
4. Empirical Positivism and the Problem of Suffering
Anchored in philosophical naturalism, this facet reflects the classical problem of evil and the demand for empirical verification. It measures the refusal to acknowledge an omnipotent, benevolent deity in the presence of systemic, innocent suffering, while endorsing deterministic or purely random mechanistic perspectives regarding the cosmos (e.g., viewing the universe as entirely governed by stochastic chance).
5. Secular Existential Priorities
This dimension operationalizes the psychological displacement of transcendental interests by secular, present-focused, and materialistic pursuits. It reflects the conscious prioritization of financial prosperity, tangible leisure, and immediate hedonic enjoyment over spiritual development or liturgical devotion.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical architecture supporting the Rejection of Christianity Scale integrates principles from cognitive psychology, social learning theory, and modern models of deconversion. Central to Greer and Francis’s rationale is the theoretical asymmetry between positive and negative psychological valences. Psychometricians and behavioral theorists—including insights derived from Leeming’s analyses of reinforcement and contemporary approach-avoidance motivation theory—have demonstrated that positive reinforcement and aversive avoidance operate along distinct psychobiological and cognitive pathways.
In attitudinal research, positive attitude towards religion represents an approach orientation characterized by perceived transcendent security, affective attachment to ritual, and subjective meaning-making. Conversely, rejection represents an active avoidance or defensive reaction driven by perceived cognitive incongruity, reactance against institutional control (as articulated in Jack Brehm’s Psychological Reactance Theory), and moral indignation. Consequently, low scores on a positive attitude scale cannot simply be equated with high rejection; a person with a low score on the FSAC might simply experience religious apathy or theological agnosticism, whereas a high score on the RCS signifies cognitive dissent, ideological invalidation, and moral aversion.
Furthermore, the scale’s theoretical framework is informed by developmental paradigms of adolescent cognitive maturation, notably Jean Piaget’s formal operational stage and James Fowler’s stages of faith development (specifically the transition from Synthetic-Conventional to Individuative-Reflective faith). During mid-to-late adolescence (ages 14 to 16), youth undergo rapid expansion of abstract reasoning, heightened sensitivity to perceived systemic hypocrisy, and an imperative to construct an autonomous personal identity distinct from inherited parental or community traditions. When institutional religious structures are perceived as rigid, dogmatic, or intellectually unconvincing, the developmental drive for identity individuation manifests as an overt, organized rejection of Christian doctrines.
Validity
Empirical validation studies conducted by Greer and Francis have demonstrated robust psychometric validity across multiple domains:
Content and Face Validity
The scale items were systematically derived from an initial pool of 32 negatively phrased statements spanning eight interconnected theoretical categories: God, church, clergy, belief systems, religious practices, personal autonomy, institutional authority, and scientific rationalism. Item selection protocols retained items demonstrating the highest item-total correlations and conceptual coherence. Although the explicit word “Christianity” is not repeated in every prompt—favoring broader linguistic tokens such as “religion,” “the church,” “God,” and “clergy”—the contextual framework and theological references (e.g., miracles of Jesus, bodily resurrection, Sunday church services) establish high contextual specificity and face validity exclusively for Christian ecologies.
Construct and Convergent Validity
Construct validity is evidenced by strong inverse correlations between the RCS and well-established indices of religious adherence. In adolescent validation samples in Northern Ireland, scores on the Rejection of Christianity Scale correlated negatively and robustly with frequency of church attendance, regularity of private prayer, and scores on the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity (with correlation coefficients typically exceeding r = -.75 to -.85, p < .001). This inverse relationship demonstrates that the instrument measures the opposing pole of religious commitment while capturing qualitative variances in active disaffection that positive scales fail to isolate.
Criterion and Group Differences Validity
The scale effectively distinguishes between groups with known differences in religious socialization and observance. Historically, Roman Catholic adolescents in Northern Ireland during the validation epoch exhibited significantly higher institutional church adherence than their Protestant counterparts due to differing community dynamics and parochial school structures. Correspondingly, empirical administrations of the RCS demonstrated that Protestant adolescents scored significantly higher on active rejection than Catholic adolescents, a finding consistent with broader sociological benchmarks in the region.
Reliability
The Rejection of Christianity Scale demonstrates remarkable internal consistency across independent samples and confessional cohorts:
- Greer & Francis (1990) Standardization Sample: In an extensive baseline investigation involving N = 1,177 Northern Irish secondary school pupils enrolled in forms 4 to 6 (ages 14–16), the scale yielded an overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .93.
- Greer & Francis (1992) Denominational Cohorts: When evaluated across bifurcated confessional cohorts, the scale preserved high reliability thresholds:
- Protestant sample (n = 466): α = .94
- Roman Catholic sample (n = 409): α = .90
Item-to-total correlations across these normative evaluations consistently met stringent psychometric criteria, with nearly all retained items exhibiting values exceeding .50. These indices indicate that despite tapping diverse targets of criticism (such as clerical competence, theological dogma, and cosmological chance), the scale items coalesce into a unified measurement construct characterized by minimal measurement error.
Factor Analysis
The structural dimensionality of the Rejection of Christianity Scale was initially examined by Greer and Francis using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The initial item pool of 32 negatively valenced items was subjected to factor extraction to identify items with strong, unambiguous loadings on a primary underlying latent factor.
The analysis revealed a dominant primary factor accounting for a substantial proportion of the total item variance, confirming that negative religious attitudes in youth operate predominantly as an overarching unidimensional construct. Items selected for inclusion exhibited substantial factor loadings on this unrotated first principal component, confirming that rejection of Christian institutions, moral critiques, and doctrinal skepticism load onto a singular, coherent latent variable.
Subsequent psychometric examinations using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in broader adolescent value surveys have verified that while multi-factor models parsing intellectual skepticism from institutional cynicism can achieve mathematical fit, a hierarchical or unidimensional model remains the most parsimonious and psychometrically robust representation for general research use. The unifactorial structure avoids fragmentation of the latent construct, allowing researchers to compute an aggregate sum or mean composite score that reflects overall anti-Christian attitude.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Name of Instrument: Rejection of Christianity Scale (RCS)
- Construct Measured: Negative attitudes, explicit ideological dissent, and institutional disaffiliation regarding Christianity
- Administration Format: Self-report questionnaire (paper-and-pencil or computer-assisted digital administration)
- Target Population: Adolescents, young adults, and secondary school pupils (validated primarily on ages 14–18; applicable to adult secularization research)
- Item Count: 13 core operational items (standardized from the original item pool)
- Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type agreement scale:
- 1 = Strongly disagree
- 2 = Disagree
- 3 = Not certain
- 4 = Agree
- 5 = Strongly agree
- Scoring Guidelines:
- All items are directly phrased in a negative direction toward Christian belief and ecclesiastical structures.
- No items require reverse scoring.
- An overall continuous rejection score is calculated either by summing the numerical ratings across all completed items (yielding a theoretical score range of 13 to 65) or by computing the mean response score (ranging from 1.0 to 5.0).
- Higher aggregate or mean scores represent higher levels of negative sentiment, theological repudiation, and alienation from Christianity.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Rejection of Christianity Scale was developed and published in the early 1990s through peer-reviewed academic investigations, notably documented in 1990 (Journal of Empirical Theology) and formally standardized in 1992 (Personality and Individual Differences). The scale was released by the authors for academic, non-commercial research, and pedagogical applications without licensing fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the original authors (Greer & Francis).
Researchers intending to deploy the instrument in institutional evaluations, longitudinal cross-national surveys, or commercial psychological applications should consult contemporary institutional copyright guidelines and contact Professor Leslie J. Francis or the corresponding copyright holders (Elsevier / empirical theology research consortiums) to ensure compliance with modern ethical guidelines and usage protocols.
References
- Francis, L. J. (1978). Measurement reintegrated: A study of the attitude towards religion of ten-year-old children. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 48(2), 200–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1978.tb02385.x
- Greer, J. E., & Francis, L. J. (1990). The religious profile of pupils in Northern Ireland. Journal of Empirical Theology, 3(2), 35–50. https://doi.org/10.1163/157092590X00033
- Greer, J. E., & Francis, L. J. (1991). The Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity: A study among secondary school pupils in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Religious Education, 13(2), 89–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/0141620910130204
- Greer, J., & Francis, L. J. (1992). Measuring “rejection of Christianity” among 14 to 16-year-old adolescents in Catholic and Protestant schools in Northern Ireland. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(12), 1345–1348. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(92)90176-S
- Kay, W. K., & Francis, L. J. (1996). Drift from the Churches: Attitude toward Christianity during Childhood and Adolescence. University of Wales Press.