Some religious believers approach faith as open-ended questioning that resists pat answers

Evidence

C. Daniel Batson has proposed a more “existential” dimension to help us understand the connection between religiousness and prejudice: religion as quest (Batson and Ventis, 1982). … The Quest dimension concerns the degree to which the individual “seeks to face religious issues such as personal mortality or meaning in life in all their complexity, yet resists clear-cut, pat answers. An individual who approaches religion in this way recognized that he or she does not know, and probably never will know, the final truth about such matters. Still the questions are deemed important and, however tentative and subject to change, answers are sought” (Batson and Burris, 1994). — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2037

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Batson’s ‘religion as quest’ construct, which contrasts with both intrinsic and extrinsic orientations toward faith.