Moral Representativeness and Satisfaction with One's Religious Community

Belonging to a community of believers represents a basic component of most religions. According to a social-functional account of religion, a primary function of religious belief is to bind individuals to these types of cooperative, moral groups. However, this framework has yet to investigate what factors are associated with being more or less "bound" to a particular community. Although previous research has found that being very representative of the congregation in terms of religious belief (e.g., fundamentalism) is an important factor, the social-functional account suggests that being representative of the binding moral beliefs of the community should mediate this effect. In this study, participants from 23 churches completed measures assessing religious and moral beliefs. Analyses revealed that moral representativeness was associated with greater satisfaction with one's faith community, above and beyond theological belief. Moreover, representativeness in terms of binding moral foundations mediated the relationship between satisfaction and representativeness in terms of religious fundamentalism.