Images of God and their mediating role in the relationship between right-wing authoritarianism and attitudes towards homosexuality in Peruvian Catholic and evangelical believers

Giácomo Olano Raffo, Agustín Espinosa, Mathias Schmitz, Harry Michael Lewis

Abstract


A dichotomous representation of God is identified within Christianity; on the one hand, the figure of God is represented as a benevolent entity; on the other, He appears as a judge who judges sin.  Both images are positively associated with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), although to a greater extent with respect to the punishing vision of God. Both images are inversely associated with positive attitudes towards homosexuality. Again, the magnitude of this relationship is greater with the image of a punishing god. Mediation analysis found that the relationship between RWA and positive attitudes toward homosexuality are mediated by the image of a punishing God, but not by the benevolent image. Participants could be categorised in line with their levels of accordance with each of the two images of God presented; the first, labelled ‘non-fundamentalist´ reported a high level of endorsement for the image of God as benevolent, but a low level of endorsement for the image of God as punishing. The second, labelled ‘fundamentalist’ captured those who endorsed the inverse of this relationship.

Comparisons between the two groups show that the latter are systematically more authoritarian and report higher levels of negative attitudes towards homosexuality. In the discussion we consider the idea that religious belief can have a paradoxical effect on prejudice.


Keywords


authoritarianism, Christianity, images of God, attitudes toward homosexuality

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