The Christian Belief in a Just World: Measurement and its Relationship to Christian Virtues - Xi Li

Summary:

This project aims to create and validate an inventory of the Christian belief in a just world and to explore the correlation between this belief and a cluster of Christian virtues, including forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and humility. It seeks to answer two specific questions regarding divine justice in the retributive sense. First, what would be the construction and validation of a scale for Christian believer’s belief in a just world? Second, what is the connection between this belief and some relevant Christian virtues? Accordingly, this project consists of two studies. First, it evaluates the existing scales for the belief in a just world and investigates the meaning of retributive divine justice as represented in biblical texts and shared traditions of the Catholic and Protestant theologies. Based on this critique and investigation, the project will create and validate a scale for Christian belief in a just world that applies to the Catholic and Protestant traditions. Second, it will use the new scale to explore the relationship between the Christian belief in a just world and some Christian virtues that might be clustered and relevant to this belief. 

The present project is needed because there is no psychological study on Christian belief in a just world, even though psychological studies on the belief in a just world have been diverse and productive in the past three decades. Because of this lack, the connection between Christian belief in a just world and several closely related Christian virtues is unclear, although there are numerous psychological studies about the relationship between the belief in a just world and human well-being. This project will deepen the study of Christian theology and biblical texts regarding retributive divine justice by approaching it from the lens of a psychological concept. It will also provide a case for the contribution of Christianity to human flourishing in social relationships because the belief in retributive divine justice, which is at the kernel of Christianity, and the related Christian virtues are crucial for promoting human flourishing in local and global communities. 

It is anticipated that this project will result in a presentation on a psychological examination of the meaning of retributive divine justice in Boston during the 2025 SBL annual conference and the publication of an article about the Christian scale of the belief in a just world in a journal on the psychology of religion, such as the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. This project will lead to the development of a course on divine justice taught from the perspective of science-engaged theology instead of the traditional lens of Christian theology, demonstrating the impact of this project on religious studies and education in the principal investigator’s home country.