Ethical and Value Orientations through the Lens of Religiosity, Belief and Personality: The Case of Some Hungarian Settlements

This paper aims at scrutinizing the complex relationship of personal belief systems, individual religiosity, traditional/institutional religious practice and personal values. The research problem is whether traditional, new-age oriented or “patchwork” belief systems, denominational affiliations and congregational group membership are linked to certain value orientations. Based on the secondary analysis of the survey research conducted by the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary during the summer of 2015 in 5 mid-size townships reaching out to approximately 850 adult respondents, multi-variate statistical methods are applied including indicators of traditional and new-age spiritual belief items, religious belonging, religious upbringing and religious behavior. These are contrasted with a modified version of the 4-item Inglehart-test and a newly developed set of Weberian economical ethic values. The key questions are 1) whether traditional protestant religiosity is connected to Weberian economical ethic, 2) whether new-age spirituality is connected to postmodern value orientation and 3) whether “patchwork” belief systems can be characterized by any particular value orientation. New aspects are added by testing how personality and happiness mediates these relationships measured by a shortened version of Eysenck's Revised Personality Questionnaire and the Oxford Happiness Inventory. Results are controlled for social-demographical background (gender, age, labor status, income, subjective perception of social status, marital status, family size, and school attainment) where relevant. As the study applied a random sampling of households only on the level of the pre-selected settlements, the database should be regarded only as a pilot study to validate these measures in the special socio-cultural context of some Hungarian towns and villages inhabited by a partly secularized population coming from a multi-confessional background. However, within the obvious framework of its methodological limitations the paper aims at drawing conclusions in form of findings from local case-studies as well as comparing some results with previous EVS data.