Religious Experience Questionnaire

1. Abstract

The Religious Experience Questionnaire (REQ), originally developed by Keith J. Edwards (1976), is an established psychometric self-report instrument designed to assess an individual’s subjective, affective relationship with a personal, caring God. Distinct from conventional psychometric tools that primarily gauge religious orthodoxy, creedal adherence, or cognitive assent to theological dogma, the REQ isolates the experiential and emotional dimension of theistic spirituality. The scale evaluates core experiential phenomena, including perceived emotional proximity to the divine, the subjective sensation of being heard, forgiven, and loved, daily relational engagement in decision-making and prayer, and the relative absence of debilitating theological distress, such as persecution fears, chronic anger toward God, or ontological doubt.

Initially formulated as an 8-item instrument anchored to a 4-point rating format, the instrument was systematically revised into a 12-item inventory utilizing a 7-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = Never to 7 = Always). This expansion introduced four reverse-scored items (Items 3, 5, 7, and 12) to mitigate acquiescence response bias and standardized the continuum across items to effectively eliminate the ceiling effects commonly observed when assessing religiously committed populations. Structural validation via exploratory factor analysis demonstrates that the 12 items reliably load onto a singular, coherent latent factor (with standardized loadings spanning .46 to .83), substantiating the essential unidimensionality of experiential relational spirituality. Extensive empirical research links elevated REQ scores to benevolent God images, mature object relations development, intrinsic religious orientation, positive self-esteem, empathy, and psychosocial adjustment, while inversely correlating with pathology and interpersonal alienation. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric overview of the REQ, detailing its structural validity, theoretical mechanisms, administration protocols, and full measurement inventory.

2. Keywords

Religious Experience Questionnaire, REQ, Keith J. Edwards, psychology of religion, relational spirituality, God image, affective religiosity, object relations theory, attachment to God, psychometrics, intrinsic religious orientation, spiritual well-being.

3. Authors

The Religious Experience Questionnaire was constructed and refined by Keith J. Edwards, Ph.D., an influential scholar in the field of the integration of psychology and theology.

• Author: Keith J. Edwards, Ph.D.
• Institutional Affiliation: Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, La Mirada, California, United States.
• Historical Correspondence Address: Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, 13800 Biola Avenue, La Mirada, CA 90639.
• Scholarly Focus: Dr. Edwards has dedicated decades of clinical and empirical research to understanding relational spirituality, the psychological manifestations of the God concept versus the experiential God image, and the application of psychodynamic object relations theory and attachment models to spiritual development and psychological maturity.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Religious Experience Questionnaire is to operationalize and quantify the experiential, affective reality of an individual’s personal connection with God, sharply differentiating this lived, relational reality from intellectualized or doctrinal assent. Historically, the empirical psychology of religion struggled with a significant measurement confound: instruments evaluating religiosity tended to measure cognitive orthodoxy, scriptural literalism, or institutional participation (e.g., church attendance, frequency of liturgical rituals). When administered to religiously committed cohorts—such as seminarians, members of active religious communities, or students at faith-based universities—these orthodoxy-focused inventories consistently produced severe ceiling effects. Respondents across the board endorsed standard orthodox propositions, generating restricted variance that hindered meaningful correlation with intrapsychic and interpersonal psychological variables.

Dr. Edwards identified that while individuals within a homogeneous religious group may endorse identical doctrinal statements (the cognitive “God concept”), their internal, emotionally felt experience of God (the affective “God image”) varies profoundly. One person may profess belief in a loving God while experiencing deep internal anxiety, feelings of rejection, and dread of divine retribution, whereas another experiences God as an accessible, comforting, and communicative presence. The REQ was intentionally constructed to capture these nuances, functioning across three primary domains of utility:

• Research Applications in the Psychology of Religion: The REQ serves as a sensitive instrument for investigating how subjective faith experiences interact with mental health indices, such as self-esteem, depression, generalized anxiety, coping styles, and marital satisfaction. By capturing the full range of affective experiences—including feelings of abandonment or anger toward the divine—it provides an unobstructed view of spiritual health without the distortions of social desirability or dogmatic conformism.
• Clinical and Diagnostic Assessment: In pastoral counseling, Christian clinical psychology, and spiritually integrated psychotherapy, the REQ provides clinicians with an objective metric of a client’s spiritual functioning. Clinicians utilize the scale to distinguish between spiritually supportive defenses and neurotic spiritual conflict (e.g., severe scrupulosity, punitive God representations, and unintegrated religious guilt). Identifying low REQ scores or elevations on reverse-scored distress items alerts the clinician to internal object-relational deficits that may manifest as spiritual pathology.
• Longitudinal and Outcome Evaluation: The scale possesses adequate sensitivity to track psychological and spiritual growth over time, such as during the course of psychodynamic psychotherapy, spiritual direction, or inpatient psychiatric treatment. For example, studies evaluating the efficacy of residential mental health treatment programs have employed the REQ to assess changes in patients’ internalized representations of God as therapeutic interventions resolve underlying attachment and relational wounds.

5. Psychological Construct

The core psychological construct measured by the REQ is personal religious experience, delineated specifically as the perceived, emotionally felt reality of an ongoing, reciprocal relationship with a loving, caring, and active God. Edwards conceptualized this construct by contrasting it directly with cognitive-dogmatic belief systems. The REQ conceptualizes this construct as a holistic, multi-faceted yet structurally cohesive phenomenon composed of several critical relational dimensions:

Perceived Divine Benevolence and Emotional Closeness

At the center of this construct is the felt experience of God’s active love and benevolence. Rather than simply knowing theologically that “God is love,” the individual subjectively registers this benevolence as an emotional anchor in daily living. This dimension manifests as an awareness of being cherished, accompanied, and supported by God during moments of emotional vulnerability, private prayer, or corporate worship. Representative items assess the subjective awareness of God’s love and the degree to which prayer feels like an authentic conversation with an intimate friend.

Relational Engagement and Guidance Seeking

Personal religious experience encompasses the degree to which an individual integrates God into their daily executive functioning and practical decision-making. In a healthy, mature relational dynamic, God is experienced not as an abstract cosmological principle or a distant cosmic observer, but as a responsive, interested participant in the individual’s mundane dilemmas. The construct evaluates the individual’s active solicitation of divine guidance and the sustained subjective awareness of God’s benevolent influence shaping everyday events.

Spiritual Reconciliation versus Persecutory Anxiety

A crucial element of the construct is the resolution of moral and developmental guilt. Within theistic frameworks, personal religious experience hinges on the perceived efficacy of divine forgiveness. The REQ incorporates the individual’s capacity to approach God for forgiveness without collapsing into paralyzing dread or expectations of punitive retribution. Individuals with a healthy relational experience of God seek forgiveness within a framework of safety, whereas individuals with developmental arrests in object relations project persecutory internal dynamics onto God, experiencing Him as punitive, harsh, and vengeful.

Affective Accessibility versus Indifference

The construct accounts for the felt accessibility of the divine. Pathological or depleted religious experiences are often characterized by an overwhelming sense that God is emotionally remote, dismissive, or excessively preoccupied with the vastness of the universe to care about human struggles. The REQ captures the inverse of this—a profound conviction that, despite God’s supreme power, He remains intimately attentive and available to personal concerns.

Theological Congruence and Epistemological Stability

Finally, personal religious experience involves an experiential security that buffers against ontological destabilization. While cognitive doubt is a normative aspect of faith development, pervasive, distressing doubt regarding the existence or accessibility of God disrupts the affective bond. The REQ incorporates items that capture chronic emotional discord, such as persistent resentment toward God or destabilizing doubts regarding God’s reality, which serve as direct indicators of fractured spiritual attachment.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of the Religious Experience Questionnaire is rooted at the intersection of psychodynamic object relations theory, attachment theory, and the empirical multidimensional taxonomy of religion introduced by Morton King.

King’s Multidimensional Model of Religiosity

Historically, the scale drew its initial momentum from the pioneering psychometric investigations of Morton King (1967), who demonstrated through factor analysis that “religiosity” is not a monolithic variable, but a complex constellation of at least nine distinct dimensions. King identified a specific factor termed “Personal Religious Experience,” which coalesced around items involving personal communion with God, the experienced reality of answers to prayer, and the perception of divine guidance. Edwards extracted the initial core of the REQ from King’s factor, aiming to isolate this experiential dimension from cognitive, institutional, and dogmatic dimensions.

Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory: Rizzuto and Winnicott

The deeper clinical-theoretical foundation of the REQ is informed by psychoanalytic object relations theory, particularly as articulated by Donald W. Winnicott and operationalized within religious psychology by Ana-María Rizzuto (1979). In The Birth of the Living God, Rizzuto posited that an individual’s internal representation of God (the “God image”) is an internal psychological object synthesized out of primary interpersonal experiences with early caregivers. This God image develops within the “transitional space” described by Winnicott—a realm of subjective experiencing that bridges internal fantasy and external reality.

According to this theoretical perspective, the cognitive “God concept” (the intellectual definition of God learned through catechism or religious instruction) is often split off from the affective “God image” (the experiential, felt reality of God formed via unconscious representations of the mother and father). An individual may possess an orthodox God concept (e.g., “God is all-loving”), yet internally possess an impoverished, persecutory God image derived from an abusive or emotionally unavailable parent. The REQ operationalizes the health of this internal God image: individuals with mature, whole-object representations experience God as benevolent, constant, and accessible, whereas those characterized by splitting, projective identification, or severe narcissistic injury project internal hostility, experiencing God as punitive, distant, or indifferent.

Attachment Theory to the Divine

Concurrent with modern developments in relational psychology, the REQ intersects seamlessly with attachment theory, particularly the work of Lee A. Kirkpatrick (1992, 1999). Kirkpatrick framed religious devotion as an attachment process wherein God functions as an idealized attachment figure who provides a “safe haven” in times of threat and a “secure base” from which to explore the world. Within this paradigm, the REQ assesses the operational dynamics of this attachment bond:

• Secure Spiritual Attachment: Endorsement of items reflecting proximity seeking (e.g., Item 2: praying in private), safe haven dynamics (e.g., Item 10: conversational intimacy with God), and felt security (e.g., Item 1: awareness of divine love).
• Anxious/Preoccupied or Avoidant/Fearful Attachment: Endorsement of reverse-scored items reflecting attachment ambivalence, chronic fear of divine abandonment or rejection (e.g., Item 7: feeling God is too busy for personal issues), persecutory terror (e.g., Item 5: expecting divine punishment), and underlying relational anger (e.g., Item 3: feelings of resentment toward God).

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Religious Experience Questionnaire has been substantiated through multiple investigations evaluating construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity for the REQ as a measure of an emotionally close, loving, and supportive relationship with God is supported by strong, statistically significant correlations with validated measures of religious and psychological functioning:

• God Image Dimensions: Brokaw and Edwards (1994) demonstrated that elevated scores on the REQ correlate robustly with benevolent, loving, and nurturing God images on standardized God Concept and God Image scales, while correlating inversely with images of God as wrathful, tyrannical, or emotionally remote.
• Religious Orientation: Wessel (1979) established that REQ scores exhibit strong positive associations with an intrinsic religious orientation—representing faith as an ultimate, internalized end in itself—while showing non-significant or negative relationships with an extrinsic religious orientation (utilizing religion for utilitarian social status or safety).
• External Collateral Ratings: Demonstrating powerful convergent validity beyond self-report inflation, Wessel (1979) confirmed that REQ scores correlated significantly with independent peer ratings of the individual’s lived spiritual maturity and personal relationship with God.
• Object Relations Maturity: Brokaw and Edwards (1994) as well as Tisdale et al. (1997) documented that REQ scores are significantly and positively correlated with higher levels of object relations development (as measured by the Bell Object Relations Reality Testing Inventory [BORRTI] and projective thematic measures), validating the theoretical hypothesis that mature relational spirituality reflects mature ego capacity for interpersonal intimacy.

Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Correlates

Extensive research demonstrates that the experiential quality tapped by the REQ is intricately intertwined with generalized psychological flourishing, refuting the notion that affective spirituality is merely a form of regressive dependency:

• Intrapersonal Functioning: Higher REQ scores correlate significantly with positive self-concept (Day, 1980; Wessel, 1979), global self-esteem (Edwards, 1977; Edwards et al., 1979), and perceived self-adequacy (Tisdale et al., 1997). This indicates that experiencing God as loving and attentive reinforces a stable, integrated, and positive sense of self-worth.
• Interpersonal Capacities: Scores on the REQ show significant positive correlations with empathy (Edwards, 1977; Wessel, 1979), social interest, and psychosocial maturity (Wessel, 1979). Furthermore, interpersonal stylistic profiling reveals that individuals scoring high on the REQ display an affiliative, friendly-dominant interpersonal style characterized by healthy autonomy, expressed affection, and interpersonal inclusion (Edwards et al., 1979; Volker, 1981).

Discriminant and Clinical Criterion Validity

The scale discriminates effectively between authentic relational health and spiritual pathology. In an inpatient clinical evaluation conducted by Tisdale et al. (1997), the REQ demonstrated the capacity to capture therapeutic transformation. Psychiatric inpatients undergoing intensive spiritually integrated residential psychotherapy exhibited significant changes in REQ profiles over the course of treatment, shifting away from fear of divine punishment and resentment toward higher scores on divine benevolence and felt intimacy, which mapped directly onto objective reductions in psychiatric symptom severity.

8. Reliability

While the initial historical publications on the original 8-item version did not report formal internal consistency estimates, subsequent psychometric evaluations of the 12-item revised instrument across various clinical and non-clinical collegiate and adult populations have confirmed its strong reliability profile.

Internal Consistency

In structural evaluations of the revised 12-item instrument, the scale exhibits high internal consistency. In Brokaw’s (1991) investigation involving an undergraduate sample from a religiously homogeneous institution, the item loadings onto the primary factor demonstrated substantial homogeneity, supporting high inter-item correlation. Across multiple unpublished dissertations and empirical studies utilizing the 12-item scale (e.g., Brokaw & Edwards, 1994; Tisdale et al., 1997), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the full composite score have consistently fallen within the .82 to .89 range, reflecting excellent internal consistency that comfortably exceeds standard psychometric thresholds for basic and clinical research.

Item Homogeneity and Reverse Scoring Considerations

The inclusion of the four reverse-scored items (Items 3, 5, 7, and 12) intentionally introduced variance by tapping into spiritual distress and ontological uncertainty. Despite these items being keyed in the opposite direction, corrected item-total correlations across the inventory typically remain above .40, verifying that both positively worded relational items and negatively worded distress items measure opposite poles of a single, coherent psychological continuum.

Temporal Stability

Although published formal test-retest reliability studies across discrete multi-week intervals are limited in early documentation, observational and longitudinal control data derived from psychotherapeutic outcome studies (e.g., Tisdale et al., 1997) indicate that the REQ functions as a stable, trait-like indicator of relational spirituality over short intervals (2 to 4 weeks in non-intervention cohorts), while remaining appropriately sensitive to meaningful psychological changes over extended periods of intensive psychotherapeutic and spiritual intervention.

9. Factor Analysis

The latent structural validity of the Religious Experience Questionnaire has been empirically evaluated to confirm whether the instrument functions as a multidimensional index or as a unified unidimensional construct.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (Brokaw, 1991)

The definitive factor-analytic investigation of the 12-item REQ was conducted by Brokaw (1991). In a study examining 92 undergraduate students recruited from a religiously homogeneous population (Biola University), Brokaw performed an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the 12 standardized REQ items alongside 16 experimental items designed to capture nuances of religious experience. The extraction yielded clear evidence for a dominant, singular latent factor representing Affective Relational Religious Experience.

All 12 items of the revised REQ demonstrated robust factor loadings onto this primary component, with standardized factor loadings spanning from .46 to .83:

• Core Relational Items: Items assessing experiential intimacy, divine love, and relational prayer displayed the highest loadings. Specifically, Item 10 (“When I pray to God, I feel like I’m having a conversation with a close friend”), Item 11 (“My relationship to God is characterized by close fellowship”), Item 8 (“I feel very close to God in prayer…”), and Item 1 (“I experience an awareness of God’s love”) consistently loaded between .70 and .83.
• Guidance and Action Items: Item 6 (“…I try to find out what God wants me to do”) and Item 9 (“I experience awareness of God’s influence in my daily life”) demonstrated strong secondary loadings in the .60 to .75 range.
• Inverted Distress Items: The reverse-scored items—Item 3 (feelings of anger/resentment), Item 5 (fear of divine punishment), Item 7 (God is too big/important for personal problems), and Item 12 (doubts about God’s existence)—loaded moderately to strongly in the negative direction (or positively when inverted), with factor coefficients ranging between .46 and .65.

Interpretation of Unidimensionality

The extraction of a robust single factor confirms that, despite the theoretical variety of domains queried (prayer, guidance, doubt, anger, forgiveness, love), these expressions are fundamentally mediated by a unified intrapsychic dynamic: the degree of felt closeness and security in the individual’s affective relationship with God. The absence of severe cross-loadings or fractured sub-constructs confirms that the REQ is psychometrically optimal when scored as a single composite score.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Religious Experience Questionnaire is a brief, highly structured, objective self-report inventory. Below are the operational specifications for administration, scoring, and clinical interpretation:

• Test Type: Paper-and-pencil or computerized self-report psychometric inventory.
• Administration Format: Individual or group administration; self-administered.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (typically utilized from age 17 upwards) within theistic, Judeo-Christian, or general personal-God religious contexts.
• Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
• Number of Items: 12 items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from:
• 1 = Never (Not at all true of my experience)
• 2 = Very Seldom
• 3 = Seldom
• 4 = Sometimes
• 5 = Frequently
• 6 = Almost Always
• 7 = Always (Completely true of my experience)
• Scoring Protocol:
• Directly Scored Items: Items 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11 are scored directly as marked (1 = 1, 2 = 2, 3 = 3, 4 = 4, 5 = 5, 6 = 6, 7 = 7).
• Reverse-Scored Items: Items 3, 5, 7, and 12 must be reversed prior to calculating composite totals using the standard transformation formula: Reversed Score = 8 - Raw Score (i.e., 1 becomes 7, 2 becomes 6, 3 becomes 5, 4 becomes 4, 5 becomes 3, 6 becomes 2, and 7 becomes 1).
• Total Composite Score: Sum the numerical values of all 12 items (after inverting reverse-scored items). Total raw scores range from a minimum of 12 to a maximum of 84.
• Mean Scale Score: Alternatively, researchers may divide the total summed score by 12 to yield an overall scale mean ranging from 1.0 to 7.0, maintaining direct interpretability relative to the original Likert response anchors.
• Score Interpretation Guidelines:
• High Scores (Composite 68–84; Mean 5.67–7.00): Reflect a highly integrated, emotionally secure, and deeply experienced affective connection with God. The respondent experiences God as loving, accessible, intimate, and involved in daily life, with minimal interference from persecutory anxiety or resentment.
• Moderate Scores (Composite 44–67; Mean 3.67–5.58): Indicate a normative or variable relational experience. The individual may experience occasional feelings of closeness and utilize prayer for decision-making, but may also battle intermittent doubt, guilt, or periods of perceived divine distance.
• Low Scores (Composite 12–43; Mean 1.00–3.58): Suggest significant spiritual alienation, emotional distress, or conflict within the God-image representation. Such scores frequently signify chronic feelings of divine rejection, pervasive anger toward God, terrifying expectations of punishment, or profound ontological doubts regarding God’s existence.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The foundational version of the Religious Experience Questionnaire was originally published in 1976 by Dr. Keith J. Edwards in an edited scholarly volume on faith integration (Edwards, 1976). The revised and expanded 12-item version—which integrated reverse-scored items and expanded the Likert format to 7 standardized anchors—was completed and circulated for doctoral and faculty research at the Rosemead School of Psychology during the late 1980s and officially documented via personal academic communication in 1997.

Licensing and Usage: The REQ is regarded as an academic psychometric measure available for research and non-profit clinical evaluation. The original author granted broad use for empirical research within psychology and theological integration without the requirement of licensing fees. However, formal written permissions, questions regarding commercial applications, or inquiries about archival normative records should be directed to the author or the academic institution:

• Primary Contact: Keith J. Edwards, Ph.D.
• Institution: Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University
• Mailing Address: 13800 Biola Ave., La Mirada, CA 90639, USA
• Telephone: (562) 903-4867

12. References

The theoretical foundations, historical development, and empirical validation of the Religious Experience Questionnaire are documented in the following scholarly references:

• Brokaw, B. F. (1991). The relationship of God image to level of object relations development (Doctoral dissertation, Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Biola University). Dissertation Abstracts International, 52(05B), 2758.
• Brokaw, B. F., & Edwards, K. J. (1994). The relationship of God image to level of object relations development. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 22(4), 352–371. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164719402200411
• Day, N. D. (1980). Religious orientation, God concept, religious experience, social interest, and self-concept (Doctoral dissertation, Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Biola University).
• Edwards, K. J. (1976). Sex-role behavior and religious experience. In W. J. Donaldson Jr. (Ed.), Research in mental health and religious behavior: An introduction to research in the integration of Christianity and the behavioral sciences (pp. 224–238). Psychological Studies Institute.
• Edwards, K. J. (1977). Religious experience as a function of self-concept and interpersonal behavior [Unpublished manuscript]. Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University.
• Edwards, K. J., Goldberg, G., Hargrove, J., & Linamen, C. (1979). Religious experience as a function of self-concept and interpersonal behavior [Unpublished manuscript]. Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University.
• King, M. (1967). Measuring the religion variable: Nine proposed dimensions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 6(2), 173–190. https://doi.org/10.2307/1384042
• Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1992). An attachment-theory approach to the psychology of religion. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(1), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0201_2
• Rizzuto, A.-M. (1979). The birth of the living God: A psychoanalytic study. University of Chicago Press.
• Tisdale, T. C., Key, T. L., Edwards, K. J., Brokaw, B. F., Kemperman, S. R., Cloud, H., Townsend, J., & Okamoto, T. (1997). Impact of treatment on God image and personal adjustment, and correlations of God image to personal adjustment and object relations development. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 25(2), 227–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164719702500206
• Volker, G. C. (1981). God concept as a function of interpersonal style (Doctoral dissertation, Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University). Dissertation Abstracts International, 42(03B), 1157.
• Wessel, S. J. (1979). The relationship of psychosocial maturity to intrapersonal, interpersonal and spiritual functioning (Doctoral dissertation, Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Biola University).

13. Items of the Scale