Abstract:

Studies investigating the effect of childhood traumas on religious orientation are very limited and do not address all dimensions of religious orientation. However, including all religious orientation dimensions in the studies is important to understand the different religious attitudes observed after traumatic experiences. In addition, there has been no studies examining the mediating role of religious orientation in the relationship between childhood traumas and purpose in life in the literature. For that reason, in this study, we investigated the mediating role of religious orientation (intrinsic, extrinsic, quest, fundamentalist) in the relationship between childhood traumas and purpose in life. 421 Muslim adults were reached through online questionnaire mothod. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form, Purpose in Life Scale and Muslim Religious Orientation Scale – Revised were delivered to the participants using conveniance sampling technique. Data was analyzed With PROCESS v3.5 macro extension in IBM SPSS 22. The results showed that childhood traumas significantly and negatively predicted purpose in life. In addition, it was obseved that childhood traumas significantly predicted intrinsic religious orientation negatively and quest religious orientation positively. Childhood traumas were not significantly related to the extrinsic and fundamentalist religious orientations. Parallel multiple mediation analysis revealed that childhood traumas nefatively affected purpose in life and some of the effect of childhood traumas on the purpose in life were mediated through lower intrinsic religious orientation and higher quest religious orientation. Based on the findings of the present study, we concluded that childhood traumas did not affect every aspect of an individual’s religiousness. We also concluded that childhood traumas might cause a sense of meaninglessness damaging the attitude of intrinsic devotion towards God and increasing a more questioning attitude towards religion.

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