Religious belief ( not necessarily) embedded in basic trust and receptivity
Questioning Erikson (1965, 1968) and Rumke (1949), the first aim of this research was to relate a sense of basic trust to various approaches to religion. A second aim was to explore a religious coping attitude of receptivity, taking a more distant view of the problem situation in question. This study explores whether the relation between basic trust and receptivity on the one hand and religiosity on the other depends on the way people approach religion. Wulff (1991, 1997) identified four approaches to religion, which can be located in a two-dimensional space in the dimensions of inclusion versus exclusion of transcendence and literal versus symbolic. Results from a sample of adults suggest that second naivete, as a measure of symbolic belief, relates positively to basic trust, whereas orthodoxy as a measure of literal belief did not. Erikson's and Rumke's statement depends on the approach to religion.