Obsessional beliefs, religious beliefs, and scrupulosity among fundamental Protestant Christians

• Scrupulosity within fundamental Protestant Christian samples is poorly understood.
• We used a sample of strongly fundamental Protestant Christians from one denomination.
• Scrupulosity is related to obsessional beliefs, but not to degree of fundamentalism.
• Scrupulosity was negatively correlated with spiritual well-being and religiosity.
• Religious fundamentalism was not related to obsessional beliefs or OCD symptoms.

While there has been substantial speculation about the relationship between scrupulosity and religion in the literature, few studies have directly examined this topic in non-clinical religious communities. The purpose of the present study is to examine obsessional beliefs, scrupulosity, and religious beliefs in a relatively large, homogeneous sample of fundamental Protestant Christians. In addition, this study included validated measures of religious commitment, level of religious fundamentalism, and degree of spiritual well-being. Results support the hypotheses that scrupulosity would be positively correlated with obsessional beliefs and negatively correlated with religious commitment and spiritual well-being. However, contrary to expectations, religious fundamentalism was not significantly related to scrupulosity. Implications of the findings are discussed.