Moral Foundations Predict Religious Orientations in New Zealand

The interplay between religion, morality, and community-making is a core theme across human experience, yet scholars have only recently begun to quantify these links. Drawing on a sample of 1512 self-identified religious – mainly Christian (86.0%) – New Zealanders, we used structural equation modeling to test hypothesized associations between Religious Orientations (Quest, Intrinsic, Extrinsic Personal, Extrinsic Social) and Moral Foundations (Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation). Our results show, for the first time in a comprehensive model, how different ways of valuing communities are associated with different ways of valuing religion.