Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptulises good work-related psychological health among clergy in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. In a random sample of 744 clergy (539 clergymen and 205 clergywomen) serving in The Presbyterian Church (USA), negative affect was assessed by the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect was assessed by the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). At the same time, burnout was independently assessed using self-report measures of overall health and burnout, and by the extraversion and neuroticism scales of Eysenck's dimensional model of personality. These independent measures of burnout indicated higher burnout among those who were emotionally exhausted and lower burnout among those who had high levels of satisfaction with their ministry. Crucially for proving the idea of balanced affect, there was a significant interaction between the effects of SEEM and SIMS scores on these independent measures of burnout, showing that the mitigating effects of positive affect on burnout increased with increasing levels of negative affect.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The Village Bible Scale, a measure of biblical conservatism, was completed by 3,243 Church of England readers of the Church Times in 2013 alongside a measure of psychological type. Overall, biblical conservatism was higher for men than women, for those under 60 than those over 60, for those with school-level than those with university-level qualifications, for laity than clergy, and higher among evangelicals and charismatics than among those in Anglo-catholic or broad-church traditions. For the sample as a whole, the perceiving process was the only dimension of psychological type to predict biblical conservatism, which was positively correlated with sensing and negatively correlated with intuition. Within church traditions, sensing scores predicted biblical conservatism in Anglo-catholic and broad-church traditions, but not for evangelicals. Thinking function scores were positively correlated with biblical conservatism among evangelicals, but negatively correlated among Anglo-catholics. The findings point to the possible roles of psychological preferences in influencing predispositions for retaining or changing theological convictions.