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Empirical steps toward a Christian Psychology

on. Once this was removed, the Cronbach’s α at the p < .01 level. Thus, the second step is
was quite satisfactory at .87. We also sought established: not only can the understanding of
to demonstrate construct validity, so subjects grace be measured, it is associated with better
were administered the Beliefs about Sin Sca- mental health.
le (Watson, Morris, Loy, Hamrick, & Grizzle, Watson, Chen, and Sisemore (2011) took the
2007) and the Allport and Ross (1967) Intrinsic next steps to further refine the Richmont Grace
and Extrinsic Religious Orientation Scales. As Scale and discover more relationships. This
was hoped, the Richmont Grace Scale had solid time, 356 undergraduates at a state university
correlations with these. As one might expect, in the southeastern United States were subjects
the Grace Scale correlated positively (.61; p < and were administered the Richmont Grace,
.001) with intrinsic religiousness and negatively the Self-Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003), Re-
(-.62; p < .001) with extrinsic religiosity. The ligious Orientation (Gorsuch & McPherson,
Richmont Grace Scale also had positive correla- 1989), and Beliefs about Sin (Watson, Morris,
tions with all four dimensions of healthy Beliefs Loy, Hamrick, & Grizzle, 2007) scales. In this
about Sin, including Self-Improvement (.58), study, three items jeopardized the reliability of
Perfectionism Avoidance (.72), Healthy Humi- the Richmont Grace Scale, so it was reduced to
lity (.54), and Self-Reflective Functioning (.60; 27 items and yielded an α of .84. Furthermore,
ps < .001). Grasping grace, then, was associated item analyses yielded four factors underlying the
with intrinsic faith and seeing sin in healthy scale, these being named Graceful Forgiveness
ways while negatively related to seeing religion Orientation, Grace and Responsibility, Grace-
only as a means to some other end. ful Avoidance of Personal Legalism and Gra-
A second study reported in Sisemore et al. ceful Avoidance of Interpersonal Legalism (the
(2011) took the next step by asking whether items for each are found in the Watson, Chen,
one’s grasp of grace related to mental health. In and Sisemore [2011] article). Again, positive
this study, two groups were recruited: one of 57 correlations were found for the complete Grace
individuals who were currently in counseling, Scale with Self-Compassion (.22; p < .001), Be-
and another of 55 who were not in counseling, liefs about Sin (.67; p < .001), and Intrinsic Re-
surveyed while attending a church function. ligious Orientation (.69; p < .001) and negative
There was a greater diversity and balance in with Depression (-.29; p < .001). Overall, this
age in this study, though the clinical group (46 study strengthened the internal reliability of the
females) was slanted toward women as com- measure of grace while also finding four factors
pared to the non-clinical group (32 females). within it while also furthering its validity in re-
All participants described themselves as evan- lationship to several other measures.
gelical/Protestant or generically Christian ex- Blackburn, Sisemore, Smith, and Re (2012) ex-
cept for one Catholic non-counseling subject. panded this base for the Richmont Grace Scale
Three measures of mental health were given, by comparing scores to the Trait Forgiveness
including the Personality Assessment Screener Scale (TFS: Berry, Worthington, O’Connor,
(PAS; Morey, 1997), the Center for Epidemiolo- Parrott, & Wade, 2005), and Beck Hopelessness
gical Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, Scale (BHS; Beck & Steer, 1993), hypothesizing
1997), and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; that greater appreciation of grace would corre-
Beck, 1993). The Richmont Grace Scale again late with forgivingness (the tendency to forgi-
performed as anticipated, negatively correlating ve) and hopefulness. The 212 participants of
with general mental health symptoms (-.41; p varying ages were skewed toward female at al-
< .001), anxiety (-.26; p < .01) and depression most a 2:1 ratio. The internal reliability of the
(-.45; p < .001) for both groups. To compare the Richmont Grace Scale again was strong with an
clinical and control (non-counseling groups) alpha of .82 with the four subscales doing well
MANCOVAs were performed to control for the also, though Grace and Responsibility (.58) was
sex differences between the two groups. F va- the weakest and also the most poorly related
lues showed that those who grasped higher le- to the other measures. The other two measures
vels of grace had greater levels of mental health were reverse-scored to make them in the direc-

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