Youth’s Attitudes Towards Other Religions in Turkey (A Research On The University Students)

Abstract

Within the theological literature, especially in the ield known as theology of religions, three such views or models are commonly distinguished: exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. This typology, which was initially proposed by Race during the early eighties, is both popular and useful. The exclusivist view is rooted in mono-faith societies or homogeneous cultures in which plurality of religions or world-views did not yet exist. The exclusivist claim would be that only one’s own religion is absolutely and uniquely true and that other religions, therefore, should be prohibited. Like the exclusivists, the inclusivists maintain the truth and superiority of their own religious tradition. The difference, however, is that in the inclusivist framework other religious traditions are considered much more positively as products of divine revelation or as legitimate paths to salvation. In the pluralist view, there is an absolute and divine sooth and religions offer different but equally representative ways to the absolute. Therefore, no matter which way is followed, one can achieve the salvation at the end. In this research, it was aimed to analyze the university students’ attitudes towards other religions. The research was carried out in the sample of Kastamonu University. In the research, it was used the attitude scale developed by Vermeer and Van Der Ven (2004) as a measuring instrument. The data were analyzed via Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 16.0 programme. In order to determine whether the attitudes of students make signiicant differentiations in terms of independent variables or not, independent samples t-test and correlation analysis were used. In the end of the study, it was determined that the youth’s attitudes towards other religions are highly in the exclusivist framework.