Compare methods

	Faith Maturity Scale	Religious Orientation Scale (ROS)
Field	Religious Studies	Religious Studies
Family	Latent structure	Latent structure
Year of origin	1993	1967
Originator	Peter L. Benson, Michael J. Donahue & Joseph A. Erickson	Gordon W. Allport & J. Michael Ross
Type	Two-dimensional latent measure of mature faith	Two-factor attitudinal scale with fourfold categorization
Seminal source	Benson, P. L., Donahue, M. J., & Erickson, J. A. (1993). The Faith Maturity Scale: Conceptualization, measurement, and empirical validation. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, 5, 1-26.	Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432-443.
Aliases	FMS, Faith Maturity Index, Vertical-Horizontal Faith Scale, Mature Faith Measure	Allport-Ross ROS, Religious Orientation Scale, Intrinsic-Extrinsic Religious Orientation Scale, Indiscriminate Proreligious Categorization
Related	3	3
Summary	The Faith Maturity Scale (FMS), developed by Peter Benson, Michael Donahue, and Joseph Erickson in 1993, measures not how much religion a person professes but how fully a vibrant, life-transforming faith is lived out. It was built on a denominationally inclusive definition of mature faith and is organized around two dimensions: vertical faith, a deepening relationship with the transcendent or divine, and horizontal faith, the translation of that relationship into service, compassion, and social concern for others. The instrument's distinctive claim is that genuine faith maturity requires both — an inward relationship with God and an outward commitment to humanity — and that a person strong on only one dimension has not reached integrated maturity. Originally developed across mainline Protestant denominations, the FMS became a standard measure of lived, mature faith.	The Religious Orientation Scale (ROS), introduced by Gordon Allport and J. Michael Ross in 1967, is the instrument that operationalized Allport's distinction between two motivational stances toward faith. The extrinsic orientation treats religion as a means to other ends — comfort, security, social standing — while the intrinsic orientation treats faith as the master motive that the believer lives by. The ROS measures the two orientations on separate item sets rather than as opposite ends of one continuum, which means a respondent can score high, low, or moderate on each independently. Allport and Ross used this independence to build a fourfold typology, adding the 'indiscriminately proreligious' (high on both) and 'indiscriminately antireligious' (low on both) categories, and showed that orientation, not mere churchgoing, predicted prejudice.