On the basis of theoretical work reported elsewhere, scales were developed with the goal of measuring some phenomena associated with Christian postformal thought development. These scales were used in 3 studies. The first examined scale intercorrelations; the second compared scores on the scales between evangelical and nonevangelical college samples; the third was a 4-year longitudinal study of a group of evangelical college students. Significant differences in scale scores were found in the evangelical and nonevangelical college samples and across the 4 years of the longitudinal study, which showed that individualism and relativism are not necessary concommitants of maturing cognitive development within the Christian community, calling into question the reliance on exclusively secular theories for understanding early adult development of Christians.
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