Stress and Negative Religious Coping in a Community Sample

Headnote

The purpose of this study was to explore how negative religious coping relates to affect and stress levels in a community sample after accounting for social support and general coping abilities. Five hundred and fifty-one community members were surveyed on their use of negative religious coping strategies coupled with measures of positive and negative affect, levels of general stress, perceived social support, and secular coping strategies. Through hierarchical regression analyses negative religious coping remained significantly tied to stress and both positive and negative affect after accounting for demographics, general coping strategies and social support. These results support the saliency of negative religious coping by highlighting the deleterious impacts of spiritual struggles even in the presence of instrumental social support and other forms of secular coping with everyday stressors.

According to the 2009 Gallup Poll, more than 80% of Americans consider religion and spirituality to be important in their lives (Saunders, Miller, & Bright, 2010) and many people turn to God and religion in the face of stress to find support (see Pargament, 1997, 2011). As a result of such findings, numerous studies have examined the role of religion and how it relates to aspects of psychological well-being, but few studies have focused specifically on negative religious coping and in particular social support in relation to stress and emotional well-being. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the utilization of negative religious coping, also construed as spiritual struggle (see Exline, 2013), in relation to social support and other general forms of secular coping, affect, and stress levels in a community sample.

Stress

Many individuals face a variety of stressors in their everyday lives, which includes physical, mental, and emotional responses that occur as a result of encountering a life change. The transactional model of stress emphasizes that the way a person appraises an event, be it benign or highly stressful, leads to ways to control the stressful event, known as secondary appraisals (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Thus, the initial assessment of the event as stressful is then reduced to a determination of resources to handle this stressful event, which is salient in understanding psychological outcomes (see Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The appraisal process is dynamic and fluid resulting in different reactions to stress...