SBNR Identity: The Role of Impersonal God Representations,Individualistic Spirituality,and Dissimilarity With Religious Groups

We conducted two studies investigating the extent to which self-identification as Spiritual but not Religious (SBNR) was associated with (H1) the development of idiosyncratic religious beliefs and exposure to religious diversity and/or (H2) negative attitudes toward organized religion and being hurt by members of a religious group. In Study 1, SBNRs scored higher than religious and nonreligious participants on belief in God as an impersonal cosmic force (but not as a personal being) and individualistic spirituality. Although SBNRs had positive attitudes toward religion, they were less positive than those identifying as religious. Exposure to religious diversity and hurt by religious groups were not significant predictors of SBNR. We replicated these results in Study 2 using a multi-item measure of God representations and also found that SBNRs’ attitudes toward religion were predicted by a perceived dissimilarity with religious groups over and above individualism, secular group participation, perceptions of Christianity as too structured, and liberalism.     

A Study of Multidimensional Religion Constructs and Values in the United Kingdom

A growing number of studies have systematically examined the relationships between religiousness and value priorities. However, few studies have utilized multidimensional constructs of religiousness or attempted to distinguish among the value priorities of the religious. Using a general public sample and a churchgoer sample in the United Kingdom, this article examines the associations between Schwartz's values, several general religion measures, and conceptualization of God. Religiousness aligns most strongly along the conservation/openness to change value dimension, and spirituality is rotated further toward self-transcendence values. Findings suggest a shift among the religious away from an emphasis on security. God concepts are uniquely related to some value types. Particularly among the churchgoers, for whom God concepts may be especially formative, characteristics attributed to God are reflected in value priorities. These findings support the theoretical assertion that conceptualization of God is a foundational religious belief implicated in more specific values, attitudes, and beliefs .     

Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality. Implications for physical and mental health research

Empirical studies have identified significant links between religion and spirituality and health. The reasons for these associations, however, are unclear. Typically, religion and spirituality have been measured by global indices (e.g., frequency of church attendance, self-rated religiousness and spirituality) that do not specify how or why religion and spirituality affect health. The authors highlight recent advances in the delineation of religion and spirituality concepts and measures theoretically and functionally connected to health. They also point to areas for areas for growth in religion and spirituality conceptualization and measurement. Through measures of religion and spirituality more conceptually related to physical and mental health (e.g., closeness to God, religious orientation and motivation, religious support, religious struggle), psychologists are discovering more about the distinctive contributions of religiousness and spirituality to health and well-being.     

Forgivingness: Similarities and Differences Between Buddhists and Christians Living in China

Mourners often rely on faith following loss, but not all find spirituality comforting. Some grievers engage in negative religious coping (NRC), signaled by behaviors and thoughts such as anger toward God or their faith community, feeling spiritually abandoned, or questioning God's power. Our longitudinal study of 46 African American homicide survivors explored the relation of both positive religious coping (PRC) and NRC to complicated grief (CG) and investigated whether religious coping more strongly predicted psychological distress or vice versa. Results indicated that NRC was associated with CG, whereas PRC was substantially unrelated to bereavement outcome. Significantly, CG prospectively predicted high levels of spiritual struggle 6 months later, both in terms of CG and NRC composite scores and at the individual-item level. Clinical implications regarding spiritually sensitive interventions are noted.     

Unanswered Prayers: Religiosity and the God-Serving Bias

Two self-report experiments examined how religiosity affects attributions made for a target person’s death. Online adults (Study 1, N = 427) and undergraduate students (Study 2, N = 326) read about Chris who had a heart attack, used religious or health behaviors, and lived or died. Participants made attributions to Chris and God (both studies), and reported their emotions (Study 2). Participants made more attributions to Chris when he lived than when he died, but only when he used health behaviors. The highly religious made more attributions to God, but not when Chris used religious behaviors and died (the God-serving bias); they reported the most positive emotions when Chris lived after using religious behaviors (the Hallelujah effect). Directions for future research in terms of implicit religious beliefs and normative evaluations of religion are discussed.     

Controllable Oddness as a Resource in Creativity

Religion, although often a powerful source of comfort, can also become a source of sadness, stress, or confusion in people's lives. Given the many demonstrated links between religiosity and well-being, some people may turn to religion with the primary aim of seeing how religion might help or profit them. Granted, religious belief and involvement can provide many benefits, including social support, a sense of meaning, purpose, and direction for one's life, an environment that fosters the development of virtue, and perhaps even a close, personal relationship with God. However, problems can arise in any of these areas, creating stumbling blocks that can create personal distress and weaken religious interest or commitment. This article considers four major stumbling blocks associated with religion: interpersonal strains, negative attitudes toward God, inner struggles to believe, and problems associated with virtuous striving.     

Male and Female He Created Them: Gender Traditionalism,Masculine Images of God,and Attitudes Toward Same‐Sex Unions

Prior research demonstrates that religion and gender traditionalism are associated with less favorable attitudes toward same‐sex unions because of its deviation from customary religious doctrine and traditional patterns of gender behavior. This study examines the link between religion, gender traditionalism, and attitudes toward same‐sex unions by utilizing a novel measure of gender traditionalism that is distinctly religious as well. Recent work on images of God reveals that individuals’ views of the divine provide a glimpse of their underlying view of reality. The results suggest that individuals who view God as a “he” are much less favorable toward same‐sex unions than those who do not view God as masculine, even while controlling for gender traditionalist beliefs and other images of God. Individuals who view God as masculine are signaling a belief in an underlying gendered reality that influences their perceptions of the proper ordering of that reality, which extends to marriage patterns. These findings encourage future research to identify innovative measures of religion that incorporate aspects of other social institutions to account for their interconnected nature.     

Roman Catholic couples: wrath and religion.

Qualitative methods were used to research the effects of the religious beliefs and practices of ten Roman Catholic couples on the ways in which they managed anger and conflict in their marital relationship. The couples were interviewed separately, twice each, using Grounded Theory techniques in the first, semi-structured interview, and Repertory Grids in the second. Religious beliefs supported a broad range of positions on anger management from self-control through to the thoughtful expression of anger. It is suggested that religious beliefs and practices can be thought of as expanding or restricting "space" by reducing the intensity of anger experienced and by providing an opportunity for reflection which enabled participants to take greater responsibility for their part in conflicts. The relationship with God affected the "space" in the couple relationship by meeting some of the unmet needs of individuals and by detouring anger away from the spouse to God where it was felt to be safely contained. This procedure was used more by wives; their husbands seemed more often to fear and avoid conflicts and the expression of anger. Links were made between the marital relationship and the relationship with God. It was proposed that these systems are both evolving interactively with changes in one resulting in changes in the other. However, there can be a delay before changes in one system can be integrated with conflicting beliefs or practices in the reciprocal system, which may result in ambivalent attitudes toward anger and conflict. Clinical implications and directions for future research were suggested.     

Dimensions of Religion Associated with Suicide Attempt and Suicide Ideation in Depressed,Religiously Affiliated Patients

There is substantial evidence to support the claim that religion can protect against suicide ideation, suicide attempts, and completed suicide. There is also evidence that religion does not always protect against suicidality. More insight is needed into the relationship between suicidal parameters and dimensions of religion. A total of 155 in‐ and outpatients with major depression from a Christian Mental Health Care institution were included. The following religious factors were assessed: religious service attendance, frequency of prayer, religious salience, type of God representation, and moral objections to suicide (MOS). Multiple regression analyses were computed. MOS have a unique and prominent (negative) association with suicide ideation and the lifetime history of suicide attempts, even after controlling for demographic features and severity of depression. The type of God representation is an independent statistical predictor of the severity of suicide ideation. A positive‐supportive God representation is negatively correlated with suicide ideation. A passive‐distressing God representation has a positive correlation with suicide ideation. High MOS and a positive‐supportive God representation in Christian patients with depression are negatively correlated with suicide ideation. Both are likely to be important markers for assessment and further development of therapeutic strategies.     

Abuse and religious experience: A study of religiously committed evangelical adults

Two hypotheses were tested: (1) in a sample of religiously-committed evangelical adults, past experience of abuse is related to more frequent (a) religious behaviour such as prayer, church attendance and Bible reading, and (b) religious experiences, such as religious visions, healings and speaking in tongues; (2) abuse is also associated with evidence of alienation from God, as noted in more frequent reports of God as distant and more frequent religious doubting. Survey data from 3424 adults attending one of four new evangelical movement churches were analysed. Controlling for socio-economic and religious socialization variables, a series of regression equations were calculated looking at the relationship between the experience of abuse and the dependent variables of three factor scores representing conventional religious behaviour, transcendent religious experience and feelings of distance from God. Self-report of the frequency of abuse was positively associated with frequency of reported transcendent religious experiences and with feelings of distance from God. A significant relationship between abuse and more conventional religious behaviour was not found. The findings provide mixed support for the idea that abuse results in ambivalent responses toward religion and God in religiously committed adults. The lack of relationship between abuse and conventional religious behaviours is somewhat inconsistent with prior results, and likely represents a ceiling effect. The positive correlation with transcendent religious experiences and distance from God are consistent with prior studies, but may suggest alternative explanations.     

Religion and behavioral procrastination: Mediating effects of locus of control and content of prayer

Religion is a significant predictor of self-regulatory processes. Procrastination has been described as the very essence of self-regulatory failure. In this study, we examined the relationship between religiousness and procrastination, with locus of control and styles of prayer playing mediating roles. These relationships were tested using data from 196 students. We applied the Centrality of Religiosity Scale, Levenson’s Locus of Control Scale, the God Control Scale, the Content of Prayer Scale, and the Behavioral Procrastination Scale. The results showed that: God control fully mediates the effects of ideology and intellect on procrastination; internal control fully mediates the effect of public prayer and religious experience on procrastination; and passive style of prayer was a mediator in the relationship between centrality of religion and procrastination. Our findings suggest that religious people may give up internal control, believing that their matters are in God’s hands. Being subject to God’s power provides them with a replacement form of control, which reduces problems of self-regulation.

     

Prevalence,Predictors, and Implications of Religious/Spiritual Struggles Among Muslims

The current investigation explored prevalence, predictors, and psychological implications of religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles among an Israeli‐Palestinian, Muslim sample. R/s struggle was assessed by the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (Exline et al. 2014), a newly developed scale that assesses a wide array of r/s struggles. Factor analysis of the scale in this study revealed five factors of struggle: Divine and Doubt, Punitive Entities, Interpersonal, Moral, and Ultimate Meaning. Of the 139 Muslim participants, between 1.4 percent and 40.2 percent experienced various r/s struggles. Positive God image and fundamentalism predicted lower levels of struggle, whereas negative God image and universality predicted higher levels of struggle. After controlling for religious variables, we found that both depressive symptoms and generalized anxiety were predicted by Punitive Entities and Ultimate Meaning struggles, while satisfaction with life was predicted by Interpersonal struggle. Possible explanations and implications of the findings are offered, and the limitations of the study are discussed.     

How Does Religion Promote Forgiveness? Linking Beliefs,Orientations, and Practices

Scholars have long observed that religion and forgiveness are generally positively linked, but it is unclear why this is the case. This article proposes and tests potential mechanisms by which religion promotes forgiveness. Using data from the 1998 General Social Survey, I find that holding a collaborative orientation toward God, subscribing to a pervasive role of religion, and believing God forgives are primary factors promoting one's propensity to forgive both oneself and others. These factors have varying influence on interpersonal forgiveness compared to self‐forgiveness and further illuminate the differences between the two processes. My findings demonstrate the importance of analyzing a person's religious beliefs and orientations directly, in addition to examining other dimensions of religion, such as affiliation, frequency of religious activity, and official religious teachings.     

Variation in the anthropomorphization of supernatural beings and its implications for cognitive theories of religion

The cognitive study of religion has been highly influenced by P. Boyer's (2001, 2003) claim that supernatural beings are conceptualized as persons with counterintuitive properties. The present study tests the generality of this claim by exploring how different supernatural beings are conceptualized by the same individual and how different individuals conceptualize the same supernatural beings. In Experiment 1, college undergraduates decided whether three types of human properties (psychological, biological, physical) could or could not be attributed to two types of supernatural beings (religious, fictional). On average, participants attributed more human properties to fictional beings, like fairies and vampires, than to religious beings, like God and Satan, and they attributed more psychological properties than nonpsychological properties to both. In Experiment 2, 5-year-old children and their parents made both open-ended and closed-ended property attributions. Although both groups of participants attributed a majority of human properties to the fictional beings, children attributed a majority of human properties to the religious beings as well. Taken together, these findings suggest that anthropomorphic theories of supernatural-being concepts, though fully predictive of children's concepts, are only partially predictive of adults' concepts.     

Constructing 'God': a Contemporary Interpretation of Religion

To discuss the rationality of religious beliefs of the meaning of those beliefs must be made intelligible, sometimes to those who do not share our presuppositions. Is it possible to explain the meaning of such basic concepts as ‘Religion’, and ‘God’ without presupposing other religious concepts? The present paper is an attempt at such a radical interpretation of religion. This is done by wedding a full‐fledged constructivist epistemology with insights from the mystical traditions of the East and the West. How such an epistemology can account for both the unity and plurality of religions is also indicated. In the process I give not only a new interpretation of ‘God’ but also suggest the reasons for the failure of the “proofs” for the existence of God. Thus, a new way is opened up for discussing the rationality of religious beliefs.     

Teleology and Structural Directedness

This paper examines the argument that scientific thinkers who embrace a religious tradition can promote intellectual integration between religion and science rather than fragmented discourse. It is argued that God’s Word as an event and the concept of structural directedness, an organized movement toward a future that does not demand a consciously intended end, may be helpful in understanding God’s actions in an indeterminant way.     

The Baltimore Mural Project: An approach to threshold concepts in religious studies

The Baltimore Mural Project (BMP) seeks to connect religious studies education to the growing literature on threshold concepts in order to address bottleneck areas in student learning. The project is designed for undergraduate service courses comprised of mostly non‐majors: for example, world religions. Students in these courses often struggle to understand and apply the discipline's unique approaches to the study of religion (i.e. its threshold concepts). Rather than merely memorize certain facts about a religious tradition's myths [or world forming stories], rituals [or embodied disclosures], materials, and so on... students are asked to apply threshold concepts related to religion, art, and the social good to the study of murals in Baltimore. Through a series of project elements (including: field work, photography, digital geomapping, and quantitative, qualitative, and archival research) the BMP helps students who struggle with threshold concepts in religious studies by creatively connecting the more conventional aspects of world religions courses to social justice issues related to mural art in Baltimore. By experientially helping students to make these connections, they are able to find creative routes through otherwise hindering barriers to their learning in religious studies.     

God in the Hands of Future Science

There is reasonable evidence suggesting that humans have an innate tendency toward being religious. Consequently, religion is unlikely to disappear; the question then is how this feature will impact on future society. Three scenarios are discussed: One, science will dominate; two, religion will dominate; and three, the present conflict between the two is resolved. The latter scenario may happen through a realization that religion has the potential for doing more good than bad, in terms of individual quality of life and in improving society. Obtaining maximum benefit of religion will require a concept of God that is compatible with science, and that can be accepted as a common core for the various faiths. Science may help in this endeavor.     

Closeness to God,anger toward God,and seeing such anger as morally acceptable: links to life satisfaction

This study examined the relationships among closeness with and anger toward God, moral acceptability of anger toward God, and life satisfaction (LS) in a sample of undergraduates (N?=?196). Findings showed that closeness to God moderated the association between anger toward God and LS, such that high anger combined with high closeness was associated with lower LS. Contrary to predictions, seeing anger toward God as morally acceptable did not moderate the connection between anger and LS, and in the context of closeness to God, it weakened the association between closeness and LS. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of understanding the dynamic and nuanced role of human emotions and perceptions in personal relationships with the Divine.