The bitter and the sweet revisited: religious resources, spiritual struggles, and psychological distress

Christopher G. Ellison and Kevin J. Flannelly

Chapter 18 in Research Handbook on Society and Mental Health, 2022, pp 306-324 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Our study examines the complex relationships between religious practices, religious resources, spiritual struggles, and psychological distress. After developing a series of arguments linking several types of resources and several domains of spiritual struggle with mental health, we analyze data on a nationwide sample of elders and rank-and-file members of the Presbyterian Church USA (n=1,042). Key findings reveal: (a) minimal associations between organizational or non-organizational religious practices and distress; (b) moderate inverse associations between religious resources (e.g., congregational support, positive religious coping, secure attachment to God) and distress; and (c) much stronger associations between spiritual struggles (e.g., negative interactions in church, chronic doubting, troubled relationships with God) and distress. There is no clear evidence of stress-buffering effects of religion, and limited evidence that divine struggles (and to a lesser extent, chronic doubting) exacerbate the deleterious effects of negative life events in this study population. Study limitations, implications, and directions for future research are identified.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781800378483/9781800378483.00023.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20327_18

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().