Abstract
Many people rely on religion to deal with the stressors in their lives. The purpose of this study is to examine a religious coping resource that has received relatively little attention—reading the Bible. We evaluated three hypotheses: (1) reading the Bible moderates the relationship between stress and hope; (2) people who read the Bible more often are more likely to rely on benevolent religious reappraisal coping responses; and (3) individuals who rely on benevolent religious reappraisals will be more hopeful about the future. Support was found for all three hypotheses in our analyses.
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Notes
Scheier and Carver (1985) claim that the items in their scale assess optimism, but we refer to them as indicators of hope. Following the seminal work of Peterson and Seligman (2004), we believe the terms “hope” and “optimism” are virtually synonymous. Moreover, these investigators note, the correlation between the two is “considerable” (Peterson and Seligman 2004, p. 570) and despite differences in the way they are operationalized, the correlates of these constructs are “strikingly similar” (Peterson and Seligman 2004, p. 570). The reader might also wonder whether the items we use to assess hope capture a state-like or trait-like phenomenon. Generally speaking, state-like phenomenon are less stable than trait-like phenomenon. However, as we will show below, stressful life events tend to be negatively associated with hope, suggesting that the construct we measure changes over time. Clearly, longitudinal data are needed to address this issue.
Preliminary analyses suggest that the level of exposure to stressful life events is not significantly associated with the frequency of Bible reading (r = − .024; ns.).
Our study was conducted in the U.S. and as a result, the study participants were overwhelmingly Christian. The statement that religious texts are the backbone of a faith tradition is appropriate for those with a Judeo-Christian background. It should be emphasized, however, that religious texts may play a less central role in other faith traditions, such as Buddhism.
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Funding
This study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation (Grant 40077).
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Neal Krause and Kenneth I. Pargament declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committees and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Krause, N., Pargament, K.I. Reading the Bible, Stressful Life Events, and Hope: Assessing an Overlooked Coping Resource. J Relig Health 57, 1428–1439 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-018-0610-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-018-0610-6