Religious coping — the mobilization of religious beliefs, practices, relationships, and appraisals in response to stressful life events — occupies a central and contested position in the depth-psychology corpus. The definitive theoretical architecture is supplied by Kenneth Pargament, whose landmark work distinguishes among conservational coping (preserving significance through spiritual support, religious perseverance, and reframing) and transformational coping (reconstituting significance through conversion, forgiveness, and religious re-valuation). Crucially, Pargament bifurcates the construct along an evaluative axis: Positive Religious Coping — collaborative partnership with the divine, benevolent reframing, spiritual support — reliably predicts better psychological, physical, and relational outcomes, while Negative Religious Coping — divine punishment appraisals, spiritual discontent, pleading and bargaining, conflict with clergy or congregation — is consistently associated with elevated distress, PTSD symptomatology, and poor adjustment. The Brief RCOPE instrument, developed from this framework, has become the field's standard psychometric vehicle. A further tension runs through the corpus between studies demonstrating the unique incremental variance religious coping explains beyond demographic and nonreligious predictors, and between-group comparisons that find secular and religious copers comparably effective overall. The clinical literature extends these findings into substance abuse recovery and bereavement contexts, where religious struggle in particular emerges as a meaningful risk indicator requiring careful assessment.
In the library
24 passages
The first factor, labeled Positive Religious Coping, consisted of items that included spiritual support, collaborative religious coping, and benevolent religious reframing. The second factor, Negative Religious Coping, was made up of items that embody religious pain, turmoil, and frustration.
This passage establishes the empirically derived positive/negative dichotomy of religious coping, anchoring the Brief RCOPE's two-factor structure in data from Oklahoma City bombing survivors.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
In Discontent, we hear anger, distance, and questions about God and the church. Religious Support involves the attempt to obtain assistance from t
This passage maps the multidimensional structure of religious coping activities — purposes, appraisals, and methods — situating spiritual discontent alongside collaborative and benevolent forms within a single empirical taxonomy.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
Positive religious coping related to stress-related growth (r =.62), religious outcome (r =.59), and PTSD (r =.25); negative religious coping tied to stress-related growth (r =.21), and PTSD (r =.48).
This passage provides quantitative evidence that positive and negative religious coping produce divergent outcomes, with negative religious coping specifically predicting elevated PTSD symptomatology.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
the overall tally in Table 10.2 reveals significant relationships between religious coping and outcomes in 53% of the cases. This figure is larger than the 39% significance rate reported between the measures of religious orientation and outcomes.
This passage demonstrates that specific religious coping methods predict adjustment outcomes more robustly than generalized religious orientation measures, justifying the methodological shift to coping-specific assessment.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
Unique effects of religious coping represent incremental R2 after demographic and nonreligious variables were entered into the regression analysis.
This table-based passage documents the unique statistical variance religious coping explains beyond demographic and secular predictors across multiple study samples.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
of all the methods of religious coping, spiritually based coping emerged as the strongest predictor of outcomes.
This passage identifies spiritually based coping — marked by emotional reassurance, relational closeness with God, and divine guidance — as the single most powerful religious coping predictor of positive adjustment.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Pleading tied to more depression (r =.26) and more negative affect (r =.35).
This passage links pleading and bargaining with God — a negative religious coping form — to elevated depression and negative affect, extending the harmful coping literature.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Conflict with members and clergy, and conflict with church dogma tied to more negative mood (r's =.51 and .42) and poorer religious outcomes (r's = -.33 and -.37).
This passage demonstrates that congregational and doctrinal conflict — key negative religious coping indicators — predict poor emotional and spiritual outcomes following bereavement.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Pleading and bargaining tied to greater depression (r =.19) and event-related distress (r =.49), but were not related to personal growth.
This passage replicates the negative association between pleading-type religious coping and distress, while showing that such coping fails to promote the personal growth sometimes attributed to post-traumatic religious engagement.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Questions were generated through interviews with church and synagogue members, personal accounts of religious coping, and a review of the literature. We tried to assess a wide array of religious coping methods, methods that embody thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and relationships.
This passage describes the inductive, empirically grounded methodology behind the religious coping activities scales, emphasizing their multidimensional conception spanning cognition, affect, behavior, and relationship.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Investigators such as Pargament (1997) have begun to examine negative aspects of religious coping, or religious struggle. In diverse studies involving multiple myeloma patients, elderly medical patients, and healthy individuals coping with the aftermath of a community tragedy, religious struggle has been tied to greater emotional di
This passage situates negative religious coping within substance abuse and medical populations, reporting that religious struggle — abandonment, doubt, alienation — consistently predicts elevated emotional distress across diverse clinical samples.
Benda, Brent B., Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006supporting
much of the literature in this area has focused on conservational methods of religious coping and their ability to preserve psychological well-being, physical health, social intimacy, or the sense of meaning in stressful times. We need to learn more about transformational types of r
This passage identifies a lacuna in the religious coping literature — the relative neglect of transformational coping — and calls for longitudinal and methodologically refined study of diverse coping forms.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
these studies do not show that religious copers experience more benefits than their nonreligious counterparts. On the face of it, people appear to be able cope as effectively without religion as with it.
This passage introduces the critical counter-finding that between-group comparisons reveal no net advantage for religious over nonreligious coping, complicating straightforward efficacy claims.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Religious coping approaches to control in, 180-183 ... as avoidance, 177-183 ... breaking point in, and attacks on significance, 339-342 ... Brief RCOPE measurement of, 298-300
This index passage maps the full conceptual scope of religious coping across Pargament's volume — from control orientations to avoidance, measurement via Brief RCOPE, and its clinical assessment as a red-flag indicator.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Studies of the prevalence of religious coping provide necessary baseline information, but they are difficult to evaluate. At what point would we say that religion is an important part of coping—if 30% turn to religion, 50%, 80%?
This passage raises the methodological problem of establishing meaningful prevalence thresholds for religious coping, noting that percentage figures require comparative reference points to be interpretable.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Religion provides its adherents with many methods to attain a sense of power and control in coping. Control can be centered in the self, growing out of the belief that God gives people the tools and resources to solve problems for themselves.
This passage introduces the self-directing, deferring, and collaborative taxonomy of religious control orientations as a distinct and theoretically grounded subset of the broader religious coping framework.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
religious coping was elicited more by the threat vignettes than by the loss vignettes, suggesting that fear and uncertainty are elements of stress with particularly important implications for religious coping.
This passage documents that threat — more than loss or challenge — is the primary psychological precipitant of religious coping mobilization, highlighting fear and uncertainty as its proximal activators.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
To say that someone prays or goes to church to cope with crisis says little about the role of religion in that individual's search for significance. People pray and attend congregations for many reasons and in many ways.
This passage argues that behavioral indices of religious practice are insufficient proxies for religious coping, insisting that functional analysis of underlying purpose is required for meaningful interpretation.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Ellen was confident that God would change him. In spite of my strong encouragement that she return to counseling, Ellen declined. Passivity a
This clinical vignette illustrates how religiously based deferring coping can shade into passive avoidance, presenting a case where divine attribution functions to forestall adaptive problem-solving.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
most of the time (62% of the cases), religion appears to be unrelated to the outcomes of negative events. Moreover, this pattern of results seems to hold true regardless of which aspects of religious orientation are being studied.
This passage establishes the sobering baseline finding that generalized religious orientation is statistically unrelated to outcomes in the majority of studies, motivating the shift to specific coping measures.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
The Cronbach's alpha for the negative religious coping scale was .46, and no single item appeared to be responsible for the low alpha.
This passage reports poor internal consistency for the negative religious coping scale in a substance-abusing sample, raising psychometric concerns about its reliability in high-risk clinical populations.
Benda, Brent B., Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006supporting
It is true that religion can be of greatest help in times of greatest stress. Does this mean that religion has little value outside of crisis? No, for it is also true that higher levels of religiousness can be more helpful than lower levels of religiousness regardless of how much stress the individual is under.
This passage mediates between stress-moderator and stress-deterrent models, arguing that religion functions both as a crisis resource and as a general protective factor irrespective of stress magnitude.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
God does not make arbitrary choices about who shall suffer and who shall not, who shall live and who shall die. Nor does God desire to punish or humble us.
This passage illustrates pastoral reframing as a religiously tailored coping resource for the physically incapacitated, presenting a theological narrative that counters divine punishment appraisals.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
religion and spirituality can play a powerful role in the prevention and treatment of substance abuse and in the maintenance of sobriety.
This passage positions religious involvement as a protective public health factor in substance abuse, extending the religious coping framework into epidemiological and recovery-oriented contexts.
Grim, Brian J., Belief, Behavior, and Belonging: How Faith is Indispensable in Preventing and Recovering from Substance Abuse, 2019aside