Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘religiousness’ is treated not as a settled category but as a contested, multidimensional construct whose boundaries, functions, and clinical significance remain actively debated. Pargament’s foundational work foregrounds the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness — inherited from Allport — as the dominant psychological framework, while simultaneously demonstrating its insufficiency: the poles of means and ends cannot be cleanly separated, and religiousness as measured often yields mixed, context-dependent outcomes. Alongside this theoretical tension sits an empirical one: religiousness sometimes moderates the effects of stress on mortality and well-being, yet in other studies it shows no significant relationship to adjustment outcomes whatsoever. The Benda-McGovern volume shifts the frame to applied clinical research, where religiousness is distinguished from spirituality by its behavioral, social, doctrinal, and denominational specificity — a definition drawn from the Fetzer Institute — and evaluated as a protective factor in addiction treatment and recovery. Laudet and colleagues extend this further, testing religiousness as one node in a network of social, spiritual, and meaning-based resources affecting quality of life among recovering persons. Across these positions, a key tension persists: whether religiousness is most usefully understood as an independent protective variable, a cultural orientation, or a proxy for deeper spiritual experience.
Religiousness has specific behavioral, social, doctrinal, and denominational characteristics because it involves a system of worship and doctrine that is shared wi
This passage offers the Fetzer Institute’s canonical working definition, distinguishing religiousness from spirituality by its institutional, doctrinal, and communal specificity.
, Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006thesis
The themes and patterns of spirituality-religiousness are explored, in their relevance to the treatment and recovery from alcohol-other drug problems, in this volume.
This passage frames the entire clinical inquiry of the volume, positioning religiousness and spirituality as jointly central to understanding addiction treatment and recovery across the life cycle.
, Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006thesis
Benda and McGovern provide CONVINCING EVIDENCE THAT SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGIOUSNESS ARE NOT ONLY RELEVANT, BUT INTEGRAL to our understanding the disease of addiction and the process of recovery.
This pre-publication endorsement encapsulates the volume’s central claim that religiousness is not peripheral but constitutive to a complete model of addiction and recovery.
, Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006thesis
The amount of unique variance explained by religiousness is 2.5 percent in alcohol use, 3 percent in use of other drugs, and 3.4 percent in delinquency.
This passage quantifies the independent predictive contribution of religiousness to substance use and delinquency outcomes, with gender moderating its effects on adolescent females more than males.
, Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006thesis
In his conception of intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness, Allport forces the individual’s hand. You must make a decision, he says. Choose the faith or choose yourself.
Pargament critiques Allport’s intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy as a forced polarity that misrepresents the actual complexity of religious motivation and its overlap with personal need.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
In developmental models of religiousness, social forms of religion have been defined as ‘psychologically primitive’ and personal forms of religion, autonomous from religious institutions, have been defined as most advanced.
This passage identifies the longstanding individualist bias in psychology of religion, whereby institutionalized religiousness is subordinated to privatized spirituality as the supposedly more mature form.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
a general measure of religiousness (e.g., self-rated religiousness and church attendance) moderated the effects of illness on mortality over the next 2 years.
This passage provides empirical support for religiousness as a stress-moderating variable, demonstrating its buffering effect on illness-related mortality among elderly poor populations.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Assessment and measurement of spirituality and religiousness, together with the various domains or attributes associated with both constructs, are indispensable elements of research in the AOD field.
This passage argues that reliable instrumentation for measuring religiousness is a prerequisite for advancing empirical research in alcohol and other drug treatment contexts.
, Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006supporting
Suicidal ideation was related to lower self-rated religiousness (r = -.39), less orthodoxy (r = -.24), and less belief in supreme being (r = -.40).
This entry documents a significant inverse relationship between self-rated religiousness and suicidal ideation, illustrating religiousness as a protective factor for psychological health under chronic illness conditions.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
The Role of Social Supports, Spirituality, Religiousness, Life Meaning and Affiliation with 12-Step Fellowships in Quality of Life Satisfaction Among Individuals in Recovery from Alcohol and Drug Problems
This study positions religiousness as one of several interacting psychosocial resources — alongside spirituality, life meaning, and 12-step affiliation — influencing quality of life in recovery.
frequency of church attendance was unrelated to the grief they felt at 2 months and at 2 years after the loss… Many, if not most of the studies in Appendix C show a checkered pattern of results within the same investigation.
Pargament acknowledges the inconsistency of the empirical record, noting that religiousness does not uniformly predict positive outcomes and that within-study results are frequently mixed.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Although most attention has focused on positive dimensions of faith, religious involvement may encompass negative experiences as well… religious struggle has been tied to greater emotional di
This passage introduces religious struggle as a negative dimension of religiousness, complicating any uniformly protective model and underscoring the ambivalence inherent in religious involvement.
, Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006supporting
Spirituality, life meaning and religious practices: (1) The Spirituality subscale of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale… yields one score representing ‘the affirmation of life in relationship with God, self, community and environment.’
This passage details the measurement instruments used to operationalize religiousness and spirituality in recovery research, distinguishing religious practices as a discrete measurable domain.
the extrinsically motivated person uses his religion, whereas the intrinsically motivated lives his religion.
Pargament rehearses Allport’s foundational intrinsic/extrinsic distinction as the most heavily used framework for psychological studies of religiousness, while contextualizing its limitations.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Congregation members who involved religion in coping were more religious in several ways. They prayed and attended church more frequently; they reported closer feelings to God and more loving images of the deity.
This passage establishes that dispositional religiousness predicts the active deployment of religious coping strategies, linking trait-level orientation to situation-specific behavior.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
religion beliefs only deter offenses when there are clear religious proscriptions, but inconsistent and ambivalent responses from the larger society.
This passage articulates the ‘ascetic argument,’ holding that religiousness inhibits substance use and delinquency only where religious doctrine is unambiguous and societal reinforcement is consistent.
, Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006supporting
an undifferentiated religion leaves the individual vulnerable to challenges, particularly to challenges to the ‘undifferentiated zone’ of the orienting system.
Pargament warns that religiousness lacking internal differentiation functions as a liability in coping, incapable of generating adequate responses to the full range of life events.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
Religion means different things to different people… we developed a booklet of profiles of hypothetical people… varied along several dimensions, such as how frequently they attend church services, whether they hold traditional Christian beliefs.
This passage uses idiographic methodology to illustrate the semantic breadth of religion as popularly construed, providing an empirical ground for the conceptual heterogeneity of religiousness.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside