Coping is the act of dealing with stressful
experiences. Religious or Spiritual (RS) coping refers to the act of employing
religious or spiritual resources to cope with a stressful experience.
KennethPargament is the psychology of religion scientist who identified two major
groups of coping strategies as positive and negative RS coping. His seminal
work was summarized in the 1997 book, The Psychology of Religion and Coping:
Theory, Research, and Practice. Many studies since then have illustrated
how positive and negative coping strategies work with different stressful
conditions.
Pargament, Koenig, and Perez (2000)
developed the RCOPE as a measure of positive and negative religious coping. The
researchers identified five basic functions of religious coping with impactful
events. A shorter form has been used widely in research (Brief RCOPE).
1. Meaning- positive and negative religious
or spiritual reappraisal
2. Control- active and passive strategies to
deal with the events
3. Comfort-drawing on RS connections or
support, or becoming discontented with RS
4. Intimacy- seeking RS support from others
or discontent in interpersonal RS relationships
5. Life transformation- RS direction,
conversion or disengaging, deconversion
Gall, T. L., & Guirguis-Younger, M.
(2013) have summarized some of the findings from coping research. In general,
positive religious coping has helped people deal with distress- including
general health and mental health conditions. However, negative coping is linked
to worsened conditions in some studies. Seeing a condition as punishment by God
seems to be a particularly common negative coping response among people whose
conditions worsen.
Examples of drawing on RS to positively
cope with difficulties include the following:
RS purification and forgiveness
RS direction, guidance, and conversion
RS consultation with members of the clergy
RS connection
Examples of negative religious coping
include
RS discontent
RS views of God or gods as punishing
RS reappraisal of God’s power
RS persistent pleading for divine
assistance
When RS appears helpful in dealing with
stressful experiences, people report increases in
one or more of the following:
Acceptance
Happiness
Optimism
purpose in life
When RS does appears unhelpful in dealing
with stressful experiences, people present with the following:
Anxiety
Feeling burdened
General negative mood
Callousness
References—These references offer a more
in-depth look at RS coping.
Gall,
T. L., & Guirguis-Younger, M. (2013). Religious and spiritual coping:
Current theory and research. In APA handbook of psychology, religion,
and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research. (pp.
349–364). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-019
Pargament,
K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research,
practice. New York: Guilford Press.
Pargament, K. I., Feuille, M., & Burdzy, D.
(2011). The Brief RCOPE: Current psychometric status of a short measure of
religious coping. Religions, 2, 51–76. doi:10.3390/rel2010051
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