Scriptural Coping: An Empirical Test of Hermeneutic Theory

Abstract

This study develops and tests a theory of scriptural coping. Using elements from hermeneutic theory as our guide, we contend that (1) specific life exigencies will increase the likelihood of someone turning to scripture for relevant insights and (2) reading scripture for relevant insights will moderate associations between exigencies and psychological well‐being. Analyzing nationally representative data from the 2012 General Social Survey (n = 1,551), we find that poor self‐rated health and low socioeconomic status increase the likelihood of someone reading scripture for insight into attaining health and wealth, respectively. Moreover, reading scripture for health insights amplifies the positive association between poor health and depressive symptoms, thereby suggesting a stress‐exacerbating effect of scriptural coping. Scripture is a polysemous resource, one that can alternatively provide comfort or trigger negative coping in the face of psychosocial stress. We discuss the implications and limitations of these findings and outline avenues for future research.

Sleep Quality and the Stress‐Buffering Role of Religious Involvement: A Mediated Moderation Analysis

“…Although the present study has advanced the nascent religion‐sleep literature, several issues remain unaddressed. First, additional religious domains should be explored in the future, including: (1) specific aspects of congregational support practices, including spiritual support (Krause ); (2) diverse styles and practices of prayer and scriptural study (DeAngelis et al ; Ellison et al. ; Poloma and Gallup ); (3) religious coping styles and practices (Ano and Vasconcelles ; Pargament ); and (4) religiously inspired character strengths or virtues, such as hope, gratitude, and forgiveness (Krause ; Krause and Ellison ; Krause et al.…”

“…Moreover, although our religious items are adequate for gauging key constructs in our study, single‐item religion measures can still suffer from low reliability. The development of multi‐item measures of scripture reading or afterlife beliefs, for instance, would be a welcome addition to work in this field (e.g., DeAngelis, Bartkowski, and Xu ).…”

“…The same is true for frequency of prayer and scripture reading. We might learn more with detailed measures of prayer types and expectancies-namely, whether prayer is intended to be colloquial, meditative, petitionary, or ritualistic-as well as with measures of domain-specific scripture readings and practices DeAngelis et al 2018;Ellison et al 2014;Poloma and Gallup 1991). All of these are promising avenues for further research.…”

Religious Activities, Christian Media Consumption and Marital Quality among Protestants

“…This finding is consistent with Hypothesis 2. Although no previous research has examined the relationship between Christian talk radio and IPV-or marital quality in general-this finding is expected in light of the research by Doss et al (2009) that couples facing relationship challenges sought help by reading books and of the study by DeAngelis et al (2018) that showed individuals use the reading of scripture as a help-seeking behavior. Listening to talk radio should be an even more likely target of help-seeking in light of the findings by Rubin (2000) that talk radio listeners often consider a host to be not only a relational partner but also a credible source of information.…”

“…Based on their recent study, DeAngelis et al (2018) observed that "readers approach scripture with preconceived biases conditioned by life experiences and other social constraints" (p. 12). Thus, people will turn to scripture for a variety of reasons and with varied perspectives based, in part, on their own needs.…”