Discuss The Topic Of Stress From A Biblical Perspective.

ORI GIN AL PA PER

Reading the Bible, Stressful Life Events, and Hope: Assessing an Overlooked Coping Resource

Neal Krause1 • Kenneth I. Pargament2

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

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.

Keywords Bible � Stressful events � Hope

It seems that virtually every survey on religion contains a question on how often study

participants read the Bible or other sacred literature. However, these data have not been

exploited fully. Instead, questions on reading sacred literature are, more often than not,

relegated to the status of a control variable or they are combined with other religious

behaviors to form more comprehensive indices of private religious practices (Ciarrocchi

et al. 2008; Davis and Epkins 2009; Marquine et al. 2015). Handling Bible reading in this

manner makes it easy to overlook important functions that may be performed by this

particular type of religious behavior.

As Hood et al. (2009) maintain, religion performs a number of important functions. One

function involves helping people cope with adversity. The purpose of the current study is to

see whether reading the Bible or other sacred literature serves as a potentially important

& Neal Krause nkrause@umich.edu

1 Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2029, USA

2 Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA

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coping resource. We have been able to identify only two quantitative studies that focus

specifically on turning to religious literature in the face of adversity. The first study was

conducted by Johnson et al. (2016). These investigators studied 101 women who were

diagnosed with PTSD. They report that women with PTSD were more likely to read the

Bible on a regular basis when they were exposed to a traumatic life event. The second

study was conducted by Tepper et al. (2001). These researchers studied 406 individuals

who were diagnosed with persistent mental illness. They found that 30% of their study

participants turned to reading scriptures in an effort to cope with symptoms of mental

illness. Since both of these studies were conducted with special populations, it is difficult to

determine whether the findings can be generalized to a wider population.

Further support for the notion that religious literature is a potentially important coping

resource is provided by a small cluster of qualitative studies. Based on a series of in-depth

interviews, Arcury et al. (2000) found that reading the Bible was a common response to the

challenges that are associated with disease self-management. Similarly, Gerdner et al.

(2007) found that one of the primary ways in which family members helped women who

were dealing with caregiving stressors involved reading Bible passages to them on a

regular basis. Another qualitative study by Hamilton et al. (2013) suggests that the Bible is

often used as a mental-health-promoting resource during stressful times. Further support

for the notion that people turn to sacred literature in order to cope with adversity is found in

the research program of Krause (2002). He conducted a series of qualitative studies in an

effort to develop closed-ended survey items on religiousness. One closed-ended item in his

resulting measure of spiritual support asked study participants to report how often, ‘‘… someone in your congregation helps you find solutions to your problems in the Bible?’’

(Krause 2008, p. 38).

The findings from the studies that have been reviewed so far suggest that some people

turn to the Bible for help in dealing with stressors they encounter in their lives. However,

this research does not directly test whether people reap specific benefits from doing so. In

order to address this issue, researchers must assess whether reading the Bible moderates the

relationship between stress- and health-related outcomes. We are unaware of any studies

that empirically evaluate this statistical interaction with data from members of the general

population. The first goal of the current study is to address this gap in the literature.

Two questions must be addressed at this juncture in order to flesh out the theoretical

underpinnings of our study. First, it is important to reflect more deeply on what people may

actually get (or hope to receive) when they turn to sacred literature during difficult times.

As we will discuss below, addressing this issue provides a way of thinking about religious

coping that has not received sufficient attention in the literature. Second, it is important to

identify an outcome measure that is well suited for capturing the potential benefits of

turning to the Bible for help in overcoming adversity.

What Reading Religious Literature May Provide

Wuthnow’s (1994) widely cited work on support groups in American society provides a

useful source of information on what people hope to get when they turn to sacred literature

for assistance. This work is relevant because Wuthnow (1994) devotes considerable

attention to Bible study groups, which are formal groups in religious institutions that are

designed to help people learn about their faith by discussing scriptures and other reli-

giously oriented literature. Wuthnow (1994) reports that an important function of Bible

study groups is to help people deal with personal crises. This is accomplished by helping

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people deepen their faith and develop more realistic and mature ways of thinking about the

nature of God. A more mature view of God includes trusting in Him and believing that

what has happened is part of His plan for helping those who are in need. This function

corresponds closely to Pargament’s notion of a benevolent religious reappraisal coping

response (Pargament et al. 2000). As Pargament and his colleagues argue, benevolent

religious reappraisals do not deny the reality of the seriousness of an event (Pargament

et al. 2000). Instead, this type of coping response helps a person reframe the meaning of a

stressful situation by placing it in a larger more positive and hopeful religious context.

Based on these insights, the second goal of the current study is to see whether turning to

sacred literature is associated with greater use of benevolent religious coping responses.

Pursuing this second goal is important because it highlights an understudied dimension

of religious coping and represents a shift in thinking about reading the Bible. Instead of

being a form of instructional religious practice or discipline, reading the Bible in this

context becomes a way of coming to terms with one’s own life problems. Based on the

discussion that has been provided up to this point, we view reading religious literature as a

religious coping resource in its own right. Similarly, benevolent religious reappraisals are

also construed as a religious coping resource. By linking the two empirically, we aim to

show that one religious coping resource (i.e., reading the Bible) serves as a gateway for a

second religious coping resource (i.e., adopting benevolent religious reappraisals). The two

differ in that one (Bible reading) is a more distal factor, while the other (benevolent

appraisals) is a more proximal factor in the coping process. However, they are similar

because when they are taken together, they provide a richer conceptual view of the way in

which people may use their faith to deal with adversity: they rely on multiple religious

coping resources, not just one and they may activate these resources in a sequential

manner.

We were unable to find any studies in the literature that examine the association

between reading the Bible and benevolent religious coping responses. However, research

by Vishkin and his colleagues provides some support for examining this relationship

(Vishkin et al. 2006). These investigators report that individual who are more religious are

more likely to use general cognitive reappraisal coping responses. Our work attempts to

bring this relationship into sharper focus by examining one specific dimension of religion

that may be involved in this relationship (i.e., Bible reading) and coping responses that are

more explicitly religious in nature (i.e., benevolent religious reappraisals).

How the Benefits of Reading Religious Literature May be Manifest

Hope is the primary outcome variable in the analyses that are provided below. The reason

for choosing this outcome measures can be traced to two findings in the literature. First,

research reviewed by Folkman (2010) suggests that stress may erode a person’s sense of

hope. Second, the benevolent reappraisals coping strategy that was discussed above may

help replenish a threatened sense of hope. This coping response includes the belief that

even though one is faced with adversity, God has a plan. Moreover, this plan will

strengthen a focal person, thereby allowing them to ultimately hand the stressful situation

successfully. Implied in this perspective is the notion that although the precise nature of the

plan may not have been grasped fully, some people have faith and hope that the plan will

ultimately lead to the best outcome. There are both biblical as well as social psychological

reasons why hope makes a good outcome in the research on religion and stress.

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With respect to a biblical basis, the apostle Paul succinctly captured the role of hope in

the process of relying on religion to deal with adversity: ‘‘We also glorify in our sufferings

because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character,

and character hope.’’ (Romans 5:3–5, New International Version). It follows from this that

if a person turns to the Bible for solace and guidance during difficult times, they may

eventually become more hopeful about the future.

Snyder and his colleagues provide a clear social psychological framework for linking

involvement in religion with hope (Snyder et al. 2002). According to these investigators,

hope is viewed as a goal-directed cognitive process that includes both planning and the

motivation to reach goals. These researchers go on to point out that religion provides a

prepackaged configuration of goals, pathways for accomplishing these goals, and the

necessary cognitions for successfully pursuing the pathways. Perhaps this is one reason

why Capps (1996) argues that pastors are fundamentally providers of hope: ‘‘Pastors, I

suggest, are agents of hope by definition (or calling) and often that is all they are’’ (p. 325,

emphasis in the original).

Findings from a number of empirical studies are consistent with this logic. More

specifically, research by Krause and his colleagues (Krause 2014; Krause and Hayward

2012; Krause et al. 2015) as well as studies by Jankowski and Sandage (2011) indicates

that greater involvement in various aspects of religious life is associated with a greater

sense of hope.

Taken as a whole, the discussion that is provided above leads to the following study

hypotheses:

H1 The magnitude of the relationship between stress and hope will be lower for people who read the Bible more frequently.

H2 People who read the Bible more frequently will be more likely to adopt a benevolent religious reappraisal coping strategy.

H3 Individuals who adopt a benevolent religious reappraisal coping strategy will be more hopeful about the future.

Methods

Sample

The data for this study come from a nationwide, face-to-face, random probability survey of

people aged 18 and older who live in the coterminous USA. The interviews, which were

completed in 2014, were conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC).

The response rate for this study was 50%. A total of 3010 interviews were completed

successfully. The sample was stratified into the following age groups: age 18–40

(N = 1000), age 41–64 (N = 1002), and age 65 and older (N = 1008).

After using listwise deletion to deal with item nonresponse, data were available for

between 2873 and 2159 study participants. The reason for different sample sizes is the way

information on benevolent religious reappraisals was obtained. Study participants were

given a checklist of 12 life events they may have encountered in the past 18 months. The

respondents were asked to identify the one life event that was most stressful for them.

Following this, study participants were told to keep this event in mind as they answer the

questions on benevolent religious reappraisals. A total of 707 study participants were

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excluded from the current study because they did not encounter a major stressor in the

previous 18 months.

A series of preliminary analyses were performed in order to develop a demographic

profile of the participants in this study. These analyses suggest that the average age of the

participants in the current study was 46.4 years (SD 17.7 years), 43.8% are men, 44.7%

were married at the time of the interview, and the average level of educational attainment

was 13.4 years (SD 3.1 years). These descriptive data as well as the findings that are

presented below are based on data that have been weighted.

Measures

Table 1 contains the measures of the core constructs that are evaluated in this study. The

procedures that were used to code these indicators are given in the footnotes of this table.

Hope

Three indicators were taken from the work of Scheier and Carver (1985) to measure hope.

A high score denotes greater hope (M = 11.0; SD 2.1; range 3–15). The internal consis-

tency reliability estimate (i.e., Cronbach’s a) for the composite measure of hope is .707.1

Bible Reading

A single indicator that assesses how often study participants read the Bible when they are

alone was taken from the work of the Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working

Group (1999). A high score on this item represents study participants who read the Bible

more often (M = 3.1; SD 2.4; range 1–8).

Stressful Life Events

Exposure to stressful life events was assessed with a 12-item checklist that was developed

by Moos et al. (1984). A simple count of the number of events that respondents had

encountered in the 18-month period prior to the survey was computed. The average number

of events was 2.7 (SD 2.1; range 0–12).

Benevolent Religious Reappraisals

This coping response measure was developed by Pargament and his colleagues (Pargament

et al. 2000). A high score stands for respondents who relied on this coping strategy more

1 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 phe- nomenon. 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.

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often (M = 7.5; SD 2.9; range 3–12). The reliability estimate for this brief composite is

.855.

Religion Control Variables

Two additional measures of religion were included in the analyses provided below to help

insure that the effects were due to bible reading per se and not some other dimension of

Table 1 Core study measures

1. Hopea

A. I always look at the bright side of things

B. I’m optimistic about my future

C. In uncertain times, I usually expect the best

2. Bible readingb

When you are at home, how often do you read the Bible?

3. Stressful life eventsc

A. Moved to a new residence

B. Death of a close friend

C. Separation or divorce

D. Trouble with family members

E. Trouble with friends or neighbors

F. Your own serious illness or injury

G. Serious illness or injury of a family member

H. Death of a spouse