RESEARCH: Stress, Religion, and Mental Health: Religious Coping in Mediating and Moderating Roles

Abstract

Religious coping has been conceptualized as a mediator, accounting for the relationship between religiousness and mental health in times of stress, and as a moderator, altering the relationship between stressors and mental health (Pargament, 1997). Direct empirical investigations of these conceptual models, however, are few. This study examined 2 forms of religious coping in mediating and moderating roles. Collaborative religious coping, which is active, refers to sharing the responsibility for problem solving with God. The deferring approach is more passive and is characterized by giving the responsibility for problem solving to God. Using structural equation modeling, the authors found that collaborative religious coping mediated the relationships of religiousness to well-being and distress in a sample of undergraduates (N = 175). No mediation effect was found for deferring religious coping. Collaborative religious coping did not moderate the relationship between stressors and mental health variables, but an exacerbating moderation effect was found for deferring religious coping. The present study contributes to the literature for its methodological departures from previous studies of religious coping. Implications are discussed.