Partnering With God: Religious Coping and Perceptions of Divine Intervention Predict Spiritual Transformation in Response to Religious - Spiritual Struggle

When coping with challenges in life, including religious-spiritual (R-S) struggles, those who believe in a relational deity (referred to here as God) may see themselves and God as active partners in engaging with the problem. We examined whether (a) attempts to engage with God via religious coping and (b) perceptions of receiving help from God were related to R-S struggle resolution and spiritual transformation in the wake of such struggles. Adults from the United States (N = 3,142; 59% women) experiencing R-S struggles completed an initial online survey, and random subsamples of participants completed follow-up surveys 2 weeks and 4 weeks later. Latent autoregressive models showed that, among methods of God-focused religious coping, collaborative religious coping related to positive struggle-related outcome variables (spiritual growth and struggle resolution) most consistently and strongly, followed by active religious surrender and then by passive religious deferral, which related to both spiritual growth and spiritual decline. Perceptions of divine intervention also predicted spiritual growth and struggle resolution independently of self-initiated engagement with God. It is important to note that then, both self-initiated religious coping efforts and perceptions of divine action explained unique variance. Results held when controlling for extraversion and emotional stability. These findings suggest that when people who believe in a relational God experience R-S struggles, they may benefit from fostering a sense of partnership with God-one in which they strive to engage with God, work together with God as collaborators, and consider ways in which God may be actively intervening to help solve the problem.