Religious Faith and Transformational Processes in Marriage (original) (raw)
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How Religiosity Helps Couples Prevent, Resolve, and Overcome Marital Conflict
Family Relations, 2006
This study reports on in-depth interviews with 57 highly religious, middle-aged married couples representing the major Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) residing in New England and Northern California. The study uses grounded theory methods to create themes and a model describing the ways that religiosity influences marital conflict. Couples reported that religiosity affects the conflict in their marriage at three phases of the conflict process: (a) problem prevention, (b) conflict resolution, and (c) relationship reconciliation. Practitioners may assist religious couples that are struggling with marital conflict by encouraging them to look to religious beliefs and practices.
Journal of Family Psychology, 2001
The association between religiosity and marital outcome has been repeatedly demonstrated, but a complete understanding of this relationship is hindered by limitations of theory and method. The purpose of the current study was to test 3 explanatory models by assessing 2 samples of newlywed couples. Findings indicated that religiosity was associated with attitudes toward divorce, commitment, and help seeking cross-sectionally. Longitudinal effects, however, were most consistent with a moderating model, wherein religiosity had a positive impact on husbands' and wives' marital satisfaction for couples with less neurotic husbands and a negative impact for couples with more neurotic husbands. Overall, the impact of religiosity was weak over the first 4 years of marriage. Theoretical propositions are offered to guide future research in delineating the types of marriages that may be most affected by religiosity.
Uniting and dividing influences of religion in marriage among highly religious couples
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2019
Previous research has suggested that religion can be both helpful and harmful. However, much of the research on religion and families has employed relatively simple, distal measures of religion and has focused on predominantly only one side of the dualistic nature of religion. Drawing upon interviews with 198 religious couples (N ϭ 396 individuals), the purpose of this study was to better understand how religion can have both a unifying and a dividing influence on marital relationships. Three overarching themes, accompanied by supporting primary qualitative data from participants, are presented. These themes include (a) how religious beliefs unite and divide marriages, (b) how religious practices unite and divide marriages, and (c) how religious communities unite and divide marriages. For the couples in this study, religion was most commonly identified as a unifying influence. However, it was also identified as having a dividing influence, including when principles were misapplied or done in excess or when ideas regarding religious beliefs, practices, and community were not shared between spouses. Implications and considerations for future research are offered.
The threefold cord: Marital commitment in religious couples
This study reports results from in-depth interviews with 57 highly religious middle-aged married couples representing the major Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) and residing in New England and Northern California. The study uses grounded theory methods to create themes that describe the ways that religiosity influences marital commitment. Couples reported that religious beliefs and practices helped them include God as the third partner in their marriage, believe in marriage as a religious institution that lasts, and find meaning in committing to marriage.
The Role of Religiosity in Intimate Relationships
European Journal of Mental Health
In this study, we aimed to review the literature on the relationship between religiosity and intimate relationship functioning. Since religious approaches put the relationship and the life of the couple in a broader perspective and give it a special character, religiosity may have a significant influence on the relationship of religious couples. Scientific research in recent years has widely confirmed the long-standing observation that religiosity is manifested in the relationship of religious couples, and this is reflected in both positive and negative aspects. In a positive context, religiosity plays a supportive role in relationships and has a positive effect on the stability and quality of the relationship as well as on the physical and psychological well-being of the couple and other family members. We present three theoretical frameworks which, in the past few years, have greatly contributed to understanding the effects of religiosity on relationships and facilitated the clarification of the diverse context of the topic. These are 1) the role of sanctification 2) marital relationship as a way of being religious and 3) marriage and religiosity as attachment-based phenomena. As a conclusion, we evaluate the major strengths and biases of the existing research, and theorize and suggest future domains for investigation.
Spouse's Religious Commitment and Marital Quality: Clarifying the Role of Gender
Objective. Research on religion and marriage consistently finds a positive association between spousal religious commitment and more positive marital outcomes. But findings regarding the moderating influence of gender on this relationship have been mixed. This article clarifies whether returns to marital quality from having a devout spouse are greater for married women or men. Method. Drawing on data from the nationally representative 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, and utilizing 12 different measures of marital quality, I estimate ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic regression models to test my hypotheses. Results. In analyses of the full sample, spouse's religious commitment generally predicts positive marital outcomes, net of controls for respondents' gender as well as their religious and sociodemographic characteristics. However, when models are estimated for women and men separately, the returns to marital quality from having a religiously committed spouse are much stronger and more consistent for women than for men. Conclusions. Findings suggest that, ceteris paribus, having a spouse who is more religious predicts positive marriage outcomes, but women benefit from having a religiously committed spouse more than men do. Possible explanations are discussed.
Religion mediated by commit and inequality on marital quality
A growing body of evidence documents positive contribution of religious and spiritual involvement (religiousness) to marital quality (MQ). Yet, historically religion produces inequality via traditionalism in household labor that limits the wife’s access to economic, educational, and social resources thus supposedly negatively affects MQ. To that end using the relational spirituality framework the purpose of this study was to examine a model assessing the effects of spouses’ religiousness on MQ as mediated by the intervening variables of commitment (as positive) and equality (as negative). Several small to medium sizes direct, indirect, and total effects were found to explain the relationships under investigation. Seven hypothesis testing results revealed that effects of religiousness on MQ are mediated by commitment positively for both seses, it did not have a meaningful mediation effect by equality neither for men or women, suggesting that not equality, but other processes explain variability in individual levels of MQ. Therapists, social workers, and clergy working with couples may benefit from educating their clients about how effects of religious participation may influence marital relationship quality.
Religious commitment, adult attachment, and marital adjustment in newly married couples
Journal of Family Psychology, 2011
Existing literature on the role of religiosity in marital functioning is often difficult to interpret due to the frequent use of convenience samples, statistical approaches inadequate for interdependent dyadic data, and the lack of a theoretical framework. The current study examined the effects of religious commitment and insecure attachment on marital adjustment. Newly married couples who did not have children (N = 92 couples, 184 individuals) completed measures of religious commitment, adult attachment, and marital functioning. There was a small positive association between religious commitment and marital adjustment. Religious commitment buffered the negative association between attachment avoidance and marital adjustment, but exacerbated the negative association between attachment anxiety and marital adjustment.
Studies examining the persistent link between religion and martial quality have focused exclusively on religion's within-marriage influence on spousal attitudes and behaviors. The current study shifts the focus to examine how religion's influence on premarital choices holds potential returns to marital quality, and under what conditions of spousal religiosity. Utilizing data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, I examine how several key measures of marriage quality are affected by religious influences on the marriage decision; the religious commitment of one's spouse; and interactions between these two factors. Multivariate analyses reveal that religion's influence on the marriage decision does not directly predict respondents' relationship-satisfaction or their spouse's loving or hurtful behaviors, while the importance of religion to one's spouse is strongly associated with all these marital outcomes. Interaction effects reveal that spouse's religiosity does not greatly influence marital quality among persons whose marriage decision was uninfluenced by religion. However, among persons for whom religion figured prominently in their marriage decision, those with less-religious spouses experienced negative marital outcomes, while those with more-religious spouses reported positive marital outcomes. Pre-marriage religious influences thus predict higher marital quality under the conditions that persons for whom religion greatly influenced their marriagedecision are able to marry religiously-committed spouses.