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Belief in Human Sinfulness, Belief in Experiencing Divine Forgiveness, and Psychiatric Symptoms

  • Original Paper
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Review of Religious Research

Abstract

Many mental health and religious professionals have long argued that belief in human sinfulness is associated with poor mental health. Others argue that the deleterious mental health effects of belief in sinfulness may be buffered by a concomitant belief in divine forgiveness, which may itself have positive mental health benefits. We test these ideas using data from a national survey of US adults (N = 1629). Our results indicate a positive association between belief in human sinfulness and all eight classes of psychiatric symptoms we examine, and a negative relationship between belief in being divinely forgiven and six of the classes of psychiatric symptoms. Moreover, there are significant interaction effects between believing humans to be sinful and belief in being forgiven for seven of the eight outcomes such that the net effects of believing in sin on mental health are attenuated for those who believe they have experienced God’s forgiveness in their lives. Among those who report feeling forgiven by God “many times,” belief in human sinfulness is only associated with four of the psychiatric outcomes, and these associations are modest in size. Our findings provide partial support for the idea that belief in sinfulness is bad for mental health, but also show that religious beliefs are best understood in relation to other beliefs. Believing in human sinfulness is not necessarily harmful if it is accompanied by belief in having experienced divine forgiveness. This study contributes to a growing body of research explicating the relationships among religious beliefs and mental health.

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Notes

  1. Some examples from Jewish and Christian scripture are in order here, such as Psalm 130:3–4 (“If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness.”) and 1 John 1:9 (“If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”). And as Hoekema (1983) points out, the apostle Paul always refers to the grace of God when describing himself as a sinner.

  2. Self-guilt was a scale of agreement with four items: (1) I am a helpless sinner, but I am worthy in the sight of God, (2) I, like everyone else, am sinful, (3) Whatever God’s punishment for me, I have no doubt that I deserve it, and (4) Nobody in the world is really good, least of all, am I.

  3. Importantly, the sin belief measures used in Musick (2000) and Ellison et al. (2009a), which are similar to the measures used in this study, likely reflect what individuals believe about the sinfulness of others as well as themselves.

  4. The ninth, which was not included in the survey and which we do not evaluate, is psychoticism.

  5. Beliefs about a fundamentally corrupt or evil human nature are not necessarily equivalent to belief in human sinfulness. For example, some Christian traditions like the Eastern Orthodox tradition do not believe in the doctrine of original sin, but still affirm that humans sin. Nevertheless, these beliefs are likely highly correlated, and existing research frequently uses these terms interchangeably (e.g., Ellison and Sherkat 1993a, b; Hempel and Bartkowski 2008; Ellison and Bradshaw 2009; Ellison et al. 2009a; Ellison and Burdette 2012).

  6. Additional evidence from the 1998 General Social Survey—the last year the questions about human nature and God’s forgiveness were asked—corroborates these findings. GSS respondents were asked to rate their view of the world from 1 (human nature is basically good) to 7 (human nature is fundamentally perverse and corrupt), as well as to identify if they “never,” “seldom,” “often,” or “always” know that God forgives them. Only two individuals (out of 1391) responded that they concurrently believe human nature is totally perverse and that they never know that God forgives them. Even if we are more liberal in our count, only 20 individuals (1.4 % of the population) answered above the median (5–7) on the measure of human nature and also reported that they “never” or “seldom” know that God forgives them. These individuals are simply rare in the U.S. population.

  7. Many evangelical Protestants, for example, draw clear distinctions between themselves and members of other religious groups or nonreligious people (Smith 1998; Wuthnow 2003), suggesting they may remain skeptical of many people around them. On the other hand, belief in being forgiven by God is a strong predictor of forgiving others (Krause and Ellison 2003), which might buffer against poor mental health for those who are wary of others on account of their corrupt human nature. Belief in experiencing divine forgiveness likely does buffer the negative association of sin beliefs and poorer mental health even for those who are not experiencing personal guilt, even if that buffer is not as strong.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97326, Waco, TX, 76798, USA

    Jeremy E. Uecker

  2. University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Christopher G. Ellison

  3. Center for Psychosocial Research, Massapequa, NY, USA

    Kevin J. Flannelly

  4. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Amy M. Burdette

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  1. Jeremy E. Uecker
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  2. Christopher G. Ellison
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  4. Amy M. Burdette
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Correspondence to Jeremy E. Uecker.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4 and Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Table 4 Scales used for psychopathological constructs (from SA-45)
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Uecker, J.E., Ellison, C.G., Flannelly, K.J. et al. Belief in Human Sinfulness, Belief in Experiencing Divine Forgiveness, and Psychiatric Symptoms. Rev Relig Res 58, 1–26 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-015-0232-3

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