Abstract
A number of investigators have studied biblical inerrancy (i.e., the belief that the Bible is inspired by God, free from error, and should be interpreted literally). However, there has been little research on the relationship between biblical inerrancy and mental health outcomes. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature. This is accomplished by estimating a latent variable model that was designed to empirically evaluate the following relationships: (1) Blacks, people with less education, and conservative Christians are more likely to have a strong belief in biblical inerrancy; (2) people with a strong belief in biblical inerrancy are more likely to experience demonic spiritual struggles when they are faced with stressful events; (3) individuals who experience demonic spiritual struggles are more likely to feel that the sacred aspects of their lives have been threatened; and (4) greater sacred loss is associated with more depressive symptoms. Data from a recent nationwide survey (N = 2332) provide support for each of these relationships.
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Notes
Five types of spiritual struggles are included in the shortened measure that was developed by Exline et al. (2014): divine (“I felt angry at God”), demonic (“I felt as though the devil was trying to turn me away from good), interpersonal (“I was frustrated or annoyed by the actions of religious/spiritual people”), moral struggle (“I worried my actions were morally or spiritually wrong”), and ultimate-meaning (“I felt as though my life had no deep meaning”). We examined the bivariate correlation between belief in biblical inerrancy and each type of spiritual struggles in order to see whether strong biblical inerrancy beliefs are more likely to be associated with demonic struggles. The following correlations were observed: biblical inerrancy and divine struggles (r = .031; ns.), interpersonal struggles (r = −.039; ns.), demonic struggles (r = .238; p < .001), moral struggles (r = .091; p < .001), and struggles involving ultimate-meaning (r = −.023; ns.). These data support our decision to focus specifically on demonic struggles in Fig. 1.
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Funding for this study was provided by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (40077).
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Krause, N., Pargament, K.I. Biblical Inerrancy and Depressive Symptoms. Pastoral Psychol 67, 291–304 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-018-0815-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-018-0815-3