Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress 2023 EHA Congress 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

A round-up of the ONWARDS phase 3 clinical trials evaluating the novel weekly insulin icodec in people with diabetes.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Journal of Religion and Health
Published in: Journal of Religion and Health 3/2011

01-09-2011 | Original Paper

Extending Religion-Health Research to Secular Minorities: Issues and Concerns

Authors: Karen Hwang, Joseph H. Hammer, Ryan T. Cragun

Published in: Journal of Religion and Health | Issue 3/2011

Login to get access

Abstract

Claims about religion’s beneficial effects on physical and psychological health have received substantial attention in popular media, but empirical support for these claims is mixed. Many of these claims are tenuous because they fail to address basic methodological issues relating to construct validity, sampling methods or analytical problems. A more conceptual problem has to do with the near universal lack of atheist control samples. While many studies include samples of individuals classified as “low spirituality” or religious “nones”, these groups are heterogeneous and contain only a fraction of members who would be considered truly secular. We illustrate the importance of including an atheist control group whenever possible in the religiosity/spirituality and health research and discuss areas for further investigation.
Literature
Asher, H. B. (1983). Causal modeling. Newbury Park: Sage.
Bainbridge, W. S. (2005). Atheism. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 1, 1–26.
Barna Research Group. (1999). Atheists and agnostics invading Christian churches. Ventura, CA: Barna Research Group.
Beit-Hallahmi, B., & Argyle, M. (1997). The psychology of religious behaviour, belief and experience. New York: Routledge.
Ben-Zur, H. (2008). Personal resources of mastery-optimism, and communal support beliefs, as predictors of posttraumatic stress in uprooted Israelis. Anxiety, Stress & Coping: An International Journal, 21, 295–307.CrossRef
Bjorck, J. P., & Thurman, J. W. (2007). Negative life events, patterns of positive and negative religious coping, and psychological functioning. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 159–167.CrossRef
Blumenthal, J. A., Babyak, M. A., Ironson, G., et al. (2007). Spirituality, religion, and clinical outcomes in patients recovering from an acute myocardial infarction. Psychosomatic Medicine, 69, 501–508.PubMedCrossRef
Brennan, M. (2004). Spirituality and religiousness predict adaptation to vision loss in middle-aged and older adults. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 193–214.CrossRef
Buggle, F., Bister, D., Nohe, G., et al. (2001). Are atheists more depressed than religious people? A new study tells the tale. Free Inquiry, 20, 4.
Chang, B. H., Skinner, K. M., & Boehmer, U. (2001). Religion and mental health among women veterans with sexual assault experience. International Journal of Psychiatry and Medicine, 31, 77–95.CrossRef
Christenfeld, N. J., Sloan, R. P., Carroll, D., & Greenland, S. (2004). Risk factors, confounding, and the illusion of statistical control. Psychosomatic Medicine, 66, 868–875.PubMedCrossRef
Cragun, R., Kosmin, B., Kosmin, A., & Hammer, J. On the receiving end: Discrimination toward the non-religious. Unpublished manuscript.
D’Andrea, L., & Sprenger, J. (2007). Atheism and nonspirituality as diversity issues in counseling. Counseling and Values, 51, 149–158.
Dawkins, R. (2007). Foreword. In T. Flynn (Ed.), The new encyclopedia of unbelief (pp. 10–14). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Downey, M. (2004). Discrimination against atheists: The facts. Free inquiry, 24, 4.
Dyer, J. (2007). How does spirituality affect physical health? A conceptual review. Holistic Nursing Practice, 21, 324–328.PubMed
Ecklund, E. H., & Park, J. Z. (2007). Religious diversity and community volunteerism among Asian Americans. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 233–244.CrossRef
Edgell, P., Gerteis, J., & Hartmann, D. (2006). Atheists as “other:” Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. American Sociological Review, 71, 211–234.CrossRef
Egbert, N., Mickley, J., & Coeling, H. (2004). A review and application of social scientific measures of religiosity and spirituality: Assessing a missing component in health communication research. Health Communication, 16, 7–27.PubMedCrossRef
Ehrlich, H. J., & Van Tubergen, G. N. (1971). Exploring the structure and salience of stereotypes. Journal of Social Psychology, 83, 113–127.CrossRef
Emerson, M. O., & Hartman, D. (2006). The rise of religious fundamentalism. Annual Review of Sociology, 32, 127–144.CrossRef
Emerson, M. O., & Smith, C. (2000). Divided by faith: Evangelical religion and the problem of race in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Exline, J. J., Yali, A. M., & Lobel, M. (1999). When God disappoints: Difficulty forgiving God and its role in negative emotion. Journal of Health Psychology, 4, 365–379.CrossRef
Feather, N. T. (1967). Evaluation of religious and neutral arguments in religious and atheist student groups. Australian Journal of Psychology, 19, 3–12.CrossRef
Flynn, T. (2009). Taken in the wrong spirit. Free Inquiry, 29, 14–15.
Furnham, A., Nicholas, M., & McClelland, A. (1998). Factors affecting nonmedical participants’ allocation of scarce medical resources. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 12, 735–746.
Guralnik, J. M., Land, K. C., Blazer, D., Fillenbaum, G. G., & Branch, L. G. (1993). Educational status and active life expectancy among older blacks and whites. New England Journal of Medicine, 329, 110–116.PubMedCrossRef
Hadaway, C. K. (1989). Identifying American apostates: A cluster analysis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 28, 201–215.CrossRef
Hadaway, C. K., Marler, P. L., & Chaves, M. (1998). Overreporting church attendance in America: Evidence that demands the same verdict. American Sociological Review, 63, 122–130.CrossRef
Halama, P. (2005). Psychological aspects of religious conversion. Ceskoslovenska Psychologie, 49, 34–52.
Hall, T. W., & Edwards, K. J. (2002). The spiritual assessment inventory: A theistic model and measure for assessing spiritual development. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41, 341–357.CrossRef
Hall, D. E., Koenig, H. G., & Meador, K. G. (2008). Hitting the target: Why existing measures of “religiousness” are really reverse-scored measures of “secularism”. Explore, 4, 368–373.PubMedCrossRef
Harper, M. (2007). The stereotyping of nonreligious people by religious students: Contents and subtypes. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 539–552.CrossRef
Harris, R. C., Dew, M. A., Lee, A., et al. (1995). The role of religion in heart-transplant recipients’ long-term health and well-being. Journal of Religion and Health, 34, 17–22.CrossRef
Hayes, B. C. (2000). Religious independents within western industrialized nations: A socio-demographic profile. Sociology of Religion, 61, 191–207.CrossRef
Heaton, T. B., Bahr, S. J., & Jacobson, C. K. (2005). A statistical profile of Mormons: Health, wealth, and social life. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.
Heiner, R. (1992). Evangelical heathens: The deviant status of freethinkers in Southland. Deviant Behavior, 13, 1–20.CrossRef
Hill, P. C. (2005). Measurement in the psychology of religion and spirituality: Current status and evaluation. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 43–61). New York: Guilford Press.
Hill, P. C., & Hood, R. W., Jr. (Eds.). (1999). Measures of religiosity. Birmingham, Alabama: Religious Education Press.
Hill, P. C., & Pargament, K. I. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health research. American Psychologist, 58, 64–74.PubMedCrossRef
Hill, P. C., Pargament, K. J., Hood, R. W., et al. (2000). Conceptualizing religion and spirituality: Points of commonality, points of departure. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 30, 51–77.CrossRef
Hoge, D. R. (1981). Converts, dropouts, returnees: A study of religious change among Catholics. New York: Pilgrim Press.
Hood, R. W., Jr., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (1996). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford.
House, J. (2001). Social isolation kills, but how and why? Psychosomatic Medicine, 63, 273–274.PubMed
Hout, M., & Fischer, C. (2002). Why more Americans have no religious preference: Politics and generations. American Sociological Review, 67, 165–190.CrossRef
Hunsberger, B., & Altemeyer, B. (2006). Atheists: A groundbreaking study of America’s nonbelievers. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
Hunsberger, B., Pratt, M., & Pancer, S. M. (2001). Religious versus nonreligious socialization: Does religious background have implications for adjustment? International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11, 105–128.CrossRef
Hwang, K. (2008). Experiences of atheists with spinal cord injury: Results of an internet-based exploratory survey. SCI Psychosocial Process, 20, 4–17.
Ironson, G., Stuetzle, R., & Fletcher, M. A. (2006). An increase in religiousness/spirituality occurs after HIV diagnosis and predicts slower disease progression over 4 years in people with HIV. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 21(Suppl 5), S62–S68.PubMedCrossRef
James, A., & Wells, A. (2002). Death beliefs, superstitious beliefs and health anxiety. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41, 43–53.PubMedCrossRef
Jantos, M., & Kiat, H. (2007). Prayer as medicine: How much have we learned? Medical Journal of Australia, 21, S51–S53.
Jenks, R. J. (1986). Perceptions of two deviant and two nondeviant groups. The Journal of Social Psychology, 126, 783–790.PubMedCrossRef
Jindra, I. (2008). Religious stage development among converts to different religious groups. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 18, 195–215.CrossRef
Johnstone, B., Glass, B. A., & Oliver, R. E. (2007). Religion and disability: Clinical, research and training considerations for rehabilitation professionals. Disability and Rehabilitation, 15, 1153–1163.
Keysar, A., Mayer, E., & Kosmin, B. A. (2003). No religion—a profile of America’s unchurched. Public Perspective, 14, 28–32.
Kier, F., & Davenport, D. S. (2004). Unaddressed problems in the study of spirituality and health. American Psychologist, 59, 53–54.PubMedCrossRef
Koenig, H. G. (2004). Religion, spirituality, and medicine: Research findings and implications for clinical practice. Southern Medical Journal, 97, 1194–1200.PubMedCrossRef
Koenig, H. G. (2008). Concerns about measuring “spirituality” in research. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 196, 349–355.PubMedCrossRef
Koenig, H. G., McCullough, M. E., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Handbook of religion and health. New York: Oxford University Press.
Koproske, C. (2006). Living without religion: The secular stigma. Free Inquiry, 27, 49–50.
Kosmin, B. A. (2007). Introduction: Contemporary secularity and secularism. In A. Keysar & B. A. Kosmin (Eds.), Secularism and secularity: Contemporary international perspectives (pp. 1–16). Hartford, CT: Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture.
Kosmin, B., & Keysar, G. (2009). American religious identification survey 2008: Summary report. Hartford, CT: Trinity College.
Kosmin, B., & Lachman, S. (1993). One nation under God. New York: Harmony Books.
Kosmin, B., Mayer, E., & Keysar, G. (2001). American religious identification survey 2001. New York: Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Laubmeier, K. K., Zakowski, S. G., & Bair, J. P. (2004). The role of spirituality in the psychological adjustment to cancer: A test of the transactional model of stress and coping. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 11, 48–55.PubMedCrossRef
Lauder, W., Mummery, K., & Sharkey, S. (2006). Social capital, age and religiosity in people who are lonely. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 15, 334–340.PubMedCrossRef
Levin, J. S. (1994). Religion and health: Is there an association, is it valid, and is it causal? Social Science and Medicine, 38, 1475–1482.PubMedCrossRef
Levin, J. S., & Vanderpool, H. Y. (1987). Is frequent religious attendance really conducive to better health? Toward an epidemiology of religion. Social Science and Medicine, 24, 539–550.
Luskin, F. (2000). Review of the effect of spiritual and religious factors on mortality and morbidity with a focus on cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases. Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation, 20, 8–15.PubMedCrossRef
Matheis, E. N., Tulsky, D. S., & Matheis, R. J. (2006). The relation between spirituality and quality of life among individuals with spinal cord injury. Rehabilitation Psychology, 51, 265–271.CrossRef
McNicholas, J., Gilbey, A., & Rennie, A. (2005). Pet ownership and human health: A brief review of evidence and issues. British Medical Journal, 33, 1252–1254.CrossRef
Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 674–697.PubMedCrossRef
Miller, L., & Kelley, B. (2005). Relationships of religiosity and spirituality with mental health and psychopathology. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 459–478). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Miller, W. R., & Thoreson, C. E. (2003). Spirituality, religion, and health. An emerging research field. American Psychologist, 58, 24–35.PubMedCrossRef
Mohr, L. B. (1990). Understanding significance testing (1st ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Nairn, R. C., & Merluzzi, T. V. (2003). The role of religious coping in adjustment to cancer. Psychooncology, 12, 428–441.PubMedCrossRef
Nooney, J., & Woodrum, E. (2002). Religious coping and church-based social support as predictors of mental health outcomes: Testing a conceptual model. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41, 359.CrossRef
Paloutzian, R. F., Richardson, J. T., & Rambo, L. R. (1999). Religious conversion and personality change. Journal of Personality, 67, 1047–1079.CrossRef
Pargament, K. I. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 168–181.CrossRef
Pasquale, F. (2007). Unbelief and irreligion, empirical study and neglect of. In T. Flynn (Ed.), The new encyclopedia of unbelief (pp. 760–766). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Perry, E. L., Davis, J. H., Doyle, R. T., & Dyble, J. E. (1980). Toward a typology of unchurched Protestants. Review of Religious Research, 21, 388–404.CrossRef
Persaud, R. (2007). Spirituality and HIV disease progression. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 22, 12–20.CrossRef
Pesut, B., Fowler, M., Taylor, E. J., et al. (2008). Conceptualising spirituality and religion for healthcare. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 17, 2803–2810.PubMedCrossRef
Peterman, A. H., Fitchett, G., Brady, M. J., et al. (2002). Measuring spiritual well-being in people with cancer: The functional assessment of chronic illness therapy—spiritual well-being scale (FACIT-Sp). Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 49–58.PubMedCrossRef
Phelps, A. C., Maciejewski, P. K., Nilsson, M., Balboni, T. A., Wright, A. A., Paulk, M. E., et al. (2009). Religious coping and use of intensive life-prolonging care near death in patients with advanced cancer. Journal of the American Medical Association, 301, 1140–1147.PubMedCrossRef
Powell, L. H., Shahabi, L., & Thoresen, C. E. (2003). Religion and spirituality. Linkages to physical health. American Psychologist, 58, 36–52.PubMedCrossRef
Presser, S., & Stinson, L. (1998). Data collection mode and social desirability bias in self-reported religious attendance. American Sociological Review, 63, 137–145.CrossRef
Rettig, S., & Pasamanick, B. (1959). Moral codes of American and Korean college students. Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 65–73.CrossRef
Riley, J., Best, S., & Charlton, B. G. (2005). Religious believers and strong atheists may both be less depressed than existentially-uncertain people. QJM: Monthly Journal of the Association of Physicians, 98, 840.PubMed
Sharkey, P. W., & Maloney, H. N. (1986). Religiosity and emotional disturbance: A test of Ellis’s thesis in his own counseling center. Psychotherapy, 23, 640–641.CrossRef
Shaver, P., Lenauer, M., & Sadd, S. (1980). Religiousness, conversion, and subjective well-being: The “healthy-minded” religion of modern American women. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137, 1563–1568.PubMed
Sherkat, D. E. (2008). Beyond belief: Atheism, agnosticism, and theistic certainty in the United States. Sociological Spectrum, 28, 438–459.CrossRef
Simonton, D. K. (2002). Creativity. In C. R. Snyder & S. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 189–201). New York: Oxford University Press.
Sloan, R. (2006). Blind faith. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Sloan, R. P., & Bagiella, E. (2002). Claims about religious involvement and health outcomes. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 14–21.PubMedCrossRef
Smith, G. H. (1980). Atheism: The case against God (1st ed., p. 355). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Retrieved January 23, 2007.
Smith, R. E., Wheeler, G., & Diener, E. (1975). Faith without works: Jesus people, resistance to temptation, and altruism. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 5, 320–330.CrossRef
Stefanek, M., McDonald, P. G., & Hess, S. A. (2006). Religion, spirituality, and cancer: Current status and methodological challenges. Psychooncology, 14, 450–463.
Thuné-Boyle, I. C., Stygall, J. A., Keshtgar, M. R., & Newman, S. P. (2006). Do religious/spiritual coping strategies affect illness adjustment in patients with cancer? A systematic review of the literature. Social Science and Medicine, 63, 151–164.PubMedCrossRef
Vance, D. E., Struzick, T. C., & Raper, J. L. (2008). Biopsychosocial benefits of spirituality in adults aging with HIV: Implications for nursing practice and research. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 26, 119–125.PubMedCrossRef
Vernon, G. M. (1968). The religious “nones”: A neglected category. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 7, 219–229.CrossRef
Vetter, G. B., & Green, M. (1932). Personality and group factors in the making of atheists. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 27, 179–194.CrossRef
Waite, L. J., & Lehrer, E. L. (2003). The benefits from marriage and religion in the United States: A comparative analysis. Population Development Review, 29, 255–276.CrossRef
Wenneberg, S. R., Schneider, R. H., Walton, K. G., et al. (1997). A controlled study of the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program on cardiovascular reactivity and ambulatory blood pressure. International Journal of Neuroscience, 89, 15–28.PubMedCrossRef
West, E. M. (2006). Religious tests of office-holding. In P. Finkelman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of American civil liberties (pp. 1314–1315). New York: Routledge.
Wong, J. Y., Rew, L., & Slaikeu, K. D. (2006). A systematic review of recent research on adolescent religiosity/spirituality and mental health. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 27, 161–183.PubMedCrossRef
Wulff, D. M. (1997). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Yohannes, A. M., Koenig, H. G., Baldwin, R. C., & Connolly, M. J. (2008). Health behavior, depression and religiosity in older patients admitted to intermediate care. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 23, 735–740.PubMedCrossRef
Zinnbauer, B. J., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Rye, M. S., Butter, E. M., Belavich, T. G., et al. (1997). Religion and spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 549–564.CrossRef
Zuckerman, P. (2006). Atheism: Contemporary numbers and patterns. In M. Martin (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to atheism (pp. 47–68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zuckerman, P. (2008). Society without God: What the least religious nations can tell us about contentment. New York: New York University Press.
Metadata
Title
Extending Religion-Health Research to Secular Minorities: Issues and Concerns
Authors
Karen Hwang
Joseph H. Hammer
Ryan T. Cragun
Publication date
01-09-2011
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of Religion and Health / Issue 3/2011
Print ISSN: 0022-4197
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6571
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-009-9296-0

Other articles of this Issue 3/2011

Journal of Religion and Health 3/2011 Go to the issue

Original Paper

Health Promoting Habits of People Who Pray for Their Health

Report

Gray Matters: A Deployed Physician’s Perspective on Combat Medicine in Iraq

Original Paper

Paul Tillich and Psychoanalysis

Book Review

THE FUNDAMENTALIST MINDSET: PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON RELIGION, VIOLENCE, AND HISTORY. Edited by Charles B. Strozier, David M. Terman, and James W. Jones, with Katharine A. Boyd. Foreword by Martin E. Marty. 274 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. $19.95

OriginalPaper

Healing and Hope in the Midst of Devastation: reflections on Katrina in the Aftermath of September 11

Report

Religion and the Catholic Church’s View on (Heart) Transplantation: A Recent Statement of Pope Benedict XVI and its Practical Impact