In the Face of Adversity: A Phenomenological Study of Spiritual Struggles among “Bible-Believing” Christians

ABSTRACT

This study explored the lived experience of adversity as spiritual struggles among fundamentalists. Ten Christian fundamentalists participated in phenomenological interviews and provided descriptions of their experiences with adversity. A hermeneutic-thematic analysis of transcribed interviews derived a structured pattern of five interdependent themes that described meaning in the experience of adversity for all participants. In adversity, they were aware of a specific adversary as the source of adversity; an alternation between negative-positive emotions; standing up against or down from the adversary; struggling through the adversity; and spiritual change. Themes are discussed in relation to the existential grounds of body, others, and time, and research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ According to Pollio et al. (1997), the approach to labeling themes is to capture their meaning in the words of participants as much as possible and to avoid the imposition of psychological terminology. It is thought that this best illuminates the meaning of the experience for participants.

² For purposes of anonymity, each participant was assigned a code, i.e., P1 through P10.