Preferences for religious help-seeking: racial and gender differences, interfaith intolerance, and defensive theology

Abstract

We examined the relation between preference for religious help-seeking and defensive theology, interfaith intolerance, spiritual conceptualisations of mental health problems, race/ethnicity, and gender in a predominantly Christian sample of 389 college students. MANOVA revealed significant main effects for race/ethnicity, with African American participants showing higher scores than Caucasians and Latinos/as across all main study variables. Follow-up ANOVA yielded main effects for race across all four variables and main effects for gender on spiritual conceptualisation of mental health problems and defensive theology. All race/ethnicity by gender interactions were nonsignificant. Preference for religious help-seeking was regressed in a hierarchical manner on race/ethnicity and gender, followed by interfaith intolerance, defensive theology, and spiritual conceptualisation of mental health problems. A statistically significant model explaining 46% of the variance emerged incorporating all variables except race. A framework for understanding help-seeking preference is presented, followed by directions for future research.

Keywords:

• defensive theology
• help-seeking
• interfaith intolerance
• race
• religion

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express sincere thanks to Sherzine McKenzie and Matthew Light for their assistance with this project.

Notes

Note: Within each variable, row values with different subscripts differ significantly and column values with different superscripts differ significantly

Notes: ^aRace Variable 1: African American = 1, Non-Hispanic White and Latino = 0.

^bRace Variable 2: Latino = 1, African American and White Non-Hispanic = 0.

^cGender: Female = 0 and Male = 1.

*p ≤ .05