Does closeness to God mediate the relationship between prayer and mental health in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim samples?

ABSTRACT

Most research in the psychology of religion does not account for interfaith differences. Many studies rely on predominately Christian samples with only a small representation of other faiths. Other studies focus solely on one religion without testing interfaith comparisons. Drawing from previous research in which closeness to God mediated the relationship between prayer and mental health in a predominately Christian sample, this study tested for mediation across three distinct religious samples: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Closeness to God mediated the relationship between prayer and mental health in the Christian and Muslim samples, but not in the Jewish sample. Prayer was consistently related to closeness to God, but closeness to God was not consistently related to mental health across the three samples. Implications for spiritually adapted therapies and future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Prayer types
• closeness to God
• mental health
• Christian prayer
• Jewish prayer
• Muslim prayer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Augustana Research and Artist Fund: [Grant Number 2018].