Perceived accountability to God, the religious role, and psychological well-being

ABSTRACT

Accountability is a relationally responsive virtue that bears meaningful connection to religion and spirituality in addition to well-being and flourishing. We consider how perceptions of accountability to God are associated with psychological well-being and how this may be conditioned by other aspects of the “religious role,” religious attendance, prayer, and biblical literalism. We draw on national data from the 2017 Baylor Religion Survey. Results suggest that accountability to God was associated with lower depressive symptoms and greater happiness but did not have a significant association with symptoms of anxiety. More frequent prayer strengthened the favourable association between accountability to God and psychological well-being. The relationship between accountability to God and better psychological well-being was also strengthened by high (weekly or more) religious attendance. Finally, our results also suggested that a literalist interpretation of the Bible in the context of low accountability to God was associated with lower psychological well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Accountability to God
• psychological well-being
• attendance
• prayer
• biblical literalism

Disclosure statement

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