Religious coping among older, unemployed workers: Narratives of the job-loss experience

ABSTRACT

This article is a qualitative examination of how older workers who lost their jobs during the Great Recession and its prolonged recovery employed religion to cope with this stressful experience. Based on 62 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with middle-class adults age 50 or older, our data reveal five distinct themes in relation to religious coping with the job-loss experience: faith as solace, surrendering to God, meaning making, discontent with God or believers, and gaining strength from religious community. Findings are placed in the context of the broader religious coping literature and several empirical and applied implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• religious coping
• older workers
• job loss
• unemployment
• and Great Recession

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Carleton College Presidential Fellowship, a Carleton College Targeted Opportunity Grant, a Carleton College Small Faculty Development Endowment Gilman Grant, and a series of Carleton College Humanities Center research assistance grants. The article benefited from the transcription assistance of Mallika Dargan, Yijun He, Ankita Verma, JordiKai Watanabe-Inouye, Katie Shaffer, and Porter Truax; research assistance of Quinn Schiller, Camille Jonlin and Cecilia Kryzda; and comments from Wes Markofski and three anonymous reviewers. A previous version of this article was presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the Society for Study of Social Problems, held in Montreal, Canada, in August 2017.

Notes

^1. Approximately 90 job clubs in the Twin Cities metro region were active when this study was conducted. Job clubs typically host guest speakers, facilitate discussion, develop networks, and advertise employment opportunities. More than one-third (N=35) of these 90 job clubs were located in Christian churches.

^2. Although interviewees were not asked to indicate their religious affiliation, those who offered this information overwhelmingly identified as Protestant or Catholic. These religious affiliations are congruent with the denominational composition of the Minneapolis Metropolitan area. In 2014, 46% of residents in this region identified as Protestant and 21% as Catholic (Pew Research Center, 2014).