A kind of Religious Coping: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Consolation in the Lutheran Tradition

Abstract

Building on the theoretical research of community psychology and cultural psychology, I focus in this paper on these two questions: What kind of religious coping is practiced by some members of the Lutheran tradition? What does an understanding of the relationship between the tradition and religious coping of these members indicate that may be distinctive or unexpected about their religious coping? I do this by: reviewing the background of my research in community psychology, cultural psychology, and tradition-specific research on religious coping – particularly in the United States; outlining a method for a qualitative study of nine Lutheran co-researchers in the United States who had experienced a significant negative event; reporting some of the results of that study; using the results of the study to discuss the two questions above; concluding with some suggestions for future research of the specific religious traditions in which religious coping phenomena may occur, and of the phenomena of religious coping in specific religious traditions.