Praying and coping: The relation between varieties of praying and religious coping styles

Abstract

This study focuses on different varieties of prayer in relation to different coping styles. A total of 337 Dutch and Flemish people answered a questionnaire comprising Pargament's Religious Coping Scale, a Receptivity Coping Scale, and a Dutch prayer inventory. Three types of prayer were distinguished: the religious, the petitionary, and the meditative prayer. The first two are typically traditional, involving a classical image of a personal God, while the third is modern, focusing on the self rather than on God. This is a distinction that applies more or less to the three coping styles of Pargament as well as to the Receptivity Scale. Pargament's religious coping styles, i.e., the collaborative and the deferring coping styles, assume the presence of an active and personal God, a view lacking in the Receptive coping styles. Based on this resemblance, an analysis of the relationship between coping styles and the varieties of prayer was made, which showed the following: (1) a relation was found between religious prayer and the collaborative and deferring coping styles; (2) a relation was also found between meditative prayer and the Receptive coping styles; and (3) no relation was found between petitionary prayer and the deferring style.