Religious Attendance, Religious Coping, and Systemic Inflammation among Older African American Adults

Abstract

Older African Americans bear a disproportionate burden of cardiovascular disease risk. One factor underlying these effects may be lifetime stressors exposure. Prior research has shown that religious attendance and positive religious coping, exhibiting a trusting relationship with God, are positively related to health outcomes. Mixed results emerged for negative religious coping. We examined whether these factors interacted with stress in predicting systemic inflammation, a key mechanism in stress-related chronic disease risk. Data was collected from the Health among Older Adults Living in Detroit study (N= 211, M= 67.6 yrs., 73.3% female). Measures included the number and severity of life stressors (measured via the Adult Stress and Adversity Inventory), religious attendance, positive/negative religious coping, and C-Reactive Protein (CRP). Number of participants (N= 114-119) varied in different analyses because of listwise deletion. Religious attendance and negative religious coping did not interact with any lifetime stressor indicators in predicting CRP. However, a significant interaction was found between stress severity and positive religious coping. A significant negative association emerged between positive religious coping and CRP for participants at -1.5 SD (but not +1.5 SD) from average stress severity. At very high levels of stress severity (~+2 SD), a positive link was found between positive religious coping and CRP. Positive religious coping may help to buffer against inflammation for older African American adults reporting low levels of lifetime stress severity. For participants reporting very high levels of stress, religious coping might have deleterious effects on inflammation.