The Role of Spirituality on Ambivalent Behaviors Among Christian Youth Attending Selected Churches in Kajiado County, Kenya

Abstract

The role of spirituality in mitigating against ambivalent behaviors among Christian youth needs to be studied, with an aim to devising efficacious intervention programs, that can be escalated to other non-Christian youth. This study aimed at investigating the relationship between ambivalent behaviors (substance use and sexual behaviors) and spirituality (strength of faith and religious coping mechanisms) among the Christian youth attending four selected Churches in Kajiado County, Kenya. Through a descriptive research design, data was collected from 145 respondents aged 14-35 years (73 male,72 female) who were regularly attending Sunday services. Data collection instruments were the Santa Clara, to assess strength of faith, the Religious Coping Questionnaire (BRIEF-COPE) to assess the religious coping mechanisms, the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Inventory (CSBI) for sexual impairment and the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test - Lite (ASSIST-Lite) for substance use. Data was analysed quantitatively using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS, version 29) utilizing Kendall’s tau-b, and scatter plots were generated to assess the nature of the relationship between spirituality and ambivalent behaviors. Findings pointed to a positive statistically significant relationship between sexual behaviors and negative religious coping (τb=.223, 95% C.I .117-.324, p=.008) showing that increased use of negative coping mechanism was related to increased sexual behaviors. The scatter plots showed that overally, ambivalent behaviors had a weak negative relationship with positive coping mechanisms (R2=1.1%) and strength of faith(R2=1.1%), and a weak but positive relationship with negative coping (R2=2.1%). There were several outliers in all the three scatter plots, showing a non-linear relationship implying that other factors were related to the ambivalent behaviors aside from the spirituality. The findings thus pointed to a moderate correlation between spirituality and ambivalent behaviors, where increased faith and use of positive coping mechanisms can mitigate against ambivalent behaviors, but there is also need for additional programs that could directly address the underlying causes, as well as the propagating factors. The study thus recommends a multi-faceted approach, incorporating psychological programs alongside the spiritual nurture, to address ambivalent behaviors among Christian youth. Such programs have the potential to be escalated to other non-Christian youth.