This paper reports on aspects of the role of religion in providing support and meaning for 324 men recovering from a life-threatening crisis, a heart attack. Over the course of a year following the crisis event, no significant changes were indicated in level of religiosity, in pattern of attendance at religious services, or in secular orientations to life and the illness experience. The men reported little contact with clergy and few plans for such contact in the future. The data reveal that, on the whole, conceptions of the etiology of the disease were strongly secular in orientation. A general implication is that this crisis experience did not fundamentally alter religious or secular attitudes among Catholic, Protestant and Jewish patients, nor did it lead to change in degree of reliance on the religious institution and its agents.