The influence of culture and politics

Welcome back to my blog. Today we continue on the series of surveys performed among Bible believing pastors who graduated from Masters, Westminster or Denver Theological Seminaries. The first survey (please visit our website for infographic) showed that pastors maintain their biblical adherence to scriptural principles throughout their life of service in a church.

However, with recent increasing secularization of culture and government in the developed world influence from government and cultural entities might pressure Bible-adherent pastors to conform to modern cultural norms (1-4). Consequently, maintaining Biblical principles sets a stage for potential conflict with secular society. Accordingly, such cultural tensions could produce mental health issues for pastors in their attempt to maintain their ethical positions. However, little data has been accumulated from Bible adherent pastors regarding the influence of any adversarial relationship with culture and government. Therefore, we surveyed pastors who graduated from Bible adherent seminaries to assess their perception of their role in society and the potential psychological impact of any adversarial attitudes of culture or government against their ministry (please visit our website for infographic).

Of 1064 invitations sent, 164 (15 %) answered the survey. Pastors overwhelmingly believed that Christianity provides a historical and current positive ethical foundation to American society. Even more strongly, pastors asserted Christianity provides for enhanced wellbeing for society and individuals.

Pastors appear concerned, however, of a larger government encroaching on freedom of religious expression. Approximately 75% indicated that constitutional freedoms were vital to allow full expression of religious beliefs and two-thirds noted that a larger government more likely represses religious expression and acts as a replacement of many actions normally provided by the church or a deity (5). Pastors were further concerned, by a wide margin, that the government favored other religions over Christianity (Humanism, Atheism and Islam).

In addition, many pastors noted concern over their ability to express freely a political opinion from the pulpit because of current culture, governmental opposition and IRS regulations. Approximately, 45% said they had suffered persecution for their beliefs. This perceived persecution was most commonly psychological through being mocked, social isolation and a cause of anxiety in some cases. However, a strong minority had experience workplace or educational institutional bias. In response, pastors indicated that they should be able to express a political viewpoint from the pulpit, that Christians should be active in politics as an expression of their faith in the public square and support candidates who espouse free expression of religious beliefs.

Our study suggested that Bible adherent pastors overwhelmingly believe that Christianity’s ethical teaching is beneficial for the wellbeing of individuals and society. However, many pastors feel negative societal and governmental pressure because of their beliefs with a potential psychological impact. Accordingly, pastors generally assert the importance of constitutional freedoms of expression to maintain their ability to express themselves from the pulpit.

Table: Short summary of responses

	Number agree	Percent agree
Christianity played an important positive role in shaping American history.	151	92%
Christianity helps promote a good, civil, ethical society and government.	157	96%
Christianity assists in producing wellbeing	155	95%
Protecting constitutional freedoms is vital to allow the full expression of religious faith and the Gospel.	122	74%
A large government generally leads to repression of religion and replacement of God by the state?	124	76%
Do you believe the federal government favors one religion over another?	118	72%
If you believe the federal government favors one religion, which does it favor?
Humanism	81	62%
Atheism	45	34%
Muslim	34	26%
I feel repressed in my ability to express a political opinion from the pulpit because of the current presidential administration or popular culture.	55	34%
I feel repressed in my ability to express a political opinion from the pulpit because of IRS regulations.	60	37%
I fear reprisal in expressing the gospel in society.	60	37%
I have suffered physical or emotional abuse because of my Christian faith.	72	44%
What type of abuse?
Mocked	71	95%
Social isolation	41	55%
Workplace or educational institutional bias	30	40%

Are you concerned about government sponsored persecution of Christianity in the US? To participate in our latest poll question - please visit our website at http://teleiosresearch.com/#anchorpoll

Thanks for visiting. I look forward to your comments and questions.

WC Stewart

http://teleiosresearch.com/

http://teleiosblog.blogspot.com/

1. Chaves, M. (2011). Religious Trends in America. Social Work & Christianity, 38: 119-132. Accessed at http://www.nacsw.org/Publications/NewsEvents/Facebook%208.8.pdf
2. Payne, M.W. (2007). Philosophy among the ruins: Twentieth century and beyond. In W. Andrew Hoffecker, ed. Revolutions in worldview: Understanding the flow of western thought. Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company.
3. Pearcy, N. (2010). Saving Leonardo: A call to resist the secular assault on mind, morals, & meaning. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
4. Wells, D.F. (2005). Above all earthly powers: Christ in a postmodern world. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
5. Bloom, P.B., Arikan, G., & Sommer, U. (2014). Globalization, threat and religious freedom. Political Studies, 62: 273–291. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9248.12060

Response policy

The purpose of the comment section is to promote discussion that is encouraging, propels the further search of Scripture and raises interesting and thought provoking Biblically related questions. You may feel free to disagree with me in a constructive manner using appropriate language.

I reserve the right to remove your comments if they are profane, pornographic, libelous or I do not consider them constructive or consistent with the policy stated above. By posting you no longer own your comments and you are granting me an unrestricted worldwide license to use your comments.

Is the Young Generation Lost?

Welcome back to my blog! We have been exploring the exciting topic of how Biblical truth enhances personal wellbeing.

Many of us “older wiser” folk J fear the younger generation, the Millennials, are leaving Christianity and do not realize its values. Such data have come from a number of respected survey houses. I thought Teleios should examine the question as well, but in more detail regarding the perceived value of Christianity in daily life.

We randomly surveyed 105 students at the University of Georgia in Athens for influences on their wellbeing, their ability to recognize advice from an individual source, its perceived benefit as contributing to wellbeing, and how they would respond to this advice.

This survey showed) that college students believe that maintenance of good health and close relations with friends, family and God, as well as satisfaction with career goals, are important to wellbeing! Detractions from wellbeing were noted most often as poor health, bad self-image and stress/fatigue from course work. Please see tables below.

When students were provided a list of advice statements from an undisclosed source, in the majority of cases students agreed the provided statements were wise.  They mostly common identified: be grateful, be slow to speak and quick to listen, and work hard to provide for yourself and others, to be sage advice. Most students correctly identified the advice statements as coming from the Bible. When the students were told on the survey the advice statements were indeed paraphrased from the Bible, and were asked how they would change their relationship to the source of the guidance, 57% indicated they would seek further advice from the Bible and most of the remaining group said they would at least maintain their current knowledge base.

What motivated their responses? I can think of several choices:

• There is a predominant Christian culture in the Southeastern United States that may have eased acceptance of the maxims coming from this religion.
• Many students may have possessed already a Christian commitment and recognized the importance of such advice in their lives apart from any cultural influence.
• Some student may have suffered enough emotional trials in their life to attract them to the wisdom and its source.

Of interest was the low number of respondents who indicated sexual relations, drugs/alcohol or social media were a source of positive wellbeing. These factors have been studied in the last generation and have been shown potentially to reduce wellbeing when used in excess.^1-3 The results of our survey, however, are positive in that it appears the great majority of students limited their dependence on these activities increasing their wellbeing.

So good news! College students most commonly identify health, close relationships with family, friends, and God, as well as satisfaction with career goals, as positive sources of wellbeing. Further, about half are willing to pursue Biblical knowledge to change their lives and most of the rest recognize the wisdom of Biblical advice.

Do you think differences existed in wellbeing between students depending on their desire to pursue Biblical wisdom, and why?  To participate in our latest poll question - please visit our website at http://teleiosresearch.com/#anchorpoll

Table 1: What most commonly improves wellbeing?

(more than one choice possible)

(N = 105)

Responses	N	Percentage
Maintenance of good health and/or sporting activities	76	72%
A close relationship with family	76	72%
A close relationship with friends	76	72%
A close relationship with God	60	57%
Satisfaction with my professional career goals	56	53%

Table 2: What most commonly detracts from general wellbeing?

(more than one choice possible)

(N = 105)

Responses	N	Percentage
Lack of vigor, energy, optimal health	67	64%
Poor self-image	67	64%
Stress/fatigue from university course work	67	64%
Lack of sense of purpose with my studies/career goals	52	50%

Thanks for visiting. I look forward to your comments and questions.

WC Stewart

http://teleiosresearch.com/

http://teleiosblog.blogspot.com/

1.       Dietze, P., Jenkinson, R., Aitken, C., Stoové, M., Jolley, D., Hickman, M., & Kerr, T. (2013). The relationship between alcohol use and injecting drug use: impacts on health, crime and wellbeing. Drug Alcohol Depend, 128, 111-115. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2012.08.013

2.       Becker, M.W., Alzahabi, R., & Hopwood, C.J. (2013). Media multitasking is associated with symptoms of depression and social anxiety. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw, 16, 132-135. http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0291

3.       Fielder, R.L., Walsh, J.L., Carey, K.B., & Carey, M.P. (2014). Sexual hookups and adverse health outcomes: a longitudinal study of first-year college women. J Sex Res, 51, 131-144. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2013.848255

Response policy

The purpose of the comment section is to promote discussion that is encouraging, propels the further search of Scripture and raises interesting and thought provoking Biblically related questions. You may feel free to disagree with me in a constructive manner using appropriate language.

I reserve the right to remove your comments if they are profane, pornographic, libelous or I do not consider them constructive or consistent with the policy stated above. By posting you no longer own your comments and you are granting me an unrestricted worldwide license to use your comments.

Does Bible Study Really Help?

Welcome again to the Teleios blog! We have been exploring together practical ways by which the Bible improves our lives.

“Oh, do I have to study the Bible every day?” Many people consider Bible study a time-consuming chore that they must endure to prove their faithfulness to God. The Teleios team considers Bible study as a wonderful life-enhancing activity that is part of our vital relationship with God.

We decided to evaluate the effect of a Bible study on the wellbeing of 46 healthy young adults from a Christian community environment. This was a “proof of concept” study since we don’t know of any prior research about this topic. The design was a prospective, randomized, active-controlled, single-blind intervention trial.

Subjects were randomized to either an active (detailed bible study program) or a control (minimally detailed bible study program) group in a 3:1 ratio. Ephesians Chapter 1 was chosen as the study text since it details many wonderful characteristics of our great salvation.

The results showed no differences between the active and control groups for any general or specific wellbeing measure. However, when the active group was compared to its own baseline data significant differences were observed in overall wellbeing.

It is unclear from our results why there was an increase of overall wellbeing in the active group. We speculate that the gain in knowledge about the security of their relationship with God, by faith alone, allowed for less guilt and greater confidence.

Interestingly, increased wellbeing was also observed in the control group, but did not quite reach significance, possibly because of the smaller sample size. This group also studied Scripture, but about events surrounding the creation of man in Genesis Chapters 1-4 that did not contain the salvation information from Ephesians provided to the active-intervention group.

Consequently, with a larger sample size it could be that greater wellbeing would have been statistically significant in both groups. If true, it might be that studying any Scripture, regardless of the specific content, could have a positive effect on wellbeing.

This proof of concept study suggests that increases in short-term well-being potentially can be achieved by a Scripture study program over the course of 4-weeks in young Christian adults.

More research is needed to better understand the effect of improved wellbeing associated with Scripture study both in the short and long term.

Is the content of scripture studied important in the improvement of wellbeing?  If yes, which portions of Scripture are best? To participate in our latest poll question - please visit our website at http://teleiosresearch.com/#anchorpoll

Thanks for visiting. I look forward to your comments and questions.

WC Stewart

http://teleiosresearch.com/

http://teleiosblog.blogspot.com/

Response policy

The purpose of the comment section is to promote discussion that is encouraging, propels the further search of Scripture and raises interesting and thought provoking Biblically related questions. You may feel free to disagree with me in a constructive manner using appropriate language.

I reserve the right to remove your comments if they are profane, pornographic, libelous or I do not consider them constructive or consistent with the policy stated above. By posting you no longer own your comments and you are granting me an unrestricted worldwide license to use your comments.

Can adherence to a Bible based lifestyle cure guilt?

Ever feel guilty? This emotion seems to afflict most of us at least intermittently. Non-Christians think Christianity causes guilt. Is this true? Amazingly, Christian practice recently has been associated with enhanced wellbeing. Further, increasing adherence to Biblical lifestyle principles such as praise, prayer, fellowship, church attendance, service and Biblical study have been associated with improved wellbeing.^1,2

Guilt, in contrast, is linked with diminished wellbeing^3,4 No surprise there!

Unfortunately, little information is available which examines the effects of guilt in a healthy Christian population and how to minimize it. Teleios recently examined the influence of guilt on the wellbeing of evangelical Christians especially associated with their adherence and knowledge of their faith. We defined evangelicals as those who accepted the free gift of salvation through faith in Christ’s death on the cross for forgiveness of their sins (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 3:21-26).

Our study showed that wellbeing scores appeared generally healthy among our evangelical subjects. However, or those who felt no guilt there was greater wellbeing reported with each question (please see table) except ‘God cares about me’ than the in those who felt some level of guilt. This finding indicates that the presence of guilt may degrade wellbeing in a generally healthy population.

The overwhelming cause for those who indicated they felt some guilt was although they had confidence in their salvation, they “feared that they had not performed enough good works to gain God's ongoing satisfaction.”

The most common reaction to guilt by participant was anxiety, followed closely by a desire for complete acceptance by God.

Importantly ,when the eight wellbeing rankings (please see table) were compared to the scores for adherence to the Christian faith, those who indicated they held to the activities or beliefs noted above showed statistically greater scores compared to less adherent participants! This was especially true among those who most often studied the Bible study or praised God. 

How do we explain this? Studying the Bible may be important because it reinforces scriptural principles that salvation is achieved only by God’s grace, not human efforts, and thus removes guilt as a factor in a Christian's life.  Those less willing to embrace scriptural lessons may demonstrate more guilt because they may imagine God’s wrath and rejection based on their own contrived system of works.

Praise also may help alleviate guilt as it demonstrates an expression of the believer’s view of God's authority and power to save them and helps maintain a correct mental attitude of humility towards God. Humility has been shown in prior work to have psychosocial benefits.⁵

This study suggests that Christians who conform to basic activities and beliefs of their faith are likely to demonstrate improved wellbeing and less guilt then those who are less adherent.

What is the most destructive type of guilt for those who believe they have been saved by grace?

Thanks,

WC Stewart

http://teleiosresearch.com/

http://teleiosblog.blogspot.com/

Table: Wellbeing questions self rankings

(Scale 0-7, 0 being strongest agreement)

Survey Question	Subjects answering	Average score no guilt (N=94)	Average score guilt (N=224)	P-value
1. I am content with life	317	0.9 ± 1.1	1.7 ± 1.2	<0.0001
2. I have peace	319	0.8 ± 1.1	1.7 ± 1.2	<0.0001
3. I am joyful	319	0.9 ± 1.1	1.7 ± 1.1	<0.0001
4. I have purpose	319	0.8 ± 1.2	1.5 ± 1.3	<0.0001
5. God cares about me	319	0.4 ± 1.1	0.9 ± 3.8	0.18
6. I feel accepted by God	319	0.2 ± 0.7	0.8 ± 1.2	<0.0001
7. I am free	318	0.3 ± 0.8	1.2 ± 1.3	<0.0001
8. I feel guilty	318	NA	2.1 ± 1.2	NA

1. MacIlvaine, W.R., Nelson, L.A., Stewart, J.A., Stewart, W.C. (2013). Association of strength of religious adherence to quality of life measures. Complement Ther Clin Pract, 19:251-255. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2013.05.001.
2. MacIlvaine, W.R., Nelson, L.A., Stewart, J.A., Stewart, W.C. (2014). Association of strength of community service to personal well-being. Community Ment Health J, 50:577-582. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10597-013-9660-0.
3. Piderman, K.M., Lapid, M.I., Stevens, S.R., Ryan, S.M., Somers, K.J., Kronberg, M.T., Clark, M.M., & Rummans, T.A. (2011). Spiritual well-being and spiritual practices in elderly depressed psychiatric inpatients. J Pastoral Care Counsel, 65:1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/154230501106500103.
4. Satterly, L. (2001). Guilt, shame, and religious and spiritual pain. Holist Nurs Pract, 15:30-39. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12119916
5. Krause, N. (2010). Religious Involvement, Humility, and Self-Rated Health. Soc Indic Res, 98:23-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9514-x   

The effect of religion upon wellbeing in the general population

Welcome back to my blog! In recent posts we have been exploring the exciting topic of how Biblical truth enhances personal wellbeing. We’ve discussed research performed by Teleios through a series of surveys in healthy individuals and ophthalmology patients, as well as a review article regarding religion in the medically ill.

Today we explore another medical literature review that we developed last year regarding the effect of religion upon wellbeing in the general population (internal data). Most all the studies we reviewed evaluated members of the Christian faith.

Our review showed a positive effect on wellbeing from religion in the lives of healthy people who were: > 10 years old, either gender  and either African-American or Caucasian.

Religion improved general wellbeing and also in specific measures such as:

• sense of community
• purpose
• satisfaction
• hope
• social relationships
• ability to forgive

Even more, the findings indicated that the measures typically used to adhere and grow in religious faith also increased wellbeing including:

• fellowship with other believers
• scripture study
• prayer
• praise
• outreach in the local community 

Additionally, increased adherence to one’s faith gave even greater benefits on wellbeing!

What does this mean practically? This review helps us recognize that religion, and in this case Christianity specifically, may enhance personal wellbeing generally but its benefit also extends to specific areas of life such as career satisfaction, marriage, family functioning, and socialization.

Why would Christianity provide an improved wellbeing? We don’t know of any studies about this but here’s what we speculate.

• First, on a spiritual level the confidence of God’s acceptance through faith in the sacrifice of Christ helps remove guilt and insecurity about a person’s relationship with God. The importance of such confidence was indicated in several studies noting that medically ill patients who have a negative, insecure relationship with God suffer with worse wellbeing.
• Second, in practical daily life the Christian scriptures provide advice on wise living in regards to family life, career, ethical choices, treatment of people in terms of mental mindset and speech (i.e., forgiveness, thankfulness, etc.). The benefits stemming from this advice can be gained by adherence to Biblical principles causing maturity (fellowship with other believers, prayer, praise, service and a Biblical learning process).

Our review demonstrated that religion, and Christianity in particular, may provide enhanced general wellbeing across various age and ethnic groups and specifically in family and social relationships as well as career. More research is needed, however, comparing wellbeing to other religions and among cultures.

To consider…would the benefit observed in our review and surveys on wellbeing be observed with other religions?

Thanks for visiting. I look forward to your comments and questions.

WC Stewart

http://teleiosresearch.com 

http://teleiosblog.blogspot.com