Suffering is part of the human condition, and people often turn to their faith to make sense of this experience. Active religious coping has been related to positive psychological outcomes in individuals facing adversity. However, not all sources of suffering can be resolved. Spiritual surrender is one form of religious coping relevant in these unresolvable situations and has been studied in the areas of addiction, grief and loss, and illness related trauma. Despite the importance of this religious coping practice and its positive impact on well-being, spiritual surrender is rarely examined and has been quantified with mixed results. We propose an emic, Christian, conceptualization of spiritual surrender that integrates theological perspectives with religious coping scholarship; then, we present three studies describing the development of a new measure. With these studies, we establish and confirm the factor structure of the Christian Spiritual Surrender Scale and evaluate its construct validity in online samples of Christians who indicated they experienced suffering. Moderation analyses indicated that spiritual surrender ameliorated the negative relationship between severity of the negative life event and one's satisfaction with life, but not the relationship to one's positive or negative feelings. We conclude that Christian spiritual surrender represents a unique and distinct religious coping practice that has not been robustly captured in previous measures and is associated with well-being in the face of adversity.

ObjectiveIn this study, we sought to gain insight into the challenges Latina immigrant mothers in rural Midwest communities encountered during the pandemic, strategies they employed to avoid infection of the virus, and impacts of the pandemic on family health and well‐being.BackgroundIn rural Midwestern communities, the pandemic disproportionately affected immigrants, many of whom are Latino and worked in meatpacking and food processing plants. Latina mothers are commonly viewed as caretakers of the family. This prescribed role placed mothers at the center of safeguarding their families' health during the pandemic.MethodIn this descriptive study, we conducted individual interviews with 124 Latina immigrant mothers across six rural Midwestern communities who participated in one of two previous studies in the communities. Thematic analyses was used to identify themes that aligned with three areas of interest: challenges experienced, strategies employed to avoid virus infection, and impacts of the pandemic on family health and well‐being.ResultsMothers enacted behaviors (e.g., sanitation practices, wore masks, stayed home) to lessen negative impacts of the pandemic on family health and well‐being. Factors beyond their control (e.g., public policies, work policies and practices) placed families at greater risk for poor health and well‐being. Eleven themes were identified that aligned with the three areas of interest.ConclusionFindings build upon and extend prior research that reexposed unjust employment conditions, inadequate health‐care systems, and an anti‐immigrant context during the pandemic that perpetuated health disparities among Latino immigrants and other minoritized populations.ImplicationsEthnographic and longitudinal studies that give voice to populations underrepresented in COVID‐19 research and at high risk for poor health are warranted to inform policies and practices to protect health during public health crises.

Global meaning systems help people make sense of their experiences, but suffering can violate global meaning and create distress. One type of potential violation is conflict between one’s experience of suffering and one’s deeply-held beliefs about God as loving, powerful, and just. The problem of theodicy—why an all-powerful and all-loving God would allow suffering—has long been an important theological and philosophical concern, but little is known about how theodicy plays out psychologically for religious individuals facing serious life difficulties. To address this issue within a specific religious tradition, Christianity, we drew upon philosophy, Christian theology, and psychology to develop the construct of theodical struggling. Through theological and philosophical input, we generated a 28-item pool and conducted 10 cognitive interviews with a diverse sample of Christian adults. In three consecutive online studies of Christian adult samples, we reduced the scale to 11 items through PCA, found a strong one-factor solution using EFA, and found support for the one-factor solution along with preliminary reliability and validity. This newly-developed Theodical Struggling Scale represents an important advance in understanding individuals’ experiences of ruptures in their beliefs regarding God’s goodness and paves the way for future research on this topic. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04642-w.

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