One hard fact of COVID-19 is the uncertainty of all things. Anchoring on the assumption that the religiosity of an individual has a profound impact on their emotions, resilience, and wellness, this study investigated the levels of the centrality of religiosity, emotions towards God, resilience, and wellness among 399 Taiwanese university students. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, factor analysis, group comparisons, multiple regression, and mediation analysis. Findings showed that most of the participants were religious. Furthermore, the 16 emotions towards God were successfully factored into three distinct sub-groups, namely: pleasant, unpleasant, and moral valence, which were later found to be quite related to Asian religions. More importantly, the results suggested that the resiliency of an individual can be attributed to their belief in the existence of God or the Divine, while the wellness indicators of security and satisfaction were related to one’s religiosity. Lastly, structural equation modeling showed that resilience fully mediated the relationship between the ideology dimension of religiosity and the security and satisfaction component of wellness. In addition to discussing these significant results, this paper also included some implications of the study results, particularly the importance of religiosity and emotions toward God or the Divine in sustaining resilience and promoting wellness, especially in the context of crisis, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Hospitalization for a sudden cardiac event is a frightening experience, one that is often marked by uncertainty about health status, fear of recurrent cardiac problems, and related existential, religious, and spiritual concerns. Religious struggle, reflecting tension and strain regarding religious and spiritual issues, may arise in response to symptoms of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The present study examined the prevalence and types of religious struggle using the Brief RCOPE, as well as associations between religious struggle, psychological distress, and self-reported sleep habits among 62 patients hospitalized with suspected ACS. Fifty-eight percent of the sample reported some degree of religious struggle. Questioning the power of God was the most frequently endorsed struggle. Those struggling religiously reported significantly more symptoms of anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance. Non-White participants endorsed greater use of positive religious coping strategies and religious struggle. Results suggest that patients hospitalized for suspected ACS experiencing even low levels of religious struggle might benefit from referral to a hospital chaplain or appropriately trained mental health professional for more detailed religious and spiritual assessment. Practical means of efficiently screening for religious struggle during the often brief hospitalization period for suspected ACS are discussed.

Cultures or cultural values, which are described as constructively created behaviors based on collective beliefs, are omnipresent at multiple levels in every human behavior and interaction, including in the sphere of religion. Scholars described religion as a cultural system of symbols, which establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations and naturalized conceptions of a general order of existence. Thus, religion is considered to be a part of culture and it acts as one among many forms of overtly expressing and experiencing spirituality that is inward, personal, subjective, transcendental, and unsystematic. In other words, cultural values are seen as a foundation to religiosity. Based on this assumption, this paper reviewed the literature to provide empirical evidence to the overt practice of religiosity that is embedded in particular cultural experiences and values as a form of expressing and experiencing the human universal of spirituality.

Racism, which has been a deeply rooted feature of so many human societies across the world for centuries, has become rampant in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past racism was thought to be as somehow “natural” or “biological.”  Later on, sociologists recognized “race” as a socially and culturally constructed ideology, which exists in a society at both the individual and institutional levels. Further down the timeline, psychologists viewed racism as an individual or a collective psychological defensive mechanism generated by feelings of fear, insecurity, and anxiety in the face of imminent or presumed internal or external threat. No matter how it is described, racism has become rampant in the shadow of COVID-19, manifested in the incidents of racial slurs and verbal abuse, online bullying, physical attacks, vandalism, and others. It took the forms of white supremacy, xenophobia, Sinophobia, and institutional and aversive racism. It was institutionalized, politicized, and religionized. Given this increasing occurrence of racism triggered by COVID-19, this paper tried to trace the historical roots of racism, followed by the analysis of the specific incidents of anti-Asian racism and discrimination related to COVID-19 in the United States. This paper also sketched the psychological implications of racism and some coping mechanisms for the victims.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented effect on many areas of people’s lives all over the world, including in the area of education. Many educational institutions must un-preparedly transition from physical classes to distance learning modalities, affecting both the students and teachers. Given that the teachers are confronted with so many challenges, leading to their increased stress and mental health issues, this research project investigated the role of religiosity in the contentment of a sample of 296 teachers in the Philippines, mediated by the effects of resilience, optimism, and well-being. Bivariate correlation analysis showed that religiosity, resilience, optimism, and well-being were positively and significantly correlated with each other, while contentment was positively and significantly correlated with optimism and well-being. Regression analysis indicated no direct significant association between religiosity and contentment. Mediation analyses suggested that optimism partially mediated the impact of religiosity on well-being, whereas well-being fully mediated the impact of religiosity on contentment and the impact of optimism on contentment. Lastly, the measurement model indicated a significant path from religiosity to contentment through optimism and well-being. These significant results suggest that, while facing adversities in life, the teachers in the Philippines might use religiosity and its relevant dimensions as positive coping mechanisms to face the academic challenges triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus derive contentment that is mediated by the positive effects of optimism and well-being.