Gender differences exist in religious involvement and depression, with women reporting significantly higher levels of both. Working from the position that religzous involvement is beneficial to mental health, this paper testa whether higher religious involvement directly de.creases depression and whethe.r ir acts as a buffer against the harmful effects of persistent strains in role domains for women compared to men. Resulta, based on a sample of married and divorced men and women living in Indianalx~lis, suggest that religious involvement measures tend to have negative effects on depression for women. There was no demonstrable relationship between religious involvement and depression for men. Of the four measures of religious involvement used here, ordy the use of prayer to cope with daily stressors and strains significantly buffered the effects of chronic tole strains on depression, but only for women, lmplications for future understanding of gender differences in the relationship between religious involvement and mental health are discussed.A cursory review of the literature investigating the relationship between religious involvement and mental health yields a wide-ranging consensus among social scientists, gerontologists, and health care providers that religious involvement produces positive mental health outcomes, including reduced levels of depression (Koenig 1995; Ellison 1994; Levin 1994; Koenig 1997 for reviews of this literature). Occasionally, studies have emerged to suggest the opposite; that religious involvement also produces either a negative or no influence at all on mental health outcomes (Heintzelman and Fehr 1976; Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi 1975; Sorenson, Grindstaff, and Turner 1995; Francis et al. 1981; Wilson and Miller 1986). In general, however, most of the work in this field has moved from attempting to confirm which of the above is the "real" effect of

Previous research demonstrates the tole of reli~ous beliefs, ~actices, and people in a wide varie~ of social movement struggles. In most c.ases, re|i~ous resource mobilization seems to occur in a relatively straightforward, uncomplicated manner and with positive oummu~s for the mot~tmat in question. L/tt/e attention has been paid to the chaUenges that ex/st to mob///zing reli~ous resources and building coalitions with reli~ous supporters. This essay examines the problematic nature of reli~ous resource mobilization as part of union strate~es to win a strikellockout against Detroit' s two newspapers, the News and the Free Press, between 1995-2000. Intensive interviews u,ith strikers, union spokespersons, and reli~ous activists, iUustrate how reli~ous resources contributed to union strength during the strike. However, these contributions were limited by the intemal dynamics in the relatiortship between the unions and reli~ous supporters as well as by the power disparities between these local coalitions and the multinational corporations they strugg~ against.

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In the grand scope of American labor history, the fight to abolish Sunday work has been left on the margins of most historical accounts of the more universal fight to shorten the workday. For good reason, some may argue. The Sunday-closing, or Sabbatarian, movement hardly seems comparable in either its scope, its effects, or its long-term significance to the eighthour movement or to an even better known Protestant reform movement: temperance. Nevertheless, the fight to abolish Sunday work represents a significant case study for exploring how cultural influences, particularly religious ones, shaped the late-nineteenth-century industrial landscape. The cultural significance of Sundays drew clergy, labor activists, and employers into a social struggle that was a simultaneous struggle over the meaning of Sundays and how best to put this meaning into industrial and legislative practice.