Social, Religious and Spiritual Capital and Physical/ Emotional Functioning in a National Sample of African Americans CHERYL L. HOLT 1 * , EMILY SCHULZ 2 , BEVERLY R. WILLIAMS 3 , EDDIE M. CLARK 4 and MIN QI WANG 1 1 Department of Behavioral and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 2 Department of Occupational Therapy, Arizona School of Health Sciences, Mesa, AZ, USA 3 Division of Gerontology/Geriatrics/Palliative Care, Department of Medicine, Birmingham VA Medical Center and University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA 4 Department of Psychology, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO, USA ABSTRACT Spiritual and religious capital are forms of the broader construct of social capital. The present study, using probability-based sampling methods, surveyed a national sample of African American adults to examine the relative contributions of spiritual and religious capital to their physical and emotional functioning. Analyses were conducted to determine if these constructs made a unique contribution above and beyond general social capital. African American men and women (N = 803) were inter- viewed by telephone. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that, across the full sample, although social capital was a positive predictor of physical and emotional functioning (p < .05 and p < .001), neither religious nor spiritual capital made an additional contribution to these outcomes. However, the relationships among these variables differed for men and women. Among men, social capital pre- dicted positive emotional functioning (p < .001) but not physical functioning; spiritual and religious capital made no additional contribution to either outcome variable. Among women, social capital predicted positive emotional functioning (p < .01) but not physical functioning. However, religious capital did make a significant additional contribution to the prediction of emotional functioning (ΔR 2 , p < .01). Dividing the sample into different age groups did not produce any different findings from those found with the sample as a whole. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for church- and faith-based health promotion interventions aimed at health disparities reduction. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: social capital; religious capital; spiritual capital; physical functioning; emotional functioning *Correspondence to: Cheryl L. Holt, Department of Behavioral and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, 2369 Public Health Building (255), College Park, MD 20742, USA. E-mail: cholt14@umd.edu Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 22: 346–362 (2012) Published online 21 August 2011 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/casp.1116 Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 14 July 2011