Religious Distress and Coping With Stressful Life Events: A Longitudinal Study J. Irene Harris, 1,2 Christopher R. Erbes, 1,3 Brian E. Engdahl, 1,2 Henry Ogden, 1 Raymond H. A. Olson, 4 Ann Marie M. Winskowski, 1,5 Kelsey Campion, 1 and Saari Mataas 1 1 Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Department of Psychology, Minneapolis, MN 2 University of Minnesota, Department of Psychology, Minneapolis, MN 3 University of Minnesota Medical School, Department of Psychiatry, Minneapolis, MN 4 Minnesota Veterans Research Institute, Minneapolis, MN 5 Universtiy of St. Thomas, Graduate School of Professional Psychology, Minneapolis, MN Objective(s): Hypothesis: Religious strain would mediate the relationship between stress symp- toms at baseline and stress symptoms 1 year later. Method: Seventy-nine people with a history of stressful life events (55 women, 23 men, one unknown gender, average age 58 years) from community churches reported stressful life events, spiritual adjustment, and posttraumatic stress symptoms at ini- tial assessment and 1-year follow-up. Results: Religious strain mediated the relationship between baseline and follow-up posttraumatic stress symptoms. Conclusions: Because religious distress contributed to prediction of stress symptoms over time, it appears that religious distress is related to adjustment to stressful life events. C  2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Clin. Psychol. 00:1–11, 2012. Keywords: stress and coping; religion; religious coping; psychology of religion; prayer While theories related to stressful life events and posttraumatic stress symptoms have emphasized intra-personal processes (such as changing assumptions or dysfunctional cognitions; Foa & Rothbaum, 1998; Janoff-Bulman, 1992), much less attention has been paid to important factors that may play a role in the development, maintenance, and course of reactions to stressful life events (Dekel, Ein-Dor, & Solomon, 2012). Religious functioning, which involves both internal (spirituality) and external (religious activities) components, is a potentially important area of functioning with implications for distress after exposure to severe stressors. For many people, religious functioning is part of coping with stressful life events (Schuster et al., 2001). Some find their faith helpful in coping, some find it ineffectual, and still others describe it as a hindrance in recovery (Falsetti, Resick, & Davis, 2003; Fontana & Rosen- heck, 2004; Pargament, Koenig, Tarakeshwar, & Hahn, 2004). These mixed findings mirror the pattern of results found in general studies of mental health and religious functioning, and may be due to a failure to measure the complexity of religiosity/spirituality (Chen & Koenig, 2006). Recently, multidimensional measurement of religious functioning has identified aspects of religiosity/spirituality that predict mental health outcomes, including positive and negative religious coping, religious comforts and strains, and active versus passive prayer coping (Ano & Vasconcelles, 2005; Exline & Rose, 2005; Harris et al., 2008; Pargament, Koenig, Tarakeshwar, & Hahn, 2004). Indicators of religious distress, including negative religious coping, religious strain, and passive prayer coping have been associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms in cross-sectional study (Harris et al., 2008; Ogden et al., 2011). ∗ This research was supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Minnesota Veterans Research and Education Foundation, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Please address correspondence to: J. Irene Harris, Staff Psychologist, VA Medical Center, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN 55417. E-mail: jeanette.harris2@med.va.gov JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 00(0), 1–11 (2012) C  2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jclp). DOI: 10.1002/jclp.21900