Hope, Religious Behaviors, and Attachment to God: A Trinitarian Perspective

Abstract

Drawing on existing research regarding adult attachment, attachment to God, and Trinitarian theology, the current study investigated the level of attachment security to God (comparing secure, preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful types) and the connection with hope and religious behaviors. Significant, positive relationships were hypothesized among the variables of secure attachment to God, high levels of hope, and high participation in religious behaviors in Christian college students. A cross-section of 268 undergraduate students at a Christian university completed the Attachment to God Inventory (Beck & McDonald, 2004), the Herth Hope Index (Herth, 1992), Relationships Structures Questionnaire (Fraley et al., 2006) and demographic questions regarding their religious behaviors. Results were analyzed utilizing correlation, polynomial logistic regression, multiple regression, and path analyses. Results indicated that the levels of hope and religious behaviors predicted 36.6% of the variance in attachment to God-avoidance. Findings regarding personal versus corporate religious behaviors are discussed. Conclusions and implications regarding attachment to God and Trinitarian theology are discussed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.