The religious role and the sense of personal control

Abstract

Is the belief in divine control associated with the generalized sense of personal control? Using data from a 2005 nationally representative survey of 1,800 adults in the United States, I test two competing views: the relinquished control versus the personal empowerment hypotheses. Results support the relinquished control hypothesis. Individuals who believe in divine control tend to report significantly lower levels of personal control - but that association is contingent upon other dimensions of the religious role. Specifically, I observe a significantly stronger negative association between belief in divine control and personal control among individuals who report lower levels of subjective religiosity and less frequent praying and attendance activities. Moreover, the interrelationships among these four dimensions of the religious role reveal important suppression effects in their influence on personal control. I discuss the ways that these observations contribute to theoretical views about the complex interactions among religious precepts, practices, and generalized expectancies of personal control.