Delight or Distraction: An Exploratory Analysis of Sabbath-Keeping Internalization

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 2015

Keywords

DISTRACTION (Psychology) -- Religious aspects, SABBATH, REST -- Religious aspects -- Christianity, INTERNALIZATION, MOTIVATION (Psychology) RELIGIOUS aspects

Abstract

Internalization of religious motivation is associated with increased subjective well-being. However, much of the work on internalization focuses on widespread, low-cost religious practices. We propose that distinctive, high-cost, and meaningful Christian practices, such as Sabbath keeping, may be related to the internalization of religion—and thus increased well-being—when they occur within a community. Using a factor-cluster approach to develop an instrument to measure the internalization of Sabbath keeping among Seventh-day Adventists, we found a positive relationship between deeper internalization and higher subjective well-being. Importantly, the relationship between internalization of Sabbath-keeping practice and well-being was only weakly meditated by a more general measure of religious internalization, suggesting separate contributions of internalization for distinctive high-cost practices and widespread low-cost practices.

Journal Title

Journal of Psychology & Theology

Volume

43

Issue

3

First Page

192

Last Page

203

First Department

Behavioral Sciences

Link to Full Text

@ the James White Library

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