How Does Religiousness Influence Health Among Sexual and Gender Minorities? Evaluating the Propositions of the Religious/Spiritual Stress and Resilience Model

With a sample of 1,176 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) Americans, we examined the core propositions of the religious/spiritual stress and resilience (RSSR) model (Lefevor, Etengoff, et al., 2023), which explains how and when religiousness is related to health for sexual and gender minorities. We found support for parts but not all of the model. As the model predicted, we found that religiousness was related to internalized homonegativity, which was, in turn, related to depression. We also found that discrimination was related to depression. Furthermore, we found that the relationship between religiousness and internalized homonegativity was moderated both by age (weaker relationship among older individuals) and congregational affirmativeness (weaker relationship among participants belonging to more affirmative congregations). In contrast to the propositions of the RSSR model, we did not observe any relationships between connectedness with LGBTQ+ communities and any other variable. Specifically, we did not find evidence that religiousness was related to connectedness with LGBTQ+ communities, that connectedness with LGBTQ+ communities was related to depression, or that connectedness with LGBTQ+ communities buffered the relationship between minority stressors and depression. Taken together, our findings suggest that the RSSR model may be a helpful way to conceptualize how religiousness impacts health for sexual and gender minorities but that a more concerted understanding of the role of connectedness with LGBTQ+ communities is needed.