Front. Public Health

Sec. Public Mental Health

Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1443960

Provisionally accepted

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Background: Religiousness has been consistently linked to positive health outcomes and flourishing, yet the underlying mechanisms are complex and not well understood. The forgiveness and relational spirituality model offers a framework to explore the moderated mediation among religious commitment, health, and forgiveness by God. Understanding these relationships among university students and community residents in Trinidad and Tobago can provide valuable insights into the role of religiousness in promoting well-being.This cross-sectional study involved 254 religious Afro-Trinidadians aged 18-78 from Trinidad and Tobago. Participants completed measures assessing religious commitment, proneness to guilt/shame, forgiveness by God, and health outcomes. Modeling using 5,000 bootstrap confidence intervals was used to analyze the hypothesized associations among variables.Results: A significant positive relationship between religious commitment and health encompassed both physical and mental aspects. Feeling forgiven by God mediated the link between religious commitment and health outcomes (B = 0.019; SE = 0.007; 95% CI = 0.007, 0.034; R 2 = 0.12). Proneness to guilt or shame moderated the association between religious commitment and forgiveness by God. This relationship was significant primarily among individuals with high levels of proneness to guilt (B = 0.075, SE = 0.019, p

Keywords: Forgiveness by God, Religious commitment, Health, Guilt, Shame

Received: 04 Jun 2024; Accepted: 10 Dec 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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