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Objective: Using participant responses from 525 different‐sex married and cohabiting African American couples, we examined the dyadic association between relational sanctification and relational forgiveness. Background: Religion has a central role in the lives of many African Americans because it traditionally has been a place of refuge against stressors that disproportionally impact African Americans. However, little is known about how African American couples utilize relational sanctification as a strength. Method: Data were collected from African American couples between October 2019 and January 2020 as part of a larger study called the Strong African American Couples Project. Utilizing dyadic panels from Qualtrics, this project specifically targeted African American couples who were cohabiting (n = 233) or married (n = 292) thus, enabling us to analyze a multigroup actor–partner interdependence model. Results: Significant actor effects were found between sanctification and individual as well as perceived partner forgiveness in married and cohabiting couple relationships. No significant partner effects were found. Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of recognizing various aspects of religiosity and spirituality within relationships, especially for African American couples with historically high rates of dissolution and self‐rated religiosity. Implications: As interventionalists work with religious and spiritual African American couples, they need to understand the role that sanctity may have within these partner relationships and the positive impact it can have on relational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We used qualitative data to evaluate how religious and interfaith couples may view the influences of fidelity and/or loyalty on their marriage. Background: Religion often regulates beliefs surrounding marriage and sexuality. Religion tends to support fidelity to marital vows. Previous quantitative studies indicated that higher religiosity is linked with higher levels of marital stability and satisfaction. Method: Using semistructured interviews with 261 married couples (N = 522) who were identified as both religious and relational exemplars, the potential connections and processes between religion, relationships, and fidelity or integrity were examined. Results: Three core themes emerged from systematic team‐based analyses: (1) integrity and/or fidelity strengthened marital quality and stability, (2) integrity and/or fidelity were core marital values and virtues, and (3) religion taught, developed, and motivated marital integrity and fidelity. Three subthemes were identified under this final theme: (3a) religious lifestyle, (3b) religious beliefs, and (3c) commitment to God. Contradictory voices that expressed and described challenges to marital integrity and fidelity are presented. Conclusion: Couples discussed how their faiths' teachings on integrity and/or fidelity strengthened marital quality and stability, added to their core marital values and virtues, and motivated marital integrity and/or fidelity through a religious lifestyle, religious beliefs and morals, and commitment to God that built commitment and fidelity to spouse. Implications: Therapists and educators who recognize that these deeply held values contribute to couples' stability and satisfaction within their relationship may be able to ask, understand, and harness religious strengths to facilitate commonalities and satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective and Background: We used qualitative methodology to explore forgiveness motivations and processes in an ethnically, economically, and geographically diverse sample of 198 highly religious Christian, Muslim, and Jewish families in the United States (N = 480). Prior research has identified several significant relational implications and outcomes of forgiveness. However, there is a need for additional research on forgiveness processes and motivations among highly religious families. Method: Families were interviewed jointly through a semistructured interview protocol. Analysis was conducted using thematic and team‐based coding procedures. Results: Core themes included (a) "Why forgive?": Relational, religious, and spiritual motivations; (b) "What enables state forgiveness?": Relational, religious, and spiritual processes; and (c) The role and development of trait forgiveness (forgivingness). Conclusion: Findings highlight the relational, religious, and spiritual motivations and processes present in forgiveness and the role religious/spiritual beliefs and practices play in those processes. Additionally, findings illustrate participants' value of the virtue of forgivingness and reported religious and relational processes that helped in developing the trait of forgivingness. Implications: We offer several questions that can be used as a starting point for practitioners to work within the worldview of religious clients to empower individuals, couples, and families to forgive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial research has established that religiosity can be a protective factor against depression. However, little research has explored these associations within couples. Theory and previous research provide evidence that these relations may be manifest through marital satisfaction. A longitudinal Actor–Partner Interdependence Model was used to test the dyadic relations between religiosity at Time-3, marital satisfaction at Time-4, and depressive symptoms at Time-5 in a long-term committed community sample of 331 married couples. Husbands' religiosity had a direct positive longitudinal impact on husbands' marital satisfaction 1 year later. Husbands' religiosity led to lower levels of their own depressive symptoms through the indirect effects of husbands' and wives' marital satisfaction. Wives' religiosity did not significantly impact any of the variables in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Muslim practice of wearing thehijab—the veiling and covering of a woman’s head and body. More specifically, this study aims to present insiders’ perspectives regarding the personal understandings of thehijabamong 20 wives and 20 husbands (n = 40) in religious Shia and Sunni Muslim families living in USA. Qualitative analysis yielded three emergent themes: (1) Thehijabas a symbol of religious commitment; (2) thehijabas a tool of protection, rather than oppression, for women and families; and (3) two different views of Muslims’ reasoning behind thehijab. These data suggest that, as perceived by “insider” participants, thehijabhas perceived benefits for religious Muslim families, although counterexamples and concerns are also expressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Islam is a major world religion and the Muslim population is one of the fastest growing religious populations in the Western world, including in the United States. However, few research studies have examined the lived religious experience of U.S. Muslim families. Much of the attention on Islam among researchers and the media tends to be on controversial aspects of the religion. The purpose of this paper is to examine the unique religious practice of the month-long fast of Ramadan, especially its perceived role on marital and familial relationships from an insider's perspective. Content analysis of in-depth, qualitative interviews of twenty diverse Shia and Sunni Muslim families living in the United States (N = 47 individuals) yielded several emergent themes. This study presents and explores data on the focal theme: "fasting brings us closer together." These data suggest that Ramadan serves a sacred, unifying, and integrating purpose for many of the 47 practicing Muslim mothers, fathers, and youth in this study. Meanings and processes involved in Ramadan and family relationships are explored and explained. Implications and applications of the research findings are discussed and some potential directions for future research are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has found that intergenerational transmission of religiosity results in higher family functioning and improved family relationships. Yet the Pew Research Center found that 44% of Americans reported that they had left the religious affiliation of their childhood. And 78% of the expanding group of those who identify as religiously unaffiliated ("Nones") reported that they were raised in "highly religious families." We suggest that this may be, in part, associated with religious parents exercising excessive firmness with inadequate flexibility (rigidity). We used a multiphase, systematic, team-based process to code 8000+ pages of in-depth interviews from 198 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim families from 17 states in all 8 major religio-cultural regions of the United States. We framed firmness as mainly about loyalty to God and God's purposes, and flexibility as mainly about loyalty to family members and their needs and circumstances. The reported findings provided a range of examples illustrating (a) religious firmness, (b) religious flexibility, as well as (c) efforts to balance and combine firmness and flexibility. We discuss conceptual and practical implications of treating firmness and flexibility as complementary loyalties in intergenerational faith transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]