ISSI Celibate Gay Christian Study
from Spiritual Friendship:
Guest post by the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity and Dr. Christine Baker.
In January of this past year, the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity (ISSI), under the leadership of Dr. Olya Zaporozhets and Dr. Mark Yarhouse, conducted a study concerning psychological factors and the spirituality of celibate gay Christians that relate to the wellbeing of “Side” B gay Christians. One of the student members of ISSI, Christine Baker, recently completed the analysis and write-up of the collected data in her dissertation, which is entitled, “Attachment, Well-Being, Distress, and Spirituality in Celibate Gay Christians”. We would like to first begin by expressing our gratitude to everyone who participated in the study. We are thankful for your time as it is very valuable, especially in such a busy world. We, therefore, truly want to thank you all for taking the time to complete the survey. We would also like to provide you all with a short summary of the results, as part of the debriefing process and in appreciation for the contribution to the research you all provided through your participation.
As seen in the title of (the now) Dr. Baker’s dissertation, the four factors being studied in the celibate gay Christian population were attachment style, well-being, distress, and spirituality. When reviewing the results from the clinical questionnaires along with a demographic survey of the 118 participants, the research team found some surprising and some expected results. To begin with the surprising results, this group of participants was moderately to highly content with life. This was a surprise due to previous research suggesting that social support was the strongest predictor of well-being in LGB persons (Lyons, Pitts, & Grierson, 2013). With “Side B” gay Christians not fitting clearly into one group by either being “too gay” for conservative Christians or “not gay enough” for “Side A” (Urquhart, 2014), the researchers hypothesized that this group would have low well-being scores as they often do not have a strong support system. However, in this sample, well-being questions were answered with an average of 80% satisfaction or above in regards six out of nine aspects of life (specifically: “your standard of living”, “your health”, “how safe you feel”, “feeling part of your community”, “your spirituality or religion”, and “your life as a whole”). We found that some of this variance was accounted by extrinsic religiosity levels: the higher scores on organized and non-organized religious activity correlating with higher well-being scores.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
