Looking Up: Surrender and Church Attendance Across Racial Groups in Southern Appalachia

There are differences in the importance of religiosity among racial groups. High spirituality and religiosity has been linked to lower amounts of depression, anxiety, and stress (Dailey 2007) and is, therefore an important variable to study. Surrender, a specific aspect of religiosity has been studied very little. A sample of undergraduate college students took the Surrender Scale (SS, Wong-McDonald & Gorsuch, 2000) and the BMMRS (Fetzer Institute, 1999). Surrendering to God may be found to predict health just as other forms of religiosity have. My interest in this study was to determine whether Surrender and church attendance vary among racial groups in Southern Appalachia as has been found in other geographic areas.