RELIGIOUS PLURALISM , RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY , AND RELIGIOUS COPING

This study examined religious pluralism, religious activity, and religious coping with participants consisting of 97 female students from a Southwestern state university. We administered a series of questions concerning attitudes toward religion and God, demographic questions, and the Ways of Religious Coping Scale (WORCS). On the basis of the responses participants gave to the attitudes toward God and religion questions, the researchers divided the participants into an Exclusivist group, a Neutral group, and a Pluralistic group. We found that Exclusivists were more apt to use religion as a coping device and were more actively involved in their religion than were the Pluralists. INTRODUCTION In Western nations religious pluralism increasingly becomes an issue due to the varieties of approaches to religion/non-religion that exists within them. Kosim, Mayer, and Keysar (2001) reported that in the USA the number of people who self-report Christianity as their religion has dropped from 86.2% in 1990 to 76.5% in 2001; other religions have grown from 3.3% to 3.7% over the same period of time. The largest increase has been in those who report no religion or refuse to participate: from 10.5% to 19.5%. With Christians representing over a three-quarters majority (76.5%, see above) some would argue with the notion that the USA is truly pluralistic (e.g., Beaman, 2003). However, the groups that call themselves Christian also vary quite widely. In the data Kosim et al. (2001) reported, Catholic (24.5%) and Baptist (16.3%) made up the largest