Religious Correlates of Life Satisfaction among African Americans and Black Caribbeans: The Significance of Organizational and Subjective Dimensions of Religion.

This article examines the relationship between life satisfaction and four dimensions of religion—organizational religion (service attendance), nonorganizational religion (private religious activities), subjective religion (self-rated religiousness), and religious coping—among nationally representative samples of African American and Black Caribbean adults in the United States. Using data from the National Survey of American Life (2001–2003), the study found that both organized religious participation and subjective religiousness were positively associated with life satisfaction in both groups, while nonorganizational religious activities and religious coping showed no significant relationship. The findings highlight the importance of religious service attendance and personal religious identity in enhancing life satisfaction and suggest that spiritual assessments could be valuable in clinical practice with Black clients. Limitations include the cross-sectional design and the age of the data, which may affect the generalizability of the results to current populations.