To Doubt or Not to Doubt? Religious Development for Spirit-Empowered Christians

Spirit-empowered" Christians have experienced increases in numbers despite overall declines in individuals self-identified as Christians in recent years.Religious doubt, however, remains widespread among Christians.Higher levels of religiosity and spirituality lead to mental health benefits, but many who experience religious doubts disengage from their faith.To examine what is working for Spirit-empowered Christians and preserve the benefits of maintaining their faith systems, we examine predictors of religious doubt for this group.Relying on Self-Determination Theory, we theorize that religious pressures predict higher Truth-in-Text (TTT) religious schema, thereby leading to lower levels of religious doubt.Inversely, greater religious pressure predicts less xenosophia, a religious schema associated with greater religious doubt.We employed a cross-sectional design, using survey research, and analyzed it via covariance-based structural equation modeling.The analysis supported our theory, confirm-Salubritas 5 (2026) 77-109 © Author(s) 2026ing the hypothesis that the high levels of religious pressure reported by Spirit-empowered Christians lead to more literal interpretations of their faith and the scriptural text (more TTT), resulting in less religious doubt.Implications for Spirit-empowered institutions are discussed.Suggestions are made for how to process inevitable religious doubts in helpful ways, including by incorporating cognitive flexibility and referencing Biblical scriptures, so that Spirit-empowered Christians can retain the benefits of their faith systems during difficult times, when their assumptions about God and the world are challenged.