Date of Conferral

2023

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Christopher Bass

Abstract

The Black Church has been a significant source of support for many African Americans and has served as a protective factor while meeting religious and spiritual needs. However, some studies have suggested that the Black Church can also be a source of trauma, betrayal, and abuse for some African Americans. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects between emotional manipulation, gender discrimination, spiritual bullying, and spiritual neglect on outcomes associated with church hurt and understand occurrences of church hurt using betrayal trauma theory. A nonexperimental, quantitative, correlational research design was used evaluate data from 155 African American adults. Participants were recruited from the Facebook group Church on Sunday, Therapy on Mondays using snowball sampling. Online questionnaires consisted of the demographic questionnaire, Religious Proscription Scale, Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale, Religious Support Scale—Adapted, and Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale and disseminated using SurveyMonkey. A factorial analysis of variance was used to analyze the data. The results of this study were not statistically significant. The study revealed that emotional manipulation and spiritual bullying had a significant independent relationship with church hurt, and spiritual neglect was experienced by most participants. The results of this study can be used to promote positive social change by educating members of the Black Church on church hurt issues and potentially reduce or prevent the occurrence of church hurt for some African Americans.

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