Religion as a Community Resource for Well-Being: Prevention, Healing, and Empowerment Pathways

The potential of religion as a resource for well‐being is examined, with special focus on prevention, healing, and empowerment pathways of influence— pathways operative both inside congregations and in outreach to the community beyond the congregation. Concerning the prevention pathway, religion offers potentially important access to families and children, and the resources of support, lifestyle values, community access, and volunteers. For the healing pathway, religion offers unique and powerful means and vantage points for influencing cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Concerning group empowerment, religion has the potential to facilitate groups' critical awareness of oppressive forces, to offer compelling alternative visions and cultural values, and to mobilize human and institutional resources. Psychologists are encouraged to focus more effort on learning from and working with religion and religious organizations to enhance their potential for prevention, healing, and empowerment in the community. A number of limitations and potential negative influences of religion in community contexts are also discussed.