Marriage and the spiritual realm: The role of proximal and distal religious constructs in marital functioning

Ninety-seven couples completed questionnaires about their involvement in jo int religious activities and their perceptions regarding the sanctification of marriage, including perceived sacred qualities of marriage and beliefs about the manifestation of God in marriage. In contrast to individual relig iousness and religious homogamy (distal religious constructs), these proxim al religious variables directly reflect an integration of religion and marr iage, and they were associated with greater global marital adjustment, more perceived benefits from marriage, less marital conflict, more verbal colla boration, and less use of verbal aggression and stalemate to discuss disagr eements for both wives and husbands. The proximal measures also added subst antial unique variance (adjusted R-2 change ranged from .06 to .48) to spec ific aspects of marital functioning after controlling demographic factors a nd distal religious variables in hierarchical regression analyses.