Exploring Religious Coping Strategies and Burnout Among Faculty at a Christian University

This study examined burnout among faculty in Christian higher education through an integrative framework combining person–environment fit (PE-Fit), job demands–resources (JD-R), and workplace spirituality. A sample of 176 faculty from Christian universities and seminaries in the southwestern United States completed measures of burnout, religious coping, emotional intelligence (EI), job satisfaction, and intent-to-turnover. Results indicated that work-related burnout was the strongest predictor of both job satisfaction and turnover intentions, with job satisfaction emerging as the primary proximal predictor of turnover. Negative religious coping significantly intensified the negative relationship between burnout and job satisfaction, whereas positive religious coping was modestly associated with improved outcomes. Although EI was associated with several variables at the correlational level, there were mixed results in terms of predicting job satisfaction and intent-to-turnover. Regulation of one’s emotions was a significant predictor of job satisfaction for models three through five, while appraisal of one’s emotions was a significant predictor when including interaction terms with religious coping and burnout. Despite these specific terms being statistically significant, the overall models of predictors were not significant. Findings suggest that religious coping functions as a context-specific resource within faith-based institutions, highlighting the importance of value congruence and spiritually grounded coping for potentially mitigating burnout among Christian faculty.