Despite recent scholarly interest in college students' spirituality and spiritual development, as well as research indicating that students are interested in spirituality and have a strong desire to integrate spirituality into their lives, few researchers have addressed the spiritual experiences of gay and lesbian college students. Utilizing a phenomenological qualitative approach, I explored the spiritual experiences of nine gay and lesbian college students at two religiously affiliated universities in the southwest region of the United States. The ages of the participants ranged from 19 to 23, with a mean of 21. There were five female, three male, and one gender queer participants. Seven participants identified as white, while the other two participants identified as Hispanic. I identified three major themes related to their lived experience of spirituality: (1) spiritual quest characterized by struggle and pain, (2) finding reconciliation and acceptance, and (3) the importance of support from the university, student groups, friends, and family. Implications for practice included the importance of establishing an official recognized student organization to support gay and lesbian students, creating spaces for personal reflection, meditation, prayer, and solitude as well as safe spaces, the need for educational and outreach programs for faculty, staff, and students, and an evaluation of institutional policies the might negatively impact gay and lesbian students. Suggestions for future research are discussed including the exploration of the impact that faculty members have on students' spiritual growth.

The purpose of this study was to explore the religion – health link in a sample of adults and undergraduate students (N = 555) that identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB), and to explore how perceptions of cultural humility of religious individuals and groups toward LGB individuals affect the relationship between religion and health. First, I found religious commitment among LGB individuals was positively correlated with satisfaction in life, but it was negatively correlated with physical health. Second, I found that cultural humility moderated the relationship between religious commitment and satisfaction in life for LGB individuals involved in a religious community. The lowest levels of satisfaction with life were found for individuals with low religious commitment and perceived the cultural humility of their religious community to be low. However, cultural humility did not moderate the relationship between religious commitment and mental and physical health outcomes. Third, I found cultural humility did not moderate the relationship between religious commitment and minority stress (i.e., internalized homophobia). Fourth, I found that cultural humility was a significant positive predictor of motivations to forgive a hurt caused by a religious individual. I conclude by discussing limitations, areas for future research, and implications for counseling.