More than 40 million American adults suffer from anxiety, but only a third receive care despite evidence of effective treatment. This is attributed to lack of access to adequate services, cultural-based myths, and prohibitive symptoms associated with anxiety, especially for marginalized populations such as racial minorities. Since spirituality is often used as a coping mechanism especially for racial groups, psychotherapy has slowly begun incorporating it into treatment. While this has the potential to reduce some barriers to care, the increasing number of Americans who are disaffiliating with traditional faiths or belong to minority spiritualities may not use the same coping mechanisms. The current study sought to contribute to the literature by obtaining a better understanding of whether the use of traditional spiritual activities and perceptions of God are different for spiritual majorities and minorities especially in managing anxiety. Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (n=1525) from the Baylor Religion Study, structural equation models were tested to examine the relationships between anxiety and religious beliefs related to attachment to God as well as between anxiety and spiritual activities that encompass both social, organizational and private, subjective religiosity. Minority stress and attachment theories guided hypotheses that higher levels of anxiety would be associated with status as a spiritual minority but would be positively mediated by participation in spiritual activities such as worship services, prayer and scripture reading as well as mediated by more secure attachment to God. Results indicated that unlike spiritual majorities, spiritual minorities show lower anxiety levels compared with spiritual majorities unless using traditional forms of spiritual activities. Rather than positive or negative perceptions of the relationship with God, inconsistent perceptions were associated with higher levels of anxiety for all participants. Spiritual minorities had lower levels of both positive and negative perceptions of God's persona as well as lower levels of positive perceptions of the relationship with God, none of which correlated to anxiety. The results may indicate that spiritual minorities use other activities to successfully cope with anxiety and that they have greater anxiety when trying to conform to the dominant culture. This has important implications for practice given that many therapists lack training on how to incorporate spirituality into treatment. Distinctions between perceptions of the relationship with God and of God's persona indicate the need for further study of how more nuanced spiritual beliefs influence anxiety outcomes for a diverse range of spiritual practice and of the process by which individuals intentionally use spiritual tools to cope with anxiety. / Ph. D.

This thesis is concerned with the development of the church educational system and its mission in the educational scheme of the Czech Republic. It also explores the post- revolutionary development and contemporary legislative background of the church educational system. The key chapter is devoted to more than 150-year history of Archbishop Grammar School in Kroměříž - since its foundation, through the communist period, until its restoration and its present condition. Then a detailed analysis of the spiritual environment and catechetic activity presently performed at Archbishop Grammar School follows. The goal of this thesis is to map out currently used methods and catechetic models at Archbishop Grammar School, their effectiveness, their usage and available means, with which it is possible to work at the school. The whole thesis thus responds to the need of objective evaluation of catechetic activity at Archbishop Grammar School in Kroměříž and wants to contribute to further possible development of this activity in the spirit of bigger effectiveness.