Having described Snyder's influential theory of hope in the psychological research, I want to turn to reflect upon how this theory struggles to describe the religious experience of Christian hope.
In this post let's talk about agency attributions.
Recall, according to hope theory hope is a product of agency and pathway attributions. Agency attributions concern confidence and self-efficacy. Do I have what it takes to walk the pathway toward my desired goal? If so, I have hope. If not, my hope diminishes.
Now, pivot to religious hope. The issue of agency in religious hope is complicated. To be sure, our agency is involved in our relationship with God. As Paul wrote, "I press on toward the goal." And yet, there is also the strong recognition that, separate from God, my will, effort, and agency can accomplish nothing. Given this, Christian hope is less concerned with self-efficacy than surrender, getting my will out of the way. The phrase "Let go, Let God" applies here.
As concrete example, consider the first two steps of the Twelve Steps:
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We admitted we were powerless—that our lives had become unmanageable.
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Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Where is self-efficacy in this recognition of powerlessness? Christian hope comes, it seems, from turning one's back on agency attributions. Christian hope is less about agency than trust.
To be sure, Snyder's theory can be tweaked to fit this reframe, and he's done this in response to questions raised in the psychology of religion literature. The tweak comes by reworking the goal. If my goal is to trust in God, to surrender, and to let go and let God, do I have the "agency" to do that? I can I surrender? If I can, if I have a high agency expectation, then I have hope in moving toward that goal of surrender. Well, sure, you can always keep replacing the goal to make the theory fit. But when you do this the theory becomes less interesting and insightful. You're just shifting labels around and not really explaining anything, in this case how stepping away from agency altogether, in an act of trusting surrender and relinquishment, is associated with hope. And if you want to redescribe "surrender" as "agency" well, fine, but what I'd like to see is a more fine-grained psychological theory of surrender than calling surrender something it really isn't in a rejiggered theory.
To conclude, this is one issue--surrender versus self-efficacy--where psychological theories of hope struggle to describe religious hope. In the next post we'll turn to pathway attributions.
