Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

The prevalence of depression in society underscores the need for awareness and support, particularly within Pentecostal communities, where depression remains underexplored. While studies suggest how the Christian context shapes depression, the literature lacks depth about the relationship between Pentecostalism and depression. This gap risks fostering misconceptions, marginalizing sufferers, and allowing dominant voices to impose stigmatizing interpretations that discourage external help and reinforce unrealistic norms. These repercussions emphasize the need to research the relationship between Pentecostalism and depression to address stigma, create supportive environments, and ensure that sufferers retain ownership of their mental health narratives. This dissertation contributes to this need by employing Grounded Theory to analyze open, in-depth interviews with nineteen participants to answer the research question: How do Pentecostals living in the United States experience, interpret, and respond to depression?

Depression among the participants was characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness, accompanied by a loss of interest in activities, fatigue, suicidal ideation, self-harm, difficulty concentrating, and disruptions in daily functioning. The analysis indicated that participants experienced depression in close connection to the stressful conditions and events they faced. These stressful conditions arose from bereavement, maternal roles, personal and moral failures, and perceived purposes or callings. While these events could be seen as common or expected life challenges, participants explicitly linked them to their depression.

A recurring theme in their accounts was their expectation that the Spirit would eliminate, minimize, or empower them to overcome life’s challenges. However, their experiences of depression and stressful conditions challenged this belief, creating an ongoing dissonance between what they believed should happen and what occurred. Participants used therapeutic resources, such as counseling, medication, and consumer tools, to help them understand and cope with depression, stressful conditions, and the underlying disconnection between their theological convictions and the reality they encountered. While these resources provided temporary relief, they did not resolve the tension, and their depression persisted. As a result, this tension between their expectations of the Spirit and their lived realities emerged as the contextual framework through which they understood and narrated their experiences of depression.

The discussion chapter interprets this tension through Paulo Freire’s concept of conscientization, which refers to the process by which individuals develop a critical awareness of the social forces shaping their lives. Specifically, the chapter discusses how, as part of depression’s disruption of the participants’ daily lives, they began to reflect more critically on the socio-theological systems shaping their suffering. One of these systems is Pentecostal triumphalism, a social and theological orientation emphasizing victory, healing, and divine empowerment. The discussion claims that triumphalism functions as a social script that has shaped participants’ expectations of the Spirit and framed their understanding of life in ways that left little interpretive space for off-script experiences such as depression and stressful conditions. Although participants demonstrated resilience and resourcefulness, their therapeutic strategies appeared to reinforce individualized understandings of distress, making it more challenging to confront the systemic nature of their suffering.

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