Abstract
In this article, we describe research on the Receptivity Scale we developed in response to some of the problems we met when using Kenneth Pargament's religious coping-scales in the Netherlands (cf. Alma, Pieper & Van Uden, 2003). The main problem with Pargament's threefold conceptualisation of religious coping (self-directing, deferring and collaborative) is the underlying view of aan active, personal God. The Receptivity Scale does justice to the idea of a more impersonal God, which is probably more common in the secularised Netherlands. Furthermore, the scale takes into account that people are not always directly focused on the solution of problems, either with or without God. The scale is administered to two populations in Belgium and two populations in The Netherlands. We compare a) the scores of the respondents on the scale with their scores on other measures of religiosity and other psychological measures, and b) the scores of theology students with the scores of psychology students. We come to the conclusion that between the attitudes of basic trust on the one hand and trust in a personal God on the other hand, there are different degrees of relating to the transcendent in times of trouble.
