Scholars@Duke
David E Eagle

David E Eagle

Associate Research Professor of Global Health
Duke Global Health Institute
Box 90392, Durham, NC 27708
PO Box 90392, Durham, NC 27710
Office hours By appointment, email or call to set up.  

Scholarly Works - Journal articles

Christian Congregations as Sites of Response to Community Substance Use Issues: An Exploratory Needs Assessment Survey of Clergy in North Carolina, USA.

Journal article J Relig Health · June 28, 2026 Opioid overdose deaths have devastated communities across the USA for over two decades. This study explores how Christian clergy in North Carolina perceive and respond to substance use issues, including opioid misuse. An anonymous online survey of clergy i ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Childhood Abuse and the Mental Health of Seminary Students: The Mediating Role of R/S Struggles

Journal article Review of Religious Research · June 1, 2026 Seminary students have been found to be at a higher risk of experiencing abuse in childhood compared with the general U.S. population, as well as demonstrate mental health struggles. This study aims to understand how R/S struggles might explain the relatio ... Full text Open Access Cite

Religious and Spiritual Struggles and Depressive Symptoms Among Seminary Students: Childhood Religiosity as Boon or Buffer?

Journal article Pastoral Psychology · June 1, 2026 This study examined whether early life religiosity moderated the relationship between religious/spiritual (R/S) struggles and mental health among 535 seminary students in the Seminary to Early Ministry (SEM) Study. We proposed two competing hypotheses: the ... Full text Cite

Suicidal Ideation Among Students at a United States Seminary: The "Wounded Healer" and Implications for Clergy Mental Health.

Journal article Journal of religion and health · June 2026 Analogous to other "helping professions," clergy often experience a higher prevalence of adverse mental health outcomes than the general population. However, it remains unclear whether this elevated risk can be attributed to work-related factors (e.g., hig ... Full text Cite

How Do Imams Describe Mental Health and Well-Being? A Qualitative Study

Journal article Pastoral Psychology · January 1, 2026 Given the significant role of imams as religious leaders, moral regulators, and counselors in society, it is important to understand how they describe and conceptualize mental health. This has not previously been studied. An exploratory qualitative study w ... Full text Cite

The role of faith in suicide prevention among people living with HIV: perspectives of religious leaders and mental health workers in Tanzania

Journal article Mental Health Religion and Culture · January 1, 2026 Religious leaders are important actors on the pathway to care for many people experiencing mental distress, particularly in low-resource settings. There is a need for collaboration with religious leaders in suicide risk recognition and interventions. From ... Full text Cite

A brief report on the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences among United Methodist clergy.

Journal article Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy · October 2025 ObjectiveThis brief report examines the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among United Methodist Church clergy in North Carolina. Clergy serve the mental, spiritual, emotional, and material needs of their congregants and communiti ... Full text Cite

House Negro or Field Negro?: Racial Salience and Claims-Making in the United Methodist Church

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · September 1, 2025 Relational inequalities theory relies on categorical differences in status to explain why the claims of people of color may be discouraged or denied. However, this mechanism may be insufficient to explain intraracial inequalities in claims-making. In this ... Full text Cite

Peer Networks and Ideological Consistency: How Student Communities Facilitate Belief Liberalization in Higher Education1

Journal article American Journal of Sociology · September 1, 2025 Why do students in higher education tend to become more liberal? The authors outline a model of belief change wherein cognitive motivations for ideological consistency interact with social factors in peer networks to influence how students in higher educat ... Full text Cite

An Exploration of the Mediators and Moderators of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Among Clergy: Secondary Analysis of Data From the Selah Trial, a Preference-Based Randomized Wait-List-Controlled Trial

Journal article International Journal of Stress Management · March 20, 2025 We conducted a secondary analysis of the Selah trial, a preference-based, partially randomized, wait-list-controlled trial, to evaluate mediators and effect modifiers of a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) intervention. Participants were United Met ... Full text Cite

Physical activity and diet pattern do not mitigate C-reactive protein increases associated with oral contraceptive use.

Journal article PloS one · January 2025 The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of body mass index (BMI), physical activity (PA) level, dietary inflammatory index (DII), and oral contractive (OC) use on C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, and to determine if elevated CRP values refle ... Full text Cite

The weight of the yoke: a qualitative analysis of the stressors for clergy across a mental health continuum

Journal article Mental Health Religion and Culture · January 1, 2025 Healthy clergy serve as the cornerstone of thriving congregations and, by extension, healthier communities. However, the multifaced working responsibilities combined with a deep sense of responsibility to one's sacred call can produce a cascade of sources ... Full text Cite

The influence of worship practices on views of the etiology and treatment of depression among Revivalist and Protestant pastors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Journal article Mental Health Religion and Culture · January 1, 2025 Pentecostal or Charismatic Christianity (PCC) emphasises spiritual forces and the Holy Spirit's power. Concerns exist that PCC clergy might over-spiritualize mental illness, discouraging professional mental health treatment for their parishioners. This stu ... Full text Cite

RELTRAD2: Refining the State of the Art of Religious Classification by Reconsidering the Categorization of Nondenominational Respondents

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · September 1, 2024 RELTRAD is a major religious taxonomy used by a large number of researchers. Although criticisms have been raised about its utility, improving the algorithm to capture contemporary religious dynamics is important given its widespread use. The present RELTR ... Full text Cite

Prevalence of obesity in religious clergy in the United States: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Journal article Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · July 2024 ObjectiveThis systematic review aims to summarize the current body of evidence concerning the prevalence of obesity among clergy (i.e., the officially designated leaders of a religious group) in the United States.MethodFrom November 2022 ... Full text Cite

When Shepherds Shed: Trajectories of Weight-Related Behaviors in a Holistic Health Intervention Tailored for US Christian Clergy.

Journal article J Relig Health · June 2024 Maintaining healthy behaviors is challenging. Based upon previous reports that in North Carolina (NC), USA, overweight/obese clergy lost weight during a two-year religiously tailored health intervention, we described trajectories of diet, physical activity ... Full text Link to item Cite

Adverse Childhood Experiences Among Seminarians: Personal Experiences of Trauma and Implications for Pastoral Well-Being and Ministerial Training

Journal article Journal of Psychology and Theology · March 1, 2024 Recent research has shown Mainline Protestant clergy evidence poor mental health. In accounting for this, research has focused on occupational factors that impact health, with less attention paid to the role of selection into ministry as it relates to heal ... Full text Cite

Divine Struggles Among Those Doing God's Work: A Longitudinal Assessment Predicting Depression and Burnout and the Role of Social Support in United Methodist Clergy

Journal article Sociology of Religion A Quarterly Review · January 1, 2024 In this study, we examine the role of spiritual struggles among clergy, in the form of "divine struggle"or feelings of alienation from God and their associations with well-being (depressive symptoms and burnout) among clergy. Drawing from a life-stress per ... Full text Cite

Pastoring in a Pandemic: Sources and Types of Social Support Used by United Methodist Clergy in the Early Period of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Journal article Journal of Psychology and Theology · December 1, 2023 COVID-19 and its associated restrictions around in-person gatherings fundamentally unsettled routine ways of doing ministry. In this article, we draw on 50 in-depth interviews conducted with United Methodist clergy in the early period of the COVID-19 pande ... Full text Open Access Cite

Is There a Crisis in Clergy Health?: Reorienting Research Using a National Sample

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · September 1, 2023 Are religious leaders unusually unhealthy? This question has long occupied scholars interested in the study of religious institutions, and a significant body of research has examined the causes, correlates, and effects of poor health among clergy. In this ... Full text Cite

Correction to “Expanding the Horizontal Call: A Typology of Social Influence on the Call to Ministry”

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · September 2023 Full text Cite

The Selah Pilot Study of Spiritual, Mindfulness, and Stress Inoculation Practices on Stress-Related Outcomes Among United Methodist Clergy in the United States.

Journal article Journal of religion and health · August 2023 The job-demand-control-support model indicates that clergy are at high risk for chronic stress and adverse health outcomes. A multi-group pre-test-post-test design was used to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and range of outcome effect sizes for f ... Full text Cite

The Gap in Mental Health Service Utilization Among United Methodist Clergy with Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms.

Journal article J Relig Health · June 2023 Clergy are tasked with multiple interpersonal administrative, organizational, and religious responsibilities, such as preaching, teaching, counseling, administering sacraments, developing lay leader skills, and providing leadership and vision for the congr ... Full text Link to item Cite

Burial workers' perceptions of community resistance and support systems during an Ebola outbreak in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: a qualitative study.

Journal article Conflict and health · May 2023 BackgroundCommunity Health Workers (CHWs) provide vital services during disease outbreaks. Appropriate burials of those who died from an infectious disease outbreak is a critical CHW function to prevent infection and disease spread. During the 201 ... Full text Cite

Expanding the Horizontal Call: A Typology of Social Influence on the Call to Ministry

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · March 1, 2023 This research examines the social actors and interactions that facilitate seminary students' sense of calling. Drawing from 36 in-depth interviews with first year Masters of Divinity students, we introduce six ideal typical social others who play a formati ... Full text Open Access Cite

Introducing the Seminary to Early Ministry Study

Journal article Religious Education · January 1, 2023 The Seminary to Early Ministry (SEM) Study is a mixed-method, prospective study designed to provide high-quality empirical data on student formation in theological education. The study will use a series of surveys and in-depth interviews to track three coh ... Full text Cite

Are Women Elders Paid Less than Men? A Brief Report from the North Carolina Statewide Longitudinal Survey of United Methodist Clergy

Journal article Review of Religious Research · December 2022 BackgroundResearch has established that salary disparities exist between men and women pastors in the United Methodist Church. However, little work has been done examining ... Full text Cite

Beyond Profession: The Next Future of Theological Education

Journal article Practical Theology · July 4, 2022 Full text Cite

Changes in Sabbath-Keeping and Mental Health Over Time: Evaluation Findings From the Sabbath Living Study

Journal article Journal of Psychology and Theology · June 1, 2022 Work-related stress is experienced at a high level in the United States. Clergy are particularly likely to over-extend themselves to act on their sacred call. Sabbath-keeping may offer a practice that is beneficial for mental health, yet many Protestant cl ... Full text Cite

Seminary Students and Physical Health: Beliefs, Behaviors, and Barriers.

Journal article J Relig Health · April 2022 As an occupational group, clergy exhibit numerous physical health problems. Given the physical health problems faced by clergy, understanding where physical health falls within the priorities of seminary students, the ways students conceptualize physical h ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Reproducing Inequality in a Formally Antiracist Organization: The Case of Racialized Career Pathways in the United Methodist Church

Journal article American Journal of Sociology · March 1, 2022 Victor Ray argues organizations are racial structures that legitimate the unequal distribution of resources and stratify the agency of racial groups through organizational processes that treat White identity as a credential and decouple formal rules meant ... Full text Cite

Age differences in trajectories of depressive, anxiety, and burnout symptoms in a population with a high likelihood of persistent occupational distress.

Journal article Int Psychogeriatr · January 2022 OBJECTIVES: Work in occupations with higher levels of occupational stress can bring mental health costs. Many older adults worldwide are continuing to work past traditional retirement age, raising the question whether older adults experience depression, an ... Full text Link to item Cite

Pastoral Ministry in Unsettled Times: A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of Clergy During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Journal article Review of religious research · January 2022 BackgroundCOVID-19 and its associated restrictions around in-person gatherings have created unprecedented challenges for religious congregations and those who lead them. While several surveys have attempted to describe how pastors and congregation ... Full text Open Access Cite

The Financial Impacts of COVID-19 on United Methodist Churches in North Carolina: a Qualitative Study of Pastors' Perspectives and Strategies.

Journal article Review of religious research · January 2022 BackgroundIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, churches in the United States were forced to stop meeting in person and move to remote forms of worship and congregational life. This shift likely impacted congregational finances, which are primaril ... Full text Cite

Clergy Who Leave Congregational Ministry: A Review of the Literature

Journal article Journal of Psychology and Theology · December 1, 2021 Since its inception in the 1960s, research on premature (i.e., pre-retirement) clergy attrition from congregational ministry has focused on identifying the factors that precipitate and mitigate ministry exits, while the rates at which clergy leave the mini ... Full text Cite

The Selah study protocol of three interventions to manage stress among clergy: a preference-based randomized waitlist control trial.

Journal article Trials · December 2021 IntroductionLike many helping professionals in emotional labor occupations, clergy experience high rates of mental and physical comorbidities. Regular stress management practices may reduce stress-related symptoms and morbidity, but more research ... Full text Cite

Evaluation of a remote, internet-delivered version of the Trier Social Stress Test.

Journal article International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · July 2021 The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is a widely used, reliable, and ecologically valid method for inducing acute stress under controlled conditions. Traditionally, the TSST is administered with staff physically present with participants, which limits the p ... Full text Cite

Enjoyment and meaning in daily activities among caregivers of orphaned and separated children in four countries

Journal article Children and Youth Services Review · September 1, 2020 Introduction: There are many orphaned and separated children (OSC) in the world and caregivers play a crucial role in raising them. Frameworks on employee mental health incorporate elements of both enjoyment/difficulties and values (i.e., hedonic and eudai ... Full text Cite

Religion and Caregiving for Orphans and Vulnerable Children: A Qualitative Study of Caregivers Across Four Religious Traditions and Five Global Contexts.

Journal article J Relig Health · June 2020 Studies of caregivers of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) rarely examine the role religion plays in their lives. We conducted qualitative interviews of 69 caregivers in four countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Cambodia, and India (Hyderabad and Nagaland), and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Using a holistic health approach to achieve weight-loss maintenance: results from the Spirited Life intervention.

Journal article Transl Behav Med · February 3, 2020 Weight-loss maintenance is essential to sustain the health benefits of weight loss. Studies with lower intensity intervention supports under real-world conditions are lacking. This study examined changes in weight and cardiometabolic biomarkers among Spiri ... Full text Link to item Cite

Putting virtues in context: engaging the VIA classification of character strengths in caregiving for orphans and vulnerable children across cultures

Journal article Journal of Positive Psychology · November 2, 2019 The VIA Classification of Character Strengths has broken important ground for measuring character strengths across cultures. Because the VIA Classification is a closed system of abstract strengths, however, it is unknown how end-users engage strengths in p ... Full text Open Access Cite

Caring and thriving: An international qualitative study of caregivers of orphaned and vulnerable children and strategies to sustain positive mental health

Journal article · March 1, 2019 © 2018 Background: Child well-being is associated with caregiver mental health. Research has focused on the absence or presence of mental health problems, such as depression, in caregivers. However, positive mental health – defined as the presence of posit ... Full text Open Access Cite

Social Networks, Support, and Depressive Symptoms: Gender Differences among Clergy

Journal article Socius · January 1, 2019 This study extends social-psychological research on social networks and mental health by examining cross-gender differences in social integration and depression among United Methodist clergy in North Carolina. Using data from the fifth wave of the Clergy H ... Full text Cite

Disentangling Race and Socioeconomic Status in HealthDisparities Research: an Examination of Black and White Clergy.

Journal article Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · October 2018 AimSophisticated adjustments for socioeconomic status (SES) in health disparities research may help illuminate the independent role of race in health differences between Blacks and Whites. In this study of people who share the same occupation (Uni ... Full text Cite

Household Charitable Giving at the Intersection of Gender, Marital Status, and Religion

Journal article Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly · February 1, 2018 Past research reveals mixed results regarding the relationship between gender and charitable giving. We show gender plays a significant role in giving but only when considered alongside marital status and religion. Using the 2006 Portraits of American Life ... Full text Open Access Cite

A 2-Year Holistic Health and Stress Intervention: Results of an RCT in Clergy.

Journal article Am J Prev Med · September 2017 INTRODUCTION: This study sought to determine the effect of a 2-year, multicomponent health intervention (Spirited Life) targeting metabolic syndrome and stress simultaneously. DESIGN: An RCT using a three-cohort multiple baseline design was conducted in 20 ... Full text Link to item Cite

Prospective Associations Between Depressive Symptoms and the Metabolic Syndrome: the Spirited Life Study of Methodist Pastors in North Carolina.

Journal article Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · August 2017 BackgroundMetabolic syndrome (Met-S) has a robust concurrent association with depression. A small, methodologically limited literature suggests that Met-S and depression are reciprocally related over time, an association that could contribute to t ... Full text Cite

The Honeymoon is Over: Occupational Relocation and Changes in Mental Health Among United Methodist Clergy

Journal article Review of Religious Research · March 1, 2017 In this study we examine how the process of relocation affects the mental health of United Methodist clergy and the extent to which relocation is associated with changes in clergy perception of the workplace environment and feelings of self-efficacy. We an ... Full text Cite

The Negative Relationship between Size and the Probability of Weekly Attendance in Churches in the United States

Journal article Socius · January 1, 2016 Are people less likely to attend large churches? Using nationally representative data, I find a negative relationship between size and the probability of attendance for Conservative, Mainline, and black Protestants and for Catholics in parishes larger than ... Full text Open Access Cite

Historicizing the megachurch

Journal article Journal of Social History · March 1, 2015 The dominant view of megachurches claims they represent a new religious form, born in the United States in the 1970s and 80s. Contrary to this position, this research demonstrates that megachurches enjoy a long history in Protestantism. An important exampl ... Full text Cite

Methodological considerations in the use of name generators and interpreters

Journal article Social Networks · January 1, 2015 With data from the Clergy Health Initiative Longitudinal Survey, we look for interviewer effects, differences between web and telephone delivery, and panel conditioning bias in an "important matters" name generator and interpreter, replicated from the U.S. ... Full text Cite

Farmland protection and agriculturalland values at the urban-rural Fringe: British Columbia's agricultural land reserve

Journal article American Journal of Agricultural Economics · January 1, 2015 Farmland conservation policies typically use zoning and differentiated taxes to prevent urban development of farmland, but little is known about the effectiveness of these policies. This study adds to current knowledge by examining the impact of British Co ... Full text Cite

Book Review: Places of Faith: A Road Trip across America's Religious Landscape

Journal article Review of Religious Research · March 2013 Full text Cite

Mega, medium, and mini: Size and the socioeconomic status composition of American protestant churches

Journal article Research in the Sociology of Work · January 1, 2012 Purpose - To assess the following question: Do large Protestant congregations in the United States exert social and political influence simply as a function of their size, or do other characteristics amplify their influence? Methodology/Approach - Using th ... Full text Cite

Changing Patterns of Attendance at Religious Services in Canada, 1986-2008

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · March 1, 2011 According to the General Social Survey, the combined rate of weekly and monthly attendance at religious services in Canada has declined by about 20 points from 1986 to 2008. Approximately half of this decline stems from the increase in the proportion of pe ... Full text Cite

The loosening bond of religion on canadian society: Reply to Bibby

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · January 1, 2011 Full text Cite

Intersecting Identities as a Source of Religious Incongruence

Journal article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · 2010 In a recent article, Chaves (2010) argues that much of the work in the sociology of religion is susceptible to the religious congruence fallacy–the tendency to assume consistency between religious beliefs and one’s attitudes and behaviors across situations ... Cite

Perceived social support, received social support, and depression among clergy

Journal article Journal of Social and Personal Relationships We argue perceived support is best conceptualized as more a measure of how an individual appraises their situation rather than a true reflection of how much support they receive. To test this theory, we used survey data from the Clergy Health Initiative Pa ... Cite