Attachment to god and parents: Testing the correspondence vs. compensation hypotheses

The relationship between early caregiver experiences and attachment to God was explored in the current study. Using the Attachment to God Inventory (AGI) developed by Beck and McDonald, the relationship between parent-child attachment and attachment to God was explored among a college population. In addi-tion, parental spirituality and religious emphases in the home were investigated. Comparisons of the AGI with parent-child attachment measures support a correspondence between working models of parents and God. Respondents that reported coming from homes that were emotionally cold or unspiritual exhibited higher lev-els of avoidance of intimacy in their relationship to God, a trend consistent with a Dismissing attachment style. Overprotective, rigid, or authoritarian homes were associated with higher levels of both avoidance of intimacy and anxiety over lovability in relationship to God, a trend characterized by the Fearful attachment style. Attachment theory is widely accepted as a broad encompassing model of psychosocial and emotional development. Recent work (Granqvist, 1998; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990; TenElshof & Furrow, 2000) has suggested that attachment the-ory may be an appropriate framework for