Little empirical evidence is available about the use of religious-spiritual coping and its impact in the positive attitudes of predominantly Muslim war refugees from Kosovo and Bosnia. On the basis of Lepore and Evans' (1996) notion about 4 coping resources and Pargament's (1997) concept of religious-spiritual coping, this hypothesis-driven study focused on the cognitive resources and additional spiritual resources for coping. We collected information about religiosity, war-related trauma, religious-spiritual coping, optimism, and hope from 138 refugees recently resettled in Michigan and Washington states. A path model demonstrated that optimism was positively related to positive religious coping, which in turn was associated with increased religiosity and higher education. Hope, in contrast, was positively associated with education, and negatively associated with negative religious coping, which in turn was predicted by more severe trauma. These findings are discussed with respect to their theoretical and clinical implications as well as the limitations of the study. © 2003, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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