Religious meaning-making and prosocial action among disaster response volunteers

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores how religious beliefs influence meaning-making and prosocial action among community responders. Fourteen non-professional rescue and relief volunteers were interviewed post the 2018-19 floods in Kerala, India. The study adopts Braun and Clarke's Thematic Analysis with a critical realist approach. Several participants viewed the disaster as an act of God but simultaneously engaged in scientific sense-making; religious meaning-making offers a means of coming to terms, while rational causal attributions promote mitigation measures. Suffering was seen as a test of faith. Many volunteers experienced the disaster as a reminder that re-oriented them to piety and iterated human vulnerability. Although the disaster evoked a lack of control, they found meaning in the service of others and viewed their actions with humility and gratitude. Service was often both intrinsically meaningful and religiously motivated. The findings underscore the role of religious meaning-making in promoting prosocial action and community resilience post disasters.