Religiousness has been shown to have a positive effect on both physical and mental health. However, several studies found that religiousness can be linked to religious and spiritual struggles which has negative effect on physical and mental health. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of religiousness on religious and spiritual struggles, if any. The Four Basic Dimensions of Religiousness Scale (4BDRS) (Saroglou, 2009) and The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (R/SS) (Exline, 2014) were administered to 209 adults in several cities in Indonesia through online survey. The result showed that religiousness has a significant negative effect on religious and spiritual struggles (β=-.3,  ρ<.05). Multiple regression test found that two dimensions of 4-BDRS have significant effect on religious and spiritual struggles, with Behaving has a significant positive effect (β=.26, ρ<.05) and Bonding has a significant negative effect (β=-.33, ρ<.05). The other two dimensions namely Believing and Belonging did not have significant effect. This study shed light to the potential dark side that religiousness might have. While as a whole, religiousness can minimize religious and spiritual struggles and so as some of its dimensions, a particular dimension might in the opposite, increase religious and spiritual struggles. Implication and application of this study will be discussed.

Key words: religiousness, religious and spiritual struggles.