Studies About Religion

[Lorin Cupples]

Theseries aims to renew the study of religion as a field of inquiry that is open in terms of disciplinary affiliation. It publishes scholars and writers from every academic division and intellectual vantage.

What defines the series are a few fundamentals: experiment in conceiving the stories that engage the past and the present, interest in questions of voice and authority, and attention to the quality of writing.

The editors invite proposals for works that augment familiar forms of academic argument, whether working with concepts or contending with an archive or anthropological situation. We are open to big claims and microhistories, short ruminations and unlikely subjects. Our interest is in books that move the discussion about religion forward and chart new possibilities for humanistic inquiry.

People who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier and more civically engaged than either religiously unaffiliated adults or inactive members of religious groups, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the United States and more than two dozen other countries.

Many previous studies have found positive associations between religion and health in the United States. Researchers have shown, for example, that Americans who regularly attend religious services tend to live longer.1 Other studies have focused on narrower health benefits, such as how religion may help breast cancer patients cope with stress. On the other hand, there are also studies that have not found a robust relationship between religion and better health in the U.S., and even some studies that have shown negative relationships, such as higher rates of obesity among highly religious Americans. (For more on previous studies of religion and health, see this sidebar.)

This analysis finds that in the U.S. and many other countries around the world, regular participation in a religious community clearly is linked with higher levels of happiness and civic engagement (specifically, voting in elections and joining community groups or other voluntary organizations). This may suggest that societies with declining levels of religious engagement, like the U.S., could be at risk for declines in personal and societal well-being. But the analysis finds comparatively little evidence that religious affiliation, by itself, is associated with a greater likelihood of personal happiness or civic involvement.

Moreover, there is a mixed picture on the five health measures. In the U.S. and elsewhere, actively religious people are less likely than others to engage in certain behaviors that are sometimes viewed as sinful, such as smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol. But religious activity does not have a clear association with how often people exercise or whether they are obese. And, after adjusting for differences in age, education, income and other factors, there is no statistical link between being actively religious and being in better self-reported overall health in any of the 26 countries and territories studied except Taiwan, Mexico and the United States.4

Even in the U.S., the strength of the linkage between religion and health varies, depending on measures and datasets used. For example, in some years, the General Social Survey has shown that religiously affiliated people who go to church or other religious services at least once a month are particularly likely to report that they are in excellent overall health, while in other recent years this has not been the case. (See sidebar on the United States).

Whatever the explanation may be, more than one-third of actively religious U.S. adults (36%) describe themselves as very happy, compared with just a quarter of both inactive and unaffiliated Americans. Across 25 other countries for which data are available, actives report being happier than the unaffiliated by a statistically significant margin in almost half (12 countries), and happier than inactively religious adults in roughly one-third (nine) of the countries.

The gaps are often striking: In Australia, for example, 45% of actively religious adults say they are very happy, compared with 32% of inactives and 33% of the unaffiliated. And there is no country in which the data show that actives are significantly less happy than others (though in many countries, there is not much of a difference between the actives and everyone else).

When it comes to measuring civic participation, the results again follow a pattern: On balance, people who are actively religious are also more likely to be active in voluntary and community groups. This dovetails with previous studies in the United States.6

In the U.S., 58% of actively religious adults say they are also active in at least one other (nonreligious) kind of voluntary organization, including charity groups, sports clubs or labor unions. Only about half of all inactively religious adults (51%) and fewer than half of the unaffiliated (39%) say the same.7

A similar pattern appears in many other countries for which data are available: Actively religious adults tend to be more involved in voluntary organizations. In 11 out of 25 countries analyzed outside of the U.S., actives are more likely than inactives to join community groups. And in seven of the countries, actively religious adults are more likely than those who are religiously unaffiliated to belong to voluntary organizations.

These are among the key findings of a new analysis of data from cross-national surveys conducted since 2010 by Pew Research Center and two other organizations: the World Values Survey Association and the International Social Survey Programme. This report focuses on countries with sufficiently large populations of people who are actively religious, inactively religious and religiously unaffiliated to allow researchers to compare all three groups using the same survey data. As a result, the analysis cannot be truly global: 26 countries surveyed by the WVS are used to measure self-rated health, happiness and voluntary group participation; 25 countries, also surveyed by the WVS, are included for voting; and 19 countries surveyed by the ISSP are used to examine smoking, drinking alcohol, obesity and exercise. A Pew Research Center survey provides U.S. estimates for self-rated happiness. The countries analyzed are mostly Christian-majority nations in Europe and the Americas (because these countries tend to have substantial unaffiliated populations), though the analysis also includes a few African and Asian countries and territories, such as South Africa, South Korea and Japan.

While in many countries religious activity seems to be connected with certain benefits, such as higher levels of happiness, it is unclear whether there is a direct, causal connection and, if so, exactly how it works.

Prior research suggests that one factor may be particularly important: The social connections that come with regular participation in group events, such as weekly worship services, Bible study groups, Sabbath dinners and Ramadan iftars.9 In an effort to understand why religion is related to happiness, Chaeyoon Lim of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Robert Putnam of Harvard University examined data from a representative sample of American adults surveyed in 2006 and recontacted in 2007. The researchers found that religious participation had a strong impact on happiness among highly religious people with many friends in their congregations, but not among those with few friends in their congregations.10

Similarly, research that examines the association between religion and mortality points to religious service participation as the key aspect of religion that promotes longevity. For instance, sociologist Jibum Kim and colleagues have found that regular service attendance is associated with reduced risk of mortality, while strength of religious affiliation, prayer, and religious beliefs have no effect.13 This association between service attendance and mortality is presumably due to the healthy behaviors and lack of risky behaviors among regular churchgoers. 14

Other researchers argue that religion can more directly lead to better health by proscribing risky behaviors and promoting healthy ones.19 Many religions discourage members from excessive alcohol and drug use, for example.20 Some religions, such as the Seventh-day Adventist Church and certain schools of Buddhism and Hinduism, encourage specific behaviors that may have health benefits, such as a vegetarian diet, regular exercise and meditation.21

Finally, it could also be that religious activity is associated with greater well-being simply because happier, healthier people have more inclination and ability to be active in their communities, including religious groups. People who are unhappy and struggling physically or financially generally may be more isolated and less able to engage in social activities.

When it comes to self-assessments of health, there is no clear pattern to indicate that either identifying with a religion or regularly attending religious services makes a significant difference in an international context.

Asking people to assess their own health may seem like an imperfect method, but past research has shown that self-rated health responses are generally reliable proxies for overall physical well-being. In fact, according to one study, responses to this seemingly simple question can be used to accurately predict physical fitness, the number of times someone will visit the doctor in the coming year, and overall longevity.

In most of the remaining 25 countries, there are no statistically significant differences between the actively religious and the unaffiliated. Where there is a gap, the actively religious are less likely to say they are in very good health. And comparisons between the actively religious and the inactives are murky: In 17 countries out of 25, there is not much of a difference between the two groups, while in four countries actives are more likely to report better health, and in four countries the inactives are healthier. (For detailed tables showing all countries, see Appendix B.)

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