Religious people often take for granted all the benefits that come with such a practice, from a sturdy belief system to a tight knit community. Of course there are many costs too, but in this post, I wanted to share a collection of what I’ve gathered from books, videos, papers, and podcasts that explain the benefits practicing a religion. Here’s a prior post where I shared some useful definitions of religion.
A fairly comprehensive and concise summary, from Elephant in the Brain (a fantastic book which I recently finished and will share insights from shortly):
Compared to their secular counterparts, religious people tend to smoke less, donate and volunteer more, have more social connections, get and stay married more, and have more kids. They also live longer, earn more money, experience less depression, and report greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.
More findings and excerpts follow…
From the NIH:
Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.
From Wiley:
We also find that religious attendance at baseline reduces the odds of illicit drug use at follow‐up. Respondents who increased their level of religious attendance over the study period also tended to exhibit a concurrent reduction in the odds of illicit drug use.
More Wiley:
It finds that religious people, members of minority religions, and people in religiously diverse countries were more likely to help a stranger. Individuals living in devout countries were more likely to help strangers even if they themselves were not religious. The results suggest that religion plays a particularly important role in promoting the prosocial norms and values that motivate helping strangers
From Wikipedia:
What Andrew B. Newberg and others “discovered is that intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads one to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid, tangible reality. In other words, the sensation that Buddhists call oneness with the universe.”
From the great book Blue Zones.
Healthy centenarians everywhere have faith. The Sardinians and Nicoyans are mostly Catholic. Okinawans have a blended religion that stresses ancestor worship. Loma Linda centenarians are Seventh-day Adventists. Ikarians have traditionally been Greek Orthodox. All belong to strong religious communities. The simple act of worship is one of those subtly powerful habits that seems to improve your chances of having more good years. It doesn’t matter if you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu.
From the podcast, Research on Religion:
My notes: Religion offers an extra layer of protection from PTSD for soldiers returning from the battlefield; Why? Possibly, if you’re strongly religious going into war, your community, practice, and faith can be protective and supportive; BUT if you’re only weakly religious, war can shatter those beliefs, and shock you out of faith. You may come back atheist, which is a double whammy where you lose your faith and suffer from this traumatic battlefield experience. The latter happened after WWI in Britain, where many returning soldiers faced nihilism, depression, and suicide
From Harvard epidemiology professor Tyler VanderWeele’s Reddit AMA:
A recent study I led found that women who attended religious services more than once per week were more than 30% less likely to die during a 16-year-follow-up than women who never attended. We found that attending religious services increases social support, discourages smoking, decreases depression, and helps people develop a more optimistic or hopeful outlook on life.
My speculation, though we do not yet have data on this, would be that groups that not only have social gatherings, but also have a shared sense of meaning, healthy behavioral norms, and a common vision for life would have a larger effect on mortality in follow-up than, say, merely showing up for a regular card game. Religious service attendance likely affects health not simply because of social support, but also because it potentially shapes so much of one’s outlook, behavior, beliefs, and one’s sense of life’s meaning and purpose.
In our study on depression, the associations between religious service attendance and subsequent depression were likewise pretty similar for Catholics and Protestants. The one outcome where we found a difference was suicide. The association between religious service attendance and suicide was protective for both Catholics and Protestants but the association was stronger for Catholics. For Protestants those who attended services were about 3-fold less likely to commit suicide; for Catholics, those who attended services were about 20-fold less likely to commit suicide. My guess is that this is the outcome which will vary the most across religious groups.
Interestingly enough, diet quality does seem to be one outcome where religious service attendance is associated with poorer health behavior. Perhaps the church potluck is indeed the culprit. Fried chicken, anyone? ;)
But, yes, with smoking and excessive drinking, religious service attendance is associated with greater likelihood of ceasing these behaviors. I do think people sometimes turn to religion when they are in particularly difficult circumstances.
There have been studies, even randomized trials, of what is sometimes called “intercessory praying” or praying for others. The standard design of these trials is that patients are randomized to receive prayer from someone else; patients themselves, however, are often “blinded” in the sense that they don’t know whether or not they are being prayed for. Some of these randomized trials have suggested an effect of prayer; other studies have suggested no effect; and the research remains controversial. Two reviews that I am aware of have attempted to synthesize all available evidence but they themselves are divided.
From the Journal of Evolutionary Economics.
It is frequently suggested that religion and particularly values associated with religion provide circumstances conducive to entrepreneurial activity (Dodd and Seaman 1998; Henley 2014; Parboteeah et al. 2015). In particular, the work of Weber (1930) is repeatedly cited in this line of reasoning. According to Weber, Protestant Christian values such as ambition, perseverance, and wealth accumulation serve as important motivators for the economic behavior of religious individuals
This is just what I’ve gathered to date. There will be lots more. I’ll probably also do a post on the known / quantified / accepted costs of being religious, too. Stay tuned.