The Surprising Ways Church Affects Your Health
Doing life with a church is good for you. In fact, being involved in church will add years to your life. On average, people who frequently attend religious gatherings live 8 years longer than those who do not. For most of my life, I’ve mainly focused on the spiritual effects of faith communities. In recent years, I’ve become more interested in the physical and emotional impact of church involvement. My first exposure to stats like the opening line came a few years ago from the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke University. Specifically, I read “Spirituality in Patient Care” by Harold Koenig, a Duke professor. It forever shaped how I view communal faith practice and forced me to see the holistic integration of spiritual, physical, and emotional health.
At this moment, many churches in America still aren’t back at pre Covid attendance numbers. The recent omicron wave certainly plays a key role in that. I’ve seen many statistics and heard many stories, and the numbers seem to land around a 1/3 to 1/4 reduction in attendance. My congregation’s experience mirrors this. However, we haven’t lost that number of members. Instead, people just attend less. Those who once came every week now come 2-3 times a month. Those who once came twice a month now come every other month. As Covid continues to retreat, I’m confident more will come back in more frequent ways.
Still, I think it’s time to more actively promote the relationship between holistic health and church involvement. After all, the church attendance decline of the last 2 years finds much of its root in physical health concerns over Covid. I embrace the legitimacy of those concerns, just as I embrace the legitimacy of the data which shows church makes us healthier. (As an aside, I know many who have experienced toxic church environments which has derailed their health. Moreover, there are larger sociological trends going back decades which have contributed to the church decline. I’m not writing with those experiences and trends in view here, but I do engage them in my book, Broken but Beautiful: Why Church is Still Worth It).
Put succinctly, if over the last two years, people left church primarily over health concerns, then they should return out of health concerns. The research is clear. Those who practice religion in community have higher metrics of physical health. The most exciting ongoing work on this comes from The Human Flourishing Project at Harvard University. Recent articles in Christianity Today and First Things demonstrate their findings.
Religious service attendance is associated with greater longevity, less depression, less suicide, less smoking, less substance abuse, better cancer and cardiovascular disease survival, less divorce, greater social support, greater meaning in life, greater life satisfaction, more volunteering, and greater civic engagement. Compared to those who never attend religious service, they have found that regular attenders have a 29% reduced risk of depression, 33% reduced risk of death, 50% reduced risk of divorce, and 84% reduced risk of suicide. I find that last statistic to be staggering due to the massive increase in suicide in recent decades. Incredibly, they have found that declining religious service attendance accounts for about 40 percent of the rise in suicide over the last 15 years.
What’s going on here? Why does going to church enhance your health? The benefit appears to come in three ways. First, religious communities broaden your social support system. You have access to more people to give you rides to the doctor, bring you food when you’re sick, and check on you when you don’t seem to be doing well. Second, religious teaching on themes ranging from forgiveness and reconciliation to abstaining from vices contributes to health. It probably seems obvious, but obedience to standard, mainstream religious teaching about taking care of yourself and others leads to good outcomes. Third, religious participation leads to higher experiences of meaning and purpose. As humans, we’re meaning making creatures who long for purpose. When we find it, it shapes our outlook and puts a healthy spring in our steps. Personally, I have found all three of these to be true. I have seen them at play through the broken but beautiful churches of my life.
As our world and nation continue to fight and overcome Covid, this realization is becoming clear. As our country’s average life span has recently declined, we need to face this truth. Our society would be healthier if more people participated in communal religion. If more people went to church, we’d be a healthier society. Religion must never be forced or coerced, and religious liberty must continue to be a foundational value. At the same time, religious participation must be embraced for what it truly is – a public health issue.
