Back in 2016, a Harvard epidemiology professor noticed something: there was a drug freely available that could significantly reduce mortality, help enormously with physical and mental well-being, and even increase the likelihood of a stable, happy marriage!
It was incredibly free and easy to use, and its benefits were increasingly scientifically backed.
The drug was … religion.
We’ve noted here before that being in a religious community – and specifically attending church – comes with various benefits.
This idea—that religion is healthy in a physical sense—prompted the Harvard professor, Tyler VanderWeele, to write in USA Today that church was potentially a “miracle drug” for society.
At the time, VaderWeele and co-writer John Siniff noted that regular religious service attendance resulted in decreased rates of depression, a greater sense of meaning, and a reduced risk of suicide.
A decade later, VanderWeele became a co-director of the Global Flourishing Study.
The massive project follows 200,000 adults across 22 countries over five years to understand what contributes to human flourishing.
Six factors are considered – happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial stability – and the first wave of findings, published recently in Nature (and helpfully summised here on Christianity Today), found an undeniable link between flourishing and religious identity.
Having material possessions isn’t necessarily a factor in a flourishing society, but it looks like religion is.
For example, middle- and low-income religious countries, like Indonesia, Mexico, Kenya, and Tanzania, scored higher on average in a composite flourishing index than more affluent, secular countries, like the US, Sweden, Germany, and Japan.
Additionally, across the 22 countries assessed, there was a 0.81-point gap (on a 10-point scale) in “composite flourishing” between people who attended religious services at least weekly and those who never attended.
These findings don’t surprise John Kasich, the former Governor of Ohio and author of the new book
“(Belief) is elevating you to a level above the din of what pulls us down on Earth,” Kasich said, speaking on Undeceptions.
“Because this world, while it doesn’t matter as much as we sometimes think, it does matter because we’re here for a purpose. That’s why we are here, and God’s given us a purpose.”
Losing our religion
However, there are potential challenges ahead.
Michael Graham, co-author of The Great De-Churching, is one of the many commentators noting the alarming drop-off in church attendance in America.
Forty million American adults who used to attend church no longer do.
As Graham (and others) have noted, this will have serious consequences for welfare, charitable donations, and general well-being.
Statistics highlighting this are similar to this study, which found that practising Christians were 40 per cent more likely to give to charities.
That same study reported that, in America, 90 per cent of charity donors were Christians.
A decrease in church attendance isn’t just bad for the individual, but for the broader collective.
The ‘good news’ is that this drop in attendance isn’t necessarily due to a lack of faith.
“Reasons such as ‘I moved’, ‘attendance was inconvenient’, or some kind of family change, like marriage, divorce, remarriage, the birth of a child … these kinds of things (are why people leave)”, Graham said in a 2024 interview.
Still, its numbers like these make people like Kasich aware of the need to promote the benefits of church attendance.
“If you want to change things, it’s great if you have a clubhouse, which can be the church, the mosque, or the synagogue,” Kasich said.
“When you’re in there, you can get psychological, material, and other people to help you.
“It’s easier to tackle a big problem together than to do it alone.”
It’s early days yet – but evidence is increasingly pointing towards the benefits of religious communities – both for the sceptic and the believer.
How the secular global West responds to these findings remains to be seen.
But, as VanderWeele and Siniff posed back in 2016, the possibilities for change are immense:
“If one could conceive of a single elixir to improve the physical and mental health of millions of Americans — at no personal cost — what value would our society place on it?”
Adapted by Alasdair Belling from Undeceptions episode 158 ‘Faith Factor’. Listen here.
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