Jeremy L. Berg

Many have drifted away from church fellowship over the past couple years of Covid. A recent article on church attendance and personal well-being cites some recent studies that show the power and blessing active participation in a local church provides. Consider this short excerpt below and read the entire piece here:

Religious participation seems to promote individual flourishing in a variety of interlocking ways, beginning with the friendships it fosters. In 2010, Chaeyoon Lim (of the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Robert Putnam (of Harvard University) estimated that about half of the effect on satisfaction comes from deep and supportive relationships. The effects are also particularly strong with respect to marriage, with weekly service attenders being about 50 percent less likely to divorce than never-attenders. Religious participation also strongly protects against self-destructive behaviors: One of our studies found that, compared with never-attenders, regular attenders were substantially less likely (68 percent less likely for women, 33 percent less likely for men) to die from alcohol poisoning, drug overdose or suicide.

But service attendance doesn’t merely protect against dysfunction; it also seems to promote positive actions and attitudes, including greater generosity with one’s time and money, and a greater sense of purpose in life. These strong effects of religious participation may explain some of the 8 percent percent drop in life satisfaction that Gallup reported from 2020 to 2021, as lockdowns forced many religious communities to halt in-person gatherings for months on end. As Covid restrictions relax and many Americans resume pre-pandemic habits, including service attendance and other forms of meaningful social engagement, we can hope that this positive trend in life satisfaction will continue.