NEWS STORY: Study reveals churchgoers live longer

c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Live longer. Go to church. A major study of church attendance and mortality reveals people who attend church weekly live an average of seven years longer than people who never attend worship services. That seven-year gap is the same as the difference in life expectancies between men and […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Live longer. Go to church.

A major study of church attendance and mortality reveals people who attend church weekly live an average of seven years longer than people who never attend worship services.


That seven-year gap is the same as the difference in life expectancies between men and women and between blacks and whites. Among black people studied, the gulf was even wider, with the life expectancy at age 20 for those who regularly attend church being 60.1 more years (that is, living to age 80), compared with 46.4 more years (age 66) for those who never attend church.

“Something’s going on here,” said Robert A. Hummer of the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

The findings by sociologists Hummer and Christopher G. Ellison of the University of Texas, Richard G. Rogers of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Charles B. Nam of Florida State University were presented recently at the joint meeting of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Several previous studies have uncovered a positive link between religion and physical and mental health. However, there has been little research on the national level into the relationship between religious experience and mortality.

In the new study, partly funded by the National Science Foundation, researchers began with a nationally representative sample of 22,080 people interviewed in their homes in 1987 as part of a cancer risk factor survey conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study data are based on 2,016 people from the federal survey who were identified as having died from 1987 to 1995 by matching respondents with the National Death Index.

Researchers found the life expectancy of people who had reported they never attended church was 55.3 years beyond age 20, compared with 61.9 years for people who attended services once a week and 62.9 for people who attended more than once a week.

“Our life expectancy estimates … indicate that religious attendance differences in mortality are similar in magnitude to those of sex and race,” researchers said.

Researchers say some of the gap may be explained by churches’ tendency to discourage unhealthy behaviors such as drinking or smoking. And the social ties promoted by church attendance contribute to a network of people that help monitor the health of members.


One area they suggest for further study is to see whether worship attendance decreases stress and helps church members cope with illness.

Kenneth Pargament, a sociologist at Bowling Green State University who studies the relation between religion and health, praised the new study.

“This kind of data underscores the power of religion, not only for their psychological well-being, but their physical well-being,” Pargament said.

The study results are in harmony with the experience of church workers seeking to strengthen the connection between the religious and medical communities.

“It is a biblical principle that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” said the Rev. Mark Olds of Cleveland’s Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, which donated land for a new medical center there. “That leads to promoting healthy care of the body.”

DEA END BRIGGS

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