Martin HenryLAST WEEK I wrote that Christians were generally having a better time sexually than most of their detractors. Sex is only one area of life in which there is an empirically measured faith advantage, all other things being equal in the famous dictum of the economists.
While I will be discussing more particularly Christian faith today because of my own personal understanding and commitment, by faith I mean here an abiding confidence in an omnipotent, wise and good Higher Authority who is in charge of things, including the life of the believer. Of course, there are other meanings.
Faith has become, rather belatedly, a subject of scientific enquiry. The 'scientific' prejudice against religion has historically precluded a lot of active investigation into the faith factor.
One of the broadcasts that Alma Mock Yen and I have done on our radio programme Science serving us (KLAS, Sundays, 7:30 pm) is simply called 'Happiness'. The information for that programme came largely from a report, The pursuit of happiness, by two psychologists, David Myers and Ed Diener, in Scientific American.
These researchers found that while wealth, youth, high social class and advanced education and other hyped-up happiness-inducing factors were in reality poor indicators of happiness, faith was a particularly good index. Myers and Diener essentially did a study of studies for their Scientific American paper, reviewing over 1,000 surveys which covered more than one million people around the world. Religiously active people consistently reported greater happiness than those who are not. One large survey of 166,000 people in 14 countries found that reported happiness and life satisfaction increases along with the strength of religious affiliation and frequency of attendance at worship services.
Myers and Diener called their findings anti-intuitive, and properly so. They don't get a lot of promo because they are too damaging to the status quo of the secular intelligentsia which dominates and controls media and academia, and therefore defines 'acceptable" public opinion.
Another major happiness factor is marriage, something encouraged by faith communities as the foundation of ordered, functional societies. Married people have been found to be more happy than unmarried people who are in turn happier than divorced people. Other unrelated studies have found that the stress and pain of divorce is exceeded only by that of losing a loved one through death.
The prophets have been well ahead of the scientists. One of them in the Judaeo-Christian tradition said, "Godliness with contentment is great gain." Another has said "A merry heart does good like a medicine." Which takes us right to another point: All other things being equal, the epidemiological profile of people of faith is significantly better than that of the general population. Take any major disease and there is likely to be a lower incidence among people of faith.
Beyond the psychosomatic effect of greater happiness/better health, people who treat seriously the religious view that their bodies are the temple of a holy God and personal behaviour should be conducted to the glory of God, as St. Paul clearly instructed Christians, are consistently healthier and have greater longevity.
The benefits are even greater the more closely diet and lifestyle approximate the 'rigid' prescriptions for food and behaviour found in Old Testament Law.
It is now quite clear that the divine declaration through Moses found in Exodus 15:26 is more a statement of scientific cause and effect rather than of miraculous intervention: "If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you."
And speaking of healing, in October 1999, the highly respected Reader's Digest magazine ran a story, Faith is powerful Medicine. Based on the available evidence from several studies, Dr. Dale A. Mathews of Georgetown University Medical Centre in Washington D.C. concluded that, "there is little doubt that healthy religious faith and practices can help people get better."
The writer asked of the Digest story: "Just how powerful is the evidence linking faith and health?" More than 30 studies have found a connection between spiritual or religious commitment and longer life. Among the most compelling: A survey of 5,286 Californians found that church members have lower death rates than non-members regardless of risk factors.
Those with a religious commitment had fewer symptoms or had better health outcomes in seven out of eight cancer studies, four out of five blood-pressure studies, four out of six heart-disease studies and four out of five general-health studies.
People with strong religious commitment seem less prone to depression, suicide, alcoholism and other addictions, according to one research analysis.
One of the most extensive reviews demonstrates that the connections between religion and health cut across age, sex, cultural and geographic boundaries. It includes more than 200 studies in which religion was found to be a factor in the incidence of a disease. And an association has been found between good health and religion in studies of children and older adults.
The impact of prayer on medical outcomes is now also being scientifically studied. In a 1988 study by cardiologist Randolph Byrd, 393 heart patients were divided into two groups. One was prayed for by Christians around the country; the other did not receive prayers from study participants. Patients did not know to which group they belonged. The group that was prayed for experienced fewer complications, fewer cases of pneumonia, fewer cardiac arrests, less congestive heart failure and needed fewer antibiotics.
On to other matters. Only recently the Caribbean Adolescent Health Survey concluded the obvious: Teenagers who attend church and think of themselves as religious or spiritual have lower rates of violence and delinquency. There is an interesting little project waiting for a sociology post-graduate candidate hungry for a good topic to research.
Someone needs to investigate (and confirm) the disproportionate presence of poor children from actively faith-based homes with married parents in the top stream of the country's education system compared to their SES peers.
It is already firmly established, as someone recently reminded me that I have written already, that the surest route out of poverty is the application of the faith-based virtues of delayed sexual activity, marriage, delayed consumption with saving for goals, and raising children by mother and father to reverence God and keep His commandments and to strive to achieve.
Abundant evidence is in. Faith confers large advantages on the faithful in all domains of life in the here and now and is not just some pie in the sky for the sweet by and by.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
