Hah! Not only does Christianity offer you eternal life, it also prolongs your life on earth, at least if you go to church. Win-win. There have been lots of studies to suggest that churchgoing is good for you; the latest is an analysis of a study of 75,000 middle-aged nurses in the US between 1999 and 2012. It turns out that those who go to church more than once a week have a third better chance of living longer than those who don’t go to church. But even those of us who go on Sundays, don’t do badly: this group was a quarter, or 26 per cent, less likely to die than the non-attenders.
This latest research was led by J VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and the findings were published last Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. “Our study suggests that for health, the benefits outweigh the potentially negative effects,” such as guilt, anxiety or intolerance”, the prof said. (Someone, sometime, should make the case for guilt as a perfectly correct response to bad behaviour.)
Alas, the study was just of women nurses; men presumably benefit too, if slightly less than women. And, because most of the nurses were Protestant or Catholic, it’s unclear whether going to church trumps going to a mosque or synagogue.
It’s by no means the first study showing a correlation between churchgoing and longevity. As Dr Dan German Blazer II, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Duke University Medical Center, who wrote an editorial on the subject in the journal, observed: “There have been literally thousands of studies” looking at whether religion is good for your health. “The one [aspect] that is significantly more predictive of good health is about religious service attendance,” he wrote.
This cheers me up, because if there’s one group of people I find hard to handle it’s what you might call the Spiritual But Not Religious. That is to say, people who declare that they are indeed spiritual, but can’t be bothered actually to go to Mass. The weight of evidence suggests that thinking beautiful, spiritual thoughts, and possibly engaging in occasional readings of Gibran’s The Prophet, doesn’t have the same effect. The benefit derives from actually taking the trouble to put everything else on hold and spend up to an hour in a church with other people (even if it’s just one priest).
What would be interesting in fact, would be an analysis of the longevity of what you might call the Religious But Not Spiritual: those who engage in religious observance without actually believing in God. It might be useful to examine the life chances of, say, members of the Sunday Assembly, a group of non-believers who go to a Sunday service but don’t pray. Rather, they engage in reflections on life. Or a study of those people who go to Mass without actually believing – my husband doesn’t believe in life after death (he’s not baptised) but he likes going to church and actually enjoys sermons. Or someone like Nick Clegg, agnostic former Lib Dem leader, who does the same: he accompanies his Catholic wife and children to church. I rather like that; like Pascal, I’m sure that going through the motions of religion is itself important. Obviously, there are pundits who will tell you that there’s nothing about religious worship per se that prolongs life; rather it’s the sense of community you derive from being part of a group and engaging in a joint, meaningful activity.
Well, fine. Let’s do other studies to see whether active pigeon fanciers or football supporters have similar longevity, allowing for the normal factors such as education, smoking and drinking habits.
My own instinct is that church-going is beneficial for several reasons. Being part of a community is a crucial component of it – and notwithstanding the eremitic tradition, Christianity is inherently social, and sociable. But it’s not quite the whole story. I do think that what we believe matters. If we are exhorted to be good and to love our neighbour; if we are told we are part of something greater than ourselves, the Body of Christ; if we are promised life more abundant, and indeed eternal life – well, it’s hardly surprising if it cheers us up.
Naturally the sociable and dogmatic aspects of Christianity are hard to separate; it’s difficult to analyse the respective benefits of receiving the Body of Christ, and getting coffee and biscuits in the church hall afterwards. But it would be strange if the belief component were not part of the benefit.
Funny, then, that a society which is so obsessed with prolonging life ignores a very obvious component of longevity. Another case for going to church: eternal life as well as more of the other sort.
Melanie McDonagh is comment editor of the London Evening Standard
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.