My colleague Ken Pope recently posted a link to Gallup’s "Religion and Wellbeing in the U.S.: Update” by Frank Newport.

Here are some excerpts:

Gallup's January Mood of the Nation survey confirmed the finding that Americans are largely satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life, despite their remarkable lack of satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. more generally.

At the same time, as my colleague Megan Brenan pointed out in her recent analysis of the data, some Americans are more satisfied than others with their personal life. One not surprising correlate of personal satisfaction is socioeconomic status. Americans with higher incomes and higher education are more personally satisfied than others.

The January Gallup data indicate that 92% of those who attend church services weekly are satisfied, compared with 82% of those who attend less than monthly. 

The difference is even more evident in terms of the percentage who report being very satisfied -- 67% of those who attend weekly are very satisfied with their personal life, compared with 48% among those who are infrequent attenders. 

Weekly religious service attenders are, in fact, more likely to say they are very satisfied than are those who make $100,000 or more in annual household income.

Religion/Wellbeing Connection Affirmed by Rigorous Research

These findings update a long line of studies confirming the connection between religion and wellbeing -- making it one of the more researched and robust findings in all of the sociology of religion.

A notable, extraordinarily in-depth review of this substantial literature in 2012 came from Harold G. Koenig, professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine. Koenig published his comprehensive summary reviewing over a century's worth of hundreds of studies looking at the relationship between religion and mental and physical health. Koenig concluded: "A large volume of research shows that people who are more R/S [religious/spiritual] have better mental health and adapt more quickly to health problems compared to those who are less R/S." Koenig's list of psychological outcomes that appear to be related, in a positive way, with religiosity included coping with adversity, hope, optimism, self-esteem, depression, suicidal tendencies, anxiety and psychotic disorders.

Another summary came from TIME: "Scientists have found, again and again, that those with a spiritual practice or who follow religious beliefs tend to be happier than those who don't. Study after study has found that religious people tend to be less depressed and less anxious than nonbelievers, better able to handle the vicissitudes of life than nonbelievers."

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