Christians are Happier
Happier – Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay
Many recent studies have evaluated whether Christians are happier than their secular neighbors and compared the proportion of Christians happy with other religious groups.
The question of what makes people happier has been a question pondered by philosophers throughout time. Philosophers from Aristotle to Jacques Rousseau and Bertrand Russel have considered happiness to be one of the principal goals of human existence.
What makes one person happy may not work for other individuals. Happiness, after all, relates to emotion and is often not defined by empirical data but rather by changing feelings.
Happiness is generally thought to represent a sense of well-being or having a purpose in life and a sense of being loved and needed. However, life satisfaction may differ when living in a developing country where expectations are modest compared to living in a first-world country where expectations are much greater.
Research indicates that the representative “happy person” is a young, healthy, well-educated, well-paid, optimistic, and extroverted individual. The happiest of these also tended to be religious, married, with high self-esteem and job morale with modest aspirations.
Research indicates that your gender or level of intelligence does not enter the happiness equation as both measures are approximately equal among happy people.
Religion and Happiness
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
The Pew Research Center performed a study to evaluate the relationship between religion and happiness defined by an individual. They found that worldwide, more than 80 percent of people identify with a religious group. In addition, they determined that there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children throughout the world, representing about 84% of the world’s population.
This population of religiously affiliated individuals included the following groups,
- Christians (2.2 billion or 32% of the world’s population),
- Muslims (1.6 billion or 23% of the population),
- Hindus (1.0 billion or 15% of the world’s population),
- Buddhists (0.5 billion or 7% of the world’s population
- Jews (14 million (0.2% of the world’s population)
- Other (400 million or 6 percent of the world’s population)
- None (1.1 billion or 16% of the world’s population)
Other religious identities include Baha’i, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca, and Zoroastrianism, to mention only a few.
Geographical Distribution
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Christians are fairly well distributed throughout the world, while other groups tend to be geographically isolated. For example, roughly equal numbers of Christians live in Europe (26 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (24 percent), and the sub-Saharan Africa region (24 percent).
Seventy-five percent of the religiously unaffiliated live in the Asia-Pacific region; the number of religiously unaffiliated living in China is about twice the population of the United States at 700 million.
Similarly, 62 percent of the world’s Muslims live in the Asia Pacific region of the country.
Majorities and Minorities
The study also showed that about three-quarters of the world’s people live in regions where their religious group makes up most of the population. Overwhelmingly, Hindus and Christians live in countries where they are in the majority.
Ninety-seven percent of Hindus live in the majority, most living in India, Mauritius, and Nepal.
Similarly, about 87 percent of Christians live in the world’s 157 majority-Christian nations.
Religious People Join More Non-Religious Social Groups
People who attend religious services are more likely than secular individuals to join other non-religious social groups such as charities and clubs.
We have elsewhere documented that religious Christians are more charitable to both churches and secular charities. This tendency is true in the United States and eight of the 26 other countries surveyed.
In the U.S., 58 percent of religious people are also involved in non-religious charities, compared to 51 percent of the inactively religious and 39 percent of the unaffiliated.
This tendency of religious people to be more socially oriented with more outside social exposure may be why religious people are also less depressed and have fewer psychiatric issues than their secular counterparts.
As an extension of their greater social involvement, Christians are more likely to vote and be politically active than their secular counterparts.
In Spain, fully 83 percent of actively religious people report that they always vote in national elections. On the other hand, only 62 percent of the religiously inactive population and 53 percent of the secular population vote.
Similarly, in the United States, 69 percent of the actively religious say they always vote compared with 59 percent of the inactive religious people and only 48 percent of the secular population vote.
There are no countries where the actively religious population is less likely to vote than the secular population.
Improved Health
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The religious population is generally healthier than their secular counterparts. There are likely many reasons for this health disparity, but probably a large contribution relates to their improved health habits.
The religiously unaffiliated are more likely to be smokers and drinkers than their religious neighbors. Many religions try to get their people to adopt more healthy attitudes and practices.
In only two of 19 countries for which sufficient data is available, the actively religious are less likely than the secular population to smoke. Additionally, the religious groups who attend church at least once a month tend to drink less than the secular population.
Researches have found that improved happiness is correlated with improved health.
A study of more than 7,000 adults found those with a positive sense of well-being were 47 percent more likely to consume fresh fruits and vegetables than their less happy counterparts. They also found that happy people were 33 percent more likely to be physically active, defined as ten or more hours of exercise a week.
Being happier is associated with improved sleep habits and practices. The proper amount of sleep is significant for blood pressure, cancer prevention, Alzheimer’s Disease prevention, heart disease, and longevity.
A 2016 review of 44 studies found that there seems to be a link between proper sleep habits and happiness.
Improved Immune System
Researchers have determined that happiness is correlated with a better immune system and possibly with an increased ability to fight off colds and chest infections.
One study evaluated 300 healthy individuals and evaluated their risk of developing a cold after nasal drops gave individuals a common cold virus. The least happy individuals were almost three times more likely to be sick than their happier counterparts.
Improved Stress Control
Happier people can handle stress better than their unhappy counterparts. One study of 200 adults evaluated their ability to cope with stress. When happier people were given stressful tasks, the cortisol levels in the happiest individuals were 32 percent lower than in their unhappy counterparts.
These effects persist over time. For example, after three years, investigators followed these same individuals, there remained a 20 percent difference between the cortisol level of the happy testers and the unhappy ones.
Reduce Pain
Some research suggests that happier people tend to experience pain less severely than their unhappy counterparts.
Arthritis is certainly a common condition that occurs more frequently in older individuals with painful and stiff joints.
Many studies have found that a higher sense of well-being may reduce the pain and stiffness associated with arthritis. Studies also show that being happy may improve the physical functioning of people with arthritis.
One study of 1000 people with painful arthritis found that happier individuals walked an extra 711 steps a day – 8.5 percent more than their less happy counterparts.
Happiness also seems to reduce the pain associated with other medical conditions. For example, a study of over 1000 individuals recovering from a stroke found that the happiest individual had 13 percent less pain after three months than their less happy counterparts.
Longer Life
With all these positive health effects of happiness, it should not be too surprising that happy people tend to live longer.
A recent study evaluated people between 52 and 79 years of age. These participants were divided into three groups depending on their happiness. Five years after the study began, 7% of people in the least happy group, 5% in the middle happy group, and 4% of the least happy group had died. When these results were controlled for age, depression, chronic diseases, health behaviors (such as exercise and alcohol consumption), and socioeconomic factors, the researchers discovered the happiest and medium-happy groups were 35% and 20% least likely to have died.
Summary
Studies show that religiously active tend to be happier in their lives than their secular counterparts.
This reported subjective feeling does not seem to relate to education, gender, or economic status but rather is a function of their religious attendance.
The more an individual attends religious practices, the happier they seem to be on average. Additionally, the religiously affiliated are more socially active in their communities and vote more frequently than their secular neighbors.
While this is a subjective feeling, most would agree that being happy would be a goal of most people, whatever their living circumstances. In addition, happiness is generally associated with improved health.
This seems to be self-evident and known to philosophers long before it was investigated by medical science.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle noted,
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
While most Christians would agree that happiness is certainly important, they would not go so far as to believe it is the “whole end of human existence.”
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