Is believing in a deity of any kind the most promising road to long-term happiness? If so, is our country’s rising rates of stress and depression somehow linked to its rising rate of secularization?
These possibly intertwined questions emerged while reading a new study suggesting that organized religion can do more for our sustained happiness than other forms of social interaction. This includes being better than playing organized sports, volunteering in the community or taking educational classes, among other social options.
It’s no secret that our country seems more stressed than ever, with depression commonly diagnosed and heightened anxiety pumping through our collective consciousness. It’s also no secret that prescription pills seem to be replacing personal prayers to ease those worries.
The number of “unchurched” Americans has jumped from 30 percent to more than 40 percent over the past quarter century, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. In the words of British sociologist Grace Davie, these people are “believing without belonging.”
Illustrating this trend is another rising group with what has become a controversial name, the “Nones,” now the second-largest religious brand in this country, next to Catholics, Pew Forum data show.
Is this overall lack of religion to blame for Americans being so harried while hurrying to seek happiness? If so, why are we fleeing from religion on a steady basis, following the lead of Western Europe, where secularism has become the new religion there.
“It is not clear to us how much this is about religion per se, or whether it may be about the sense of belonging and not being socially isolated,” Mauricio Avendano, an author of the study, said in a statement.
The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, says the age-old secret to such contentment can be found while taking part in religion. However, it’s not completely clear if this also means taking part in God, Jesus or another supernatural figure. Or simply the social interactions found on church pews and inside places of worship.
“The church appears to play a very important social role in keeping depression at bay and also as a coping mechanism during periods of illness in later life,” said Avendano, an epidemiologist at the London School of Economics.
The study’s researchers explored four areas for criteria: volunteering with a charity; taking educational courses; participating in religious organizations; and participating in a political or community organization. It’s no surprise that lasting happiness can’t be found in politics but those other categories also couldn’t compete with religions.
Researchers found that joining political or community organizations lost their steam in time. And too often the short-term benefits it offered can lead to “depressive symptoms” later in life.
Personally, I have never been attached to any religion, church or deity throughout my life. I was a “None” before it became a statistical demographic. I was “unchurched” long before a quarter century ago, though I’ve most likely been in more churches than you, for professional reasons.
I also haven’t volunteered extensively with any charity, took extended educational courses, or participated in a political or community organization. Like many other people, I find my “sustained happiness” through intimate connections with people without the traditional construct of those social frameworks.
I have preferred to go to it alone, so to speak, without those common means to connect with others. Maybe this is mostly because of my job, not only as a writer – a solitaire endeavor each day – but because I get to meet so many different people each week, each month, each year.
Those writing-related relationships are fleeting, some lasting only a few minutes, but possibly they’re enough to feed my soul for personal connectedness. I have discovered that my “third place” in life can be found during these interactions for columns, stories, radio shows and other brief relationships. (As a sociological rule, our “first place” is our home, and our “second place” is our workplace.)
This lone-wolf attitude may change as I get older, and it may have already changed for you with more wrinkles, more gray hairs and more time on your hands. A part of me wonders when it may kick in – my need for more socialization, my reliance for a religion, my selfless devotion to a group larger than me.
Will this be essential for what those researchers described as “sustained happiness” in life? Or can such happiness only be fleeting, in spurts, rather than sustained contentment, which offers us a different kind of lasting comfort.
The older I get, the more I seek contentment over happiness. I do this by circling the proverbial wagons around what, and who, I hold near and dear to my heart. I’ve come to understand where, and how, I derive this contentment, and it’s not found in those aforementioned categories.
Surely I can’t be alone. How do you find sustained happiness? Or lasting contentment? At church with other like-minded believers? Through spiritual oneness with a higher power? By volunteering your time to a larger cause? Being alone?
We talk so often about finding ever-elusive happiness but what are we actually doing about it? Don’t worry, be happy, but how exactly? And does it have a prayer without divine intervention of some kind?
Share with me your thoughts and I’ll share them in a future column, and also during an upcoming segment on my radio show.
Twitter @jdavich
