In an article for the Daily Signal, Carrie Sheffield discussed several studies that revealed people who regularly attend church are happier than those who don’t.

What was particularly intriguing was an analysis of Pew Research surveys conducted by Washington University professor, Ryan Burge.

He noticed that it didn’t matter where you fell on the political spectrum, if you attended church you were happier than those who didn’t.

Burge found among Liberals born in 1980s and 1990s only 20% who regularly attended church described themselves as being ‘very happy’. This compared to the 49% of the same political leaning who regularly attended church and stated they were ‘very happy.’

The percentages were similar for those who classified themselves as conservatives. Only 27% of non church attenders considered themselves to be ‘very happy’ compared to 45% who did.

The same held true with those who were politically in the middle. If they did not attend church, only 17% considered themselves to be ‘very happy’ compared to 33% of those regularly attended houses of worship.

“Highly active religious people are happier than non-religious people,” Burge concluded. “There’s no other way to spin this data than this simple conclusion … People who identify as Christians are significantly more likely to be very happy compared to those who are non-religious.”

Carrie then pointed to research conducted by researchers from the University of Harvard.

In an article for the Christianity Today, the duo, Tyler VanderWeele and Brendan Case, described the decline in church attendance as “an American public health crisis.”

Why?

Their research found that 68% of women and 33% of men are less likely to die from despair associated deaths — suicide, alcoholism and drugs — if they regularly attended church.

 “A number of large, well-designed research studies have found that religious service attendance is associated with greater longevity, less depression, less suicide, less smoking, less substance abuse, better cancer and cardiovascular-disease survival, less divorce, greater social support, greater meaning in life, greater life satisfaction, more volunteering, and greater civic engagement,”  VanderWeele and Case wrote.

This is not just an American phenomena.

A study conducted by the London School of Economics and Holland’s University Medical Center in 2015 came to a similar conclusion.

In their study, they analyzed the lifestyles of 9,000 Europeans in 10 different countries over the age of 50. They focused on their participation with various groups, including religious, political, charitable and educational.

They found that in all countries only religious participation produced what they described as ‘sustained happiness.’

“The church appears to play a very important role in keeping depression at bay and also as a coping mechanism during periods of illness in later life,” wrote Mauricio Avendano, who led the research group. “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.”

These studies add new meaning to King David’s words who wrote, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let’s go to the house of the Lord‘” (Psalm 112:1 NASV).