Religion, it turns out, is good for what ails you. In fact, it may prevent things from ailing you altogether. That, at least, is what Harold Koenig, M.D., has found after much research into the connections between religion and health of mind and body.
Dr. Koenig, director of Duke University’s Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health, has a far-flung reputation for his findings in this field of study. His latest book, The Healing Power of Faith: Science Explores Medicine’s Last Great Frontier, carries his message beyond fellow scientists to a wide readership.
On the basis of his own research and that of other scholars, Koenig takes as proven that religious faith and practice can improve physical and mental functioning. “Religious people live longer,” he asserts, in part because they have “a stronger sense of well-being and life satisfaction than their less religious peers.”
This scholar even claims that “the risk of dying from all causes is up to 35 percent lower for people who attend religious services once or more a week than for those who attend less frequently.”
Among the specific benefits that Koenig has documented are lower blood pressure, strengthening of the human immune system, protection against depression, and restraints on behavior that poses threats to safety and wellbeing.
As a result, religiously committed men and women can find protection against heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Faith may also fortify the body against infection and stress. By motivating practitioners against risky behaviors leading to addictions and getting people to take better care of themselves, religion has the power to guard wellbeing.
All of this, I am aware, can sound like pure hokum. Physicians like Koenig can appear to be nothing more than quacks out to sell the public the latest remedy in the ongoing search for lasting health. But Dr. Koenig insists on exacting standards for his research and will not go beyond what can be shown through statistical methods.
Though himself a religiously committed person, he has the good sense not to claim too much. His research does not prove the existence of God, not does it show conclusively that God acts in the lives of human beings. And, of course, it does not prove divine backing of any one religion.
Also important to note is that Koenig’s research focuses on people for whom religion holds genuine value. They do not go to church or synagogue because it is socially approved; they sincerely believe in God and commit themselves to God and neighbor.
As already noted, these studies show that those who worship in community once a week derive more health benefits. Similarly, believers who take an active part in their religious congregation by serving others also appear to strengthen their resistance to ailments of body and mind.
Koenig would never claim for religion the power to cure every serious disease. But he does say that even those with incurable illnesses can find healing, that is a strengthening of the inner person that enables them to live better with the disease. That is the distinction made by retired basketball star Magic Johnson about AIDS: “I’m not cured, But I am healed.”
In a telephone conversation last week, I asked Harold Koenig whether the benefits he talks about in his book apply to people already old. “It depends how you define health,” he told me. “If you define it in a broad sense, in the sense of wellbeing and meaning, then it can create tremendous healing. Old age is a time when people are more sensitive to spiritual things.”
From all that Dr. Koenig has discovered, it follows that religion and spirituality should loom much larger in American health care than they actually do. One major study has shown that “orthopedic injury patients who received chaplain visits required 66 percent less pain medication, made two-thirds fewer calls on the nursing staff, and were discharged two days earlier than patients with similar diagnoses who received no chaplain visits.”
Why don’t the churches, synagogues, and other religious centers act on this knowledge? Some actually do, as witness in not a few places the presence on the pastoral staff of a professional nurse. About three thousand churches around the country have such a person.
Still, very few churches and synagogues emphasize spirituality geared to older people. As Dr. Koenig told me, “they want to hide the older people and want to portray themselves as young and vibrant. It’s sad.”
When you consider the ways in which religion acts on the whole person, body as well as soul, then it is indeed sad that churches, synagogues and other such places do not pay more attention to the spiritual situation of older people. For the foreseeable future, we elders will form larger and larger parts of these congregations, thus creating favored opportunities for spiritual teaching directed toward us.
Richard Griffin