Are people of faith really happier than others?
A perplexing question, for sure
Ryan P. Burge teaches at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. He’s forever turning up interesting surveys and studies that shed light on people who describe themselves as religious.
Recently he published this post about whether religious people are happier than others. In it, he concludes this:
“(R)eligious people self-identify as happier than non-religious people. There’s just no mistaking that conclusion. There are ways to try and explain it away, certainly. For instance, maybe the causal arrow goes the opposite way — happier people tend to be more religious. But the upshot is still the same: religious nones are less happy than folks who identify with a faith tradition.”
(As many of you know by now, the term “nones” that Burge used refers to religiously unaffiliated people who, from a list of possible religions to which they’ve made a commitment, choose “none of the above.”)
I believe Burge is right about what I just quoted from him, but it’s unclear to me why what he says is true.
Here are some of my own theories that you’re free to discuss, dismiss, believe, ignore:
People of faith (some of them, anyway) are sometimes comforted by having what we might call the long view. That is, they see the temporary nature of their lives and have adopted beliefs about eternity that make them worry less about their ultimate destination — especially if they’re not part of a fear-based religion.
Religious people are more likely to be surrounded by a supportive community that can share their load. It’s certainly possible to be a lone wolf inside a religious congregation but it strikes me as more likely (and much of this comes from my own experience) that they feel part of a group of people who try, however imperfectly, to love and support one another.
Some religious people are comforted by what, in my book, The Value of Doubt, I describe as false certitude. And that makes them happy (though, I would argue, for a misguided reason).
Participation in religious activities gives people a grounding in ceremonial or ritualistic practices that provide structure and comfort to their lives. In Christian terms, I’m thinking of baptism, confirmation, Holy Communion, marriage ceremonies, funerals, worship. Other faith traditions, of course, have their own rituals and ceremonies that help to stabilize and give meaning to the lives of adherents.
There is comfort in religious practices and beliefs that are centuries old and have stood the test of time. One problem with being a contributor to happiness is that, in my experience, many people of faith have very little sense of their own tradition’s history and, thus, they tend to whitewash or ignore what’s often brutal and destructive in that history. Ask a Lutheran, for instance, if he or she is aware that in 1543 Martin Luther, the founder of Lutheranism and leader of the Protestant Reformation, wrote a profoundly antisemitic (or, more precisely, anti-Judaism) book (or treatise) called On the Jews and Their Lies. Still, to be saying the same prayer today that, by the scriptural account, Jesus taught to his disciples 2,000 years ago can be a source of comfort and, thus, happiness.
Many people of faith get to share a lot of meals together. What could be unhappy about that (well, mostly unhappy)?
There are no fact-checkers at funerals. So people of faith know that anyone who says anything about them right after their death will find at least something good to say about them, even if it means stretching the truth.
What would you add to this list? What would you subtract? Either way, do what makes you happy. And here’s a link to Burge’s writing about all this.
A ‘guns to gardens’ event in KC this month
Central Presbyterian Church in Kansas City has scheduled its second annual “Guns to Gardens” event on its property at 3501 Campbell St. It will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25. It’s an opportunity for people, anonymously, to turn in guns, which then will be blacksmithed into garden tools.
The church reports that “71 community volunteers have now been trained to assist with the effort — and this year’s event comes just weeks after a shooting near the church that left multiple people injured and one person dead. It also unfolds amid a grim national milestone: according to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 300 mass shootings have occurred since January 2025. . .”
At last year’s event, church officials say, 70 volunteers collected 81 firearms. The 2025 goal is more than 200 guns.
Let’s re-explore what was mislabeled as the discovery of the ‘New World’
What used to be known as “Columbus Day,” Oct. 12, has become “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” in the U.S. as a way of reminding ourselves that the late 15th Century invasion of this land by white Europeans led to horrific cultural and physical genocide committed on the people who came to be called Native Americans (itself a bit of a problematic term).
In this week’s “Read the Spirit” online magazine published by my friend David Crumm, former religion writer for the Detroit Free Press, he provides readers with several pieces exploring the holiday earlier this week and why President Trump and his followers want to go back to praising Columbus.
David labels Trump’s remarks about all of this the “latest broadside against diversity and non-Christian cultural traditions.”
And American historian Heather Cox Richardson, noted in her daily “Letters from an American” that Trump’s proclamation about Columbus Day contained “a white Christian nationalist version of American history, with much more emphasis on Christianity than Trump’s previous, similar proclamations.”
My question: Why can’t we just expect accounts of history to be as factual as possible and as in-depth as possible, meaning that history always should report human triumphs as well as human-caused disasters? The history I was taught in an American public grade school was, in terms of this very Columbus-Indigenous history, sorely lacking, as I explained a few years ago in this Flatland column. We can do better for our kids and grandkids today.
P.S.: Yes, the world rejoices and gives thanks for the cease-fire in the Hamas-Israel war and the hopes that it raises for a permanent path to peace. But let’s not forget what lies ahead for those who have survived this catastrophe.
This RNS column provides a good reminder of that, and I commend it to you.
The Book Corner
The Three Beliefs of Ego: A Sufferer’s Guide to Freedom, by Aaron Abke.
There’s a great deal in this book about becoming spiritually well by understanding — and responding effectively to — the sources of suffering. No doubt many of you will want to read it for that reason.
But I’m introducing you to the book because it contains some of the clearest language about why someone like Aaron Abke, who describes himself as “a third-generation pastor’s son in an evangelical Christian church,” (he briefly was a pastor himself) would abandon the theologically conservative, evangelical tradition.
In fact, his words are biting, and evangelical leaders might benefit from understanding them as what might have been said in one person’s exit interview from that branch of the Christian faith.
That branch, he writes, “portrayed a God who was petty, jealous, hypocritical and megalomaniacal — a deity whom, despite all my years of religious devotion, I had never personally encountered. . .By the age of twenty-three, I could no longer tolerate the notion of a God who tortures his adversaries forever. There was a period when the mere mention of this idea could provoke me into an angry outburst. The Jesus I routinely heard described from pulpits was completely irreconcilable with the one I knew in my heart. The Christian Jesus is often depicted as a bloodthirsty warlord from the book of Revelation, returning from heaven on a white stallion to slay his enemies and stain his noble sword with their blood.
“A huge segment of the Christian church still today is enthralled by this theology. . .The Jesus I knew in my heart and encountered in those red letters (in the Bible text) was so very different, so loving and so kind, forgiving his murderers even while they murdered him and instructing us to do the same.”
As I say, this is the story of one man’s abandonment of one type of Christianity and his finding spiritual direction outside the church, though his commitment to Christ Jesus remains constant.
But he is far from alone in his critique of some parts of evangelical Christianity, and that critique may be contributing to the current phenomenon of many people also abandoning that approach to the faith.
Not the ‘Reddit’ but the ‘Deddit’ Corner
(Where every now and then you’ll find — without additional comment — links to some of the best obituaries ever.)
(Photo by me)
March 7th 1965 - September 21st 2025