"Study finds greater religious involvement associated with lower mortality risk"

This is a continuation of an earlier occasional series on this blog. The problem is, I don't know which series.

I've written previously about the emotional, health, and life-outcome benefits for those who practice Christianity. I've also written about how science news reporting sometimes gets it wrong (here, for instance, or here, where one of the links is unfortunately dead now). This could be one or the other, or possibly both, and I'm not sure which.

A EurakeAlert headline says that greater religious involvement leads to longer lives. The article says three groups were being compared in this research: active Christian church participants, former participants, and those who had never been affiliated with any faith. The problem is, the results reported don't seem to have anything to do with those groupings. Instead, they show that providing care and support to others in one's church is good for one's health. That's the real thrust of the article's abstract, too.

I'm not going to pay the $20 to find out what the research really says--sorry. Is there someone out there who can tell us more?

At any rate, there appears at least to be empirical evidence to support what the Bible has said all along: it's good to love one another.

Posted: Thu - June 8, 2006 at 03:03 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

"Study finds greater religious involvement associated with lower mortality risk"

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson