Charlie Kirk knew the keys to happiness in life are simple: faith, family, and freedom. New data on religious practice confirms Kirk was right: People attending church are much happier than people who don’t.
God wants us encouraged alongside other believers, and new research from Ryan Burge at Washington University in St. Louis illustrates the power of worshipping alongside fellow spiritual travelers.
“Highly active religious people are happier than non-religious people,” Burge wrote in his analysis of Pew Religious Landscape Survey data. “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.”
Generationally, Burge also found that “The impact of religiosity on happiness is especially large among folks born in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Online church services have a positive correlation with happiness, but as COVID-19 lockdowns showed us, there is no substitute for in-person worship.
“People who attend a house of worship in person are significantly happier than those who never attend,” Burge noted. “There’s a positive effect for online worship, but it’s more muted.”
“Even when I control for age and political ideology, religious people are much more likely to report that they are very happy compared to non-religious individuals,” Burge wrote.
Burge rightly noted that politically conservative people are more likely to be religious than political liberals. Yet even voting blue, you’ll still feel less blue if you go to church.
Burge reports that among liberals born in the 1980s or 1990s who are nonreligious and never attend a house of worship, 20% of them say that they are very happy. For liberals born in the 1980s or 1990s who indicate that they are weekly church-attending Christians, 49% said that they were very happy.
Burge also just compared conservatives in this same way, finding 45% of religious people are “very happy” compared to 27% of the nonreligious conservatives. When he compared moderates, he found 33% vs. 17%.
The flip side is also true: suicide, depression, mental illness, and addiction are correlated with secularism. No doubt there is a positive effect from the community impacts of attending church, but it’s beyond the human effect, because community groups like sports teams don’t offer the same level of purpose and meaning that religion does, according to research from AmeriCorps, a government agency that supports volunteering and community development.
AmeriCorps research found “Religious and spiritual activities” bring people the most happiness and meaning and lowest stress of any other activity, including “Sports, exercise and recreation” or “Socializing, relaxing and leisure.”
“Empty pews are an American public health crisis” was the title of a piece Harvard researchers Tyler VanderWeele and Brendan Case co-authored for Christianity Today.
In their piece, the scholars listed the benefits of religious attendance: “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.”
Indeed, women and men attending weekly religious services are 68% and 33% less likely, respectively, to die “deaths of despair”—suicide, drug overdose or alcohol poisoning—according to 2020 research from Harvard University’s School of Public Health.
The National Bureau of Economic Research found states with decreased religious participation saw increased deaths of despair. A Psychiatric Times academic literature review reported that of 93 observational studies, “two-thirds found lower rates of depressive disorder with fewer depressive symptoms in persons who were more religious.”
Boston University researcher Brian J. Grim reported “more than 84% of scientific studies show that faith is a positive factor in addiction prevention or recovery and a risk in less than 2% of the studies reviewed.”
This new Washington University research confirms thousands of years of Judeo-Christian wisdom.
Charlie Kirk led the vanguard of the “commonsense revolution” President Donald Trump talked about during his 2024 victory. Part of embracing common sense is returning to the values underpinning the spiritual heritage behind American exceptionalism. Truth wins.
Carrie Sheffield is author of “Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness” and program manager of Healthy Faith at United Charitable.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Carrie Sheffield.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Important article Carrie – you have written something that contributes to Good Citizenship which is an extension of Good Character. Praise for Charlie Kirk and Praise for Erika Kirk. Rest in peace for Charlie. Good work ahead will be enhanced by those of us with conservative values who respect the principles. of Faith, Family and Freedom.
It is encouraging that a revival seems to be occurring. My fear is that new church goers end up attending the mainstream churches that have moved away from the Word of God as expressed in the Bible in favor of becoming involved in social justice with the use of interpretations of the words in the Bible that were distortions influenced by politics rather than spiritual. I left my Presbyterian Church USA congregation as it grew more and more woke with the national church’s adoption of support for the BDS movement against Israel being the final step leading to my withdrawal. Eventually, I joined a Presbyterian Church in America congregation where I found a church that was strictly Scripture oriented.
Body and soul go together, our souls suffer from malnutrition, only we don’t know it, even if we suspect it.It shows in the brain which controls the action of the body. Brain is damaged by the poisonous ideology. It should not be takin lightly like some crank.This is an epidemic produced in the lab of the left called school.
I would like to add that being religious you have support. Those who don’t believe are looking to belong somewhere and they follow some screaming lefty on TikTok or Discord or any anti establishment platform on the internet. And get radicalized. Because they think they will be seen as a hero as important to the cause these evil people are spouting. Those TikTok radicals repeat what their left political leaders are saying. Jimmy Kimmel said Charlie was shot by a MAGA follower. He never apologized for that lie. We on the right are not violent. Never will. 300,000 people were at Charlie’s memorial and no riots no vandalism, no littering, nothing just people getting together from all over America to mourn a human being. But the left has to keep up their rhetoric that we on the right are evil. And when called upon what they are doing with their evil rhetoric, they say we are taking free speech away. Didn’t you do that when you killed Charlie Kirk? His free speech is taken away forever. Only what you didn’t count on was that million of Charlie Kirk’s are bringing his message forth. You might kill the person but not his message. That is what religion instills in people, love, compassion and empathy for another human being. No internet site can teach that.
Progressive Leftist are hate filled communist, who hates Trump, America and Americans.
Charlie Kirk,Was a Man of God!
If we take anything from his death,we should take his FAITH,KINDNESS,& Christ’s teachings.
and most important The Ten Commandments.
Amen!!! And thanks.
God bless Charlie Kirk! May he rest in peace!
The haters killed Charlie more for his Christianity than for his ;political views. They are, knowingly or not, following Satan! How else to explain the hyperbolic level of hateful words and actions to people they do not even know?
Off topic– What happened to “PaulE” whose comments were always succinct and spot on?
God Family Country
but, Pray with ONE eye open
Religiosity is not the standard for true believers. I’m with Faithful in Christ Ministries, who teach God’s Word that has been researched from the original languages, Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. We have ZOOM meetings and everyone is just as happy as anyone who is attending a physical church.
Satan, our adversary, is the one who put it in the mind of that young man to kill Charlie Kirk. Once people understand the truth of this, they can stop blaming and start forgiving, just as Charlie’s wife did.
Let’s love one another and stand up for each other against the adversary. Read Ephesians 6: 10-20. Therein is our ability to stand against the darkness of this world. This is the way for us to unite.
Blessings.
The Lord does indeed, move in mysterious ways! Turning point for sure!!!
This should not be news to anyone who is a believer. Do they have the joy of following Christ?
Just wanted to offer some advice from the witness of Christ us always … no matter the reason …Philippians 1:14-18 “…most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. 15 Some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill. 16 The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my chains; 17 but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.” (New King James Version)
Are we in the last Revival before the Rapture???
Charlie had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Christians are “happier” because of hope for eternity. God’s promises are real as told to us in His Word. When thinking of death, non-believers have nothing to look forward to. An eternal reality of heaven or hell is what most will refuse to acknowledge.
we all prayed to Jesus for HIS choice of servant in leadership to help our country survive. HE alone does the “perfect choosing” for the exact moment/situation. Praise Jesus no other!
John 4:24 must BE respected.
Because of God truth that’s entangled(works) in Proverbs 16:3.
beware of false “profits”, the attempts of the corrupted, who, seeing the worldwide numbers of supporters for his genuine Christianity witness, will NOW try to “piggyback” on Charlie Kirk’s genuine Christianity witness and enroll Jesus Christ into their “personal profit/success version” of their deception-Christianity.
where were the religious when millions of illegals crossed the AMERICAN BORDER?
where were the religious when antifa staged riots?
where were the religious when men/ women tried to change their sex?
where were the religious when CHILDREN were groomed by their teachers?
My goodness the Princess Diana like hype over this poor mans death. The poor guys widow even used his corpse in a disgusting professionally video taped in the funeral home “grieving moment” with her dead husbands body. Maybe thats what folks with an 8 digit (and rapidly growing now), income do by way of handling “grief”, who knows?
Let the man rest and watch his widows fortunes soar. At least she will be supposedly taking over the reigns of TPUSA rather than that speed-hustle speaking member of Gods chosen genocidal maniacs, Ben Shapiro. Considering what those folks put Mr. Kirk through over the last few weeks of his life I bet he was spinning in his freshly dug grave over seeing Shaprio’s short lived stint as a wannabe TPUSA head.
Now maybe some truth will come out as to who and how Mr. Kirk was really killed. Or like sheep we can just blindly believe in the miracle steel bones Mr. Kirk was laughably said to possess. I mean, who wouldn’t believe the FBI???