#CHURCH ATTENDANCE S FULL#
We will require you to write your full name, legibly, in the attendance book along with your mobile phone number. Regrettably, we cannot allow anyone who has experienced symptoms or whose temperature exceeds 99.5° F to enter. We will check your temperature and ask if you have experienced any unusual symptoms within the past week. We will require you to sanitize your hands upon arrival.
We ask that in all events you take your age, general health and any underlying medical conditions or other risk factors into consideration when deciding whether or not to come to Church. We will both ask and observe if you are exhibiting any symptoms and, regrettably, cannot allow you to enter Church if you are. We implore you to err on the side of caution. We ask that you please abstain from coming to Church and remain home if you have any reason to believe that you have been exposed to the virus or are experiencing any unusual symptoms whether or not those symptoms are associated with a cold or the flu or COVID or are otherwise not feeling well. Us-and we hope you will, please re-familiarize yourselves with our revised Health status, behavior, and religious attendance were all self-reported, which makes the data prone to some bias.Look forward to seeing you in Church this Sunday. population,” they add, “and can provide a more complete picture of the social forces determining their health.”įinally, the authors also recognize some limitations to their study.
“This is a form of social engagement and identity that is of importance to many older persons in this sample and in the U.S. “Our study highlights the benefits of including measures of religious participation as an additional social determinant of mortality, particularly in older populations.” It could be the case, they write, that people who go to religious ceremonies also tend to have healthier behaviors, such as not smoking or consuming alcohol.īenefiting from the support of a community or helping others may also be the underlying causes for the health benefits of religious ceremonies.Īs for the slight increase in mortality risk found for those who consider religion very important, the authors explain, “An increased feeling of the importance of religion in old age may coincide with illness, physical decline, and a resulting need for comfort or consolation.” While this was an observational study that cannot explain causality, the authors speculate on the potential reasons for the results. Idler explains, “With this paper, we were able to take a theory and a conceptual framework to real data and came back with some dramatic findings.” All the associations found were independent of religious affiliation.Ĭommenting on the findings, Prof. However, those who considered religion “very” important had a 4 percent higher risk of mortality.
The researchers note that this positive effect on health was comparable with that of having a higher income. They sum up the findings, saying, “After adjustment for confounders, attendance at religious services had a dose-response relationship with mortality, such that respondents who attended frequently had a 40 lower hazard of mortality compared with those who never attended.”Īdditionally, even people who attended religious ceremonies less often also had a lower chance of dying prematurely, compared with those who did not take part in religious services at all. Gender, race or ethnicity, education, and income were also considered as potential determinants of health.
The researchers included variables such as religious attendance, the importance of religion, and religious affiliation. The scientists applied Cox proportional hazards models to calculate the link between religious attendance and all-cause mortality during the decade studied. Idler and her collegues focused on the data gathered between 20 on more than 18,000 participants.