Study: Key to happiness is having friends at church

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Attending religious services regularly and having close friends in your congregation are keys to having a happier, more satisfying life, a new study finds.

Even attending irregularly increases a person’s sense of well-being, as long as there is a circle of friendships within the community and a strong, shared religious identity, according to the study reported in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.

Numerous studies have shown that religious people report a higher level of well-being compared with the non-religious, says Chaeyoon Lim, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who’s the lead author of the study.

Lim’s study finds that when people with similar levels of attendance are compared, the key factors determining happiness are the social aspect of religion and a shared religious connection. He says that “90 percent of the correlation between church attendance and life satisfaction can be explained if you have these close interactions.”

Gannett News Service