{"id":36562,"date":"2017-06-02T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T16:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=36562"},"modified":"2017-06-19T09:44:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T14:44:43","slug":"scientific-research-worship-is-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/02\/scientific-research-worship-is-healthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific Research: Worship Is Healthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A research team led by Vanderbilt scientist (and Baptist pastor) Marino Bruce<\/a> has released the findings from their study<\/a> of over 5000 middle-aged subjects (ages 40 to 65, across sex and races):<\/p>\n

\u201cOur findings support the overall hypothesis that increased religiosity \u2013 as determined by attendance at worship services \u2013 is associated with less stress and enhanced longevity.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps the team needed to perform a separate study of pastoral-liturgical ministers and musicians!<\/p>\n

Joking aside (and I do hope the previous sentence is received light-heartedly), I do wish to make a few comments:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Having done my own research on worship and healing (health) now a decade ago (which came to publication in articles and then my 2009 book<\/a>), I am glad to see that medical and social scientists continue to probe this topic, even as ours becomes an increasingly less-churched society (especially among the younger generations than the Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers of this new study). I’m left wondering whether the reported positive effects of worship might vary according to life stages (that is, the full range of youth, adults, middle-aged adults, elderly).<\/li>\n
  2. I would argue that working theologically (practically and theoretically) with social-scientific studies does not reduce liturgy (corporate divine worship) to instrumental human purposes. The glorification of God and sanctification (salvation) of people are flip sides of the same coin.<\/li>\n
  3. Strangely, a key point Dr. Marino Bruce makes in the video clip does not appear in the Vanderbilt write-up: He argues that scientists have largely attributed the human benefits of divine worship to “social support,” whereas he is proposing a further or alternative benefit, namely, the practice or experience of “holiness.” If the latter intrigues you, I recommend playing the short video included in the article<\/a>. But I cannot help but wonder, now having completed my sixth year at Vanderbilt, whether there might not be an institution-wide bias (conscious or not) against explicit, detailed presentation of theological categories even when discussing religion. I offer that last musing in relation to the evolving North American version of “secularization.”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cOur findings support the overall hypothesis that increased religiosity \u2013 as determined by attendance at worship services \u2013 is associated with less stress and enhanced longevity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3119,357,2864,2480],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-plaza-new-ws","category-demographics-and-sociology","category-ritual_studies","category-secularism"],"yoast_head":"\nScientific Research: Worship Is Healthy - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/02\/scientific-research-worship-is-healthy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scientific Research: Worship Is Healthy - 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