To get emotional benefits from going to church, believers must attend regularly: study

September 9, 2024

A recent study in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion finds that believers need to attend church more frequently, in order to better enjoy the emotional benefits of attendance.

The Christian Post reports that researchers who studied the effects of regular weekend church attendance found that regular church attendance resulted in increased positive emotions and decreased negative emotions.

Researchers also reported that subjects in the study who did not attend church regularly did not experience a change in their emotional well-being.

The study relies upon data collected from 2,869 U.S. adults who were asked to complete daily questionnaires on their smartphones over a two week period regarding their attendance of religious services.

Blake Victor Kent is the lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at Westmont College. Kent reported:

“The day-by-day nature of data collection in SoulPulse allowed us to make two really interesting comparisons. First, we were able to compare those who attended a religious service in a given weekend against those who didn’t. Second, taking only those who did attend on a given weekend, we were able to compare those who were regular attenders against those who didn’t attend regularly.”

According to the Christian Post, Kent explained that what the researchers found was “remarkable” stating:

“In order to experience a positive emotional benefit from going to church you have to not only attend but attend regularly. This is probably because in order to benefit you need to be familiar with the routines, the style of worship, and the people with whom you are worshiping. If not, you just aren’t able to participate with the same level of familiarity, and the social connections just aren’t there. Thus, there is little or no emotional impact.”

The findings come at a time when Lifeway Research reports that fewer than 50% of Americans hold formal memberships at a church and more Protestant churches than ever are closing their doors.

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