The Emotional Impact of Worship

The Emotional Impact of Worship

Ruth loved her synagogue. A grandmother of three, she was an active member of the same congregation that she had belonged to most of her life. For so many years, every time there was an event at temple-a Shabbat service, a special celebration for the children, a committee meeting-Ruth would be there. Besides her family, of course, her Jewish faith and her love of Torah and temple were the center of her life.

Ruth especially looked forward to worship services. She loved the peace, the stillness as she sat holding her siddur, praying with others and experiencing the presence of God. Worship gave her a sense of calm and contentment, and a relaxed feeling of wholeness.

As Ruth got on in years, she began having health problems. Most were self-limiting-they would come and go-and none of them kept her away from temple for too long. Over time, though, her health problems became more serious, and they began to interfere with her synagogue activities. She started to have some rheumatological symptoms that made it increasingly difficult to get around. This condition made it painful to hold or carry things or be on her feet for long periods of time. Still, she persevered in her temple activities.

One day Ruth felt an intense pain. Her doctor checked her out and sent her for a lengthy series of tests. The doctor was honest with her; it might be cancer. There would be many more tests, and they would prove to be tiring, painful, and nerve-racking. Ruth was terrified, and for a while was too exhausted even to go to temple.

During the time she spent at home, Ruth began reading books on the role of feelings and emotions in promoting health and hastening recovery from illness.

She truly believed that a positive outlook was important, but it was hard to stay upbeat. Her preexisting conditions were difficult enough without having to deal with the threat of cancer. And without temple, she felt especially cut off from a source of deep joy. She became sad and depressed.

Fortunately, the tests came back negative; Ruth did not have cancer. Soon she was able to return to temple and take part in worship and other activities once more. Remembering what she had read, Ruth tried to be especially aware of her body and her feelings while at worship. Her sadness lifted, and that old feeling of calm and peace returned. She now has found that she can maintain these feelings even after services. All she has to do is close her eyes and silently pray, imagining herself sitting in temple, and she is flooded once more with a warm relaxation. For a moment, her heart beats slower, her joints and muscles ache less, her tension fades away, and she rejoices in the knowledge that she has heeded the biblical call to "be still and know that I am God."

"Consider your soul," suggested Reader's Digest in its article "Eight Easy Ways to Look-and Feel-Years Younger." Citing my work as evidence, the article named frequent churchgoing as the final key to "help you stay healthy, look and feel younger and live longer." Yet just as reporting a religious affiliation does not guarantee active religious participation, neither does frequent religious attendance necessarily imply anything more than sitting passively in a pew. As the previous chapter indicates, there is strong evidence from numerous studies that going to church or synagogue is associated with positive health outcomes, and we have a good idea why; but these studies do not tell us what goes on inside people's hearts once they walk through the door.

Not all people who attend services do so to worship collectively, to connect with God or a higher power, or to receive spiritual sustenance. For some, attendance is motivated by a desire to please their family; for others, a perceived need to appear socially acceptable; for still others, loneliness or boredom. For these people, the social support benefits of attendance may still be present. That is, even if active religious participation is motivated by reasons other than making some kind of connection with God or the divine, there are still considerable gains to be derived from fellowship with others.

But for people whose churchgoing or synagogue experience is motivated by a desire to experience the joy of worship, practicing religion may offer health benefits beyond those resulting from the effects of healthy habits and supportive networks. The worship experience may produce feelings such as hope, forgiveness, catharsis, and love, which science tells us can affect our physiology, promoting health and relieving distress. Just as research studies report benefits of religious affiliation and organized religious participation, so is there solid evidence that worshiping God has a positive influence on our health.

The Demography of Prayer

Research confirms that prayer is the most common form of worship. Among adult Americans, rates of prayer, both collectively and privately, have been uniformly high for decades.

Data from the authoritative General Social Survey reveal that over half of us pray at least daily, a trend that has held steady for nearly thirty years. Data from various surveys show that the proportion of us who report ever praying to God has held consistently at around ninety percent for over fifty years. If anything, levels of very frequent prayer seem to have increased. Sociologist Dr. Andrew M. Greeley notes that the number of people who reported praying more than once a day-certainly a good indicator of an active devotional life-rose from about a quarter of the population in the early to mid-1970s to nearly one-third a decade later.

Using a nationally representative sample of nearly one thousand five hundred adults, my colleague Dr. Taylor and I explored in considerable depth the patterns of prayer among Americans. We analyzed data from the annual General Social Survey, the same source used by Dr. Greeley, to update and expand on his findings. We made several important observations:

One. Counting both public and private prayer, considerably more people pray at least daily than attend weekly religious services.

This includes over forty-three percent of those ages eighteen to thirty, over forty-five percent of those ages thirty-one to forty, over fifty-seven percent of those ages forty-one to sixty, and nearly three-quarters of those over age sixty.

Two. Hardly anyone reports that they never pray. Less than one percent of respondents said that they never engaged in prayer. This is consistent with other studies that have found this number to vary between two percent at the highest, and zero.

Three. Prayer is more frequently practiced in successively older age groups. This could reflect higher rates of prayer in earlier generations, or it could mean that we pray more as we get older. Or it could mean both.

Four. Women pray more often than men, throughout life, and African Americans pray more often than Caucasians.

Five. The strongest determinant of frequent prayer is active participation in religious services.

Naturally, folks who go to church or synagogue regularly will have more opportunities, on average, to pray than those who do not. But many of us pray privately, for reasons unrelated to participation in formal worship liturgies. Other strong determinants of frequent prayer in our study were a feeling of closeness to God and a history of mystical or transcendent experiences.

Prayer is a natural part of most of our lives. It is a component of organized religious worship across religions and religious denominations, and also reflects and is motivated by very personal feelings and experiences. Prayer, whether public or private, is often used for "expressive" purposes-a term used by social scientists to mean "for its own sake." But it may also be used "instrumentally"-as a means to an end.