Searching for happiness? Go to church.
Church participation leads to more happiness and civic engagement, Pew Research Center said after analyzing surveys from the U.S. and 25 other countries.
Religiously active people also tend to smoke and drink alcoholic beverages less than others, Pew said in its findings. But church participation had no clear positive outcomes for health, obesity and exercise, with results varying among countries studied.
Pew said “This analysis finds that in the U.S. and many other countries around the world, regular participation in a religious community clearly is linked with higher levels of happiness and civic engagement,” citing civic activities such as voting, joining community groups and volunteering.
Pew also found Religious affiliation without participation does not lead to the same positive outcomes.
Pew describes actively religious people as those who identify with a religious group and attend church services at least monthly.
Among key findings, actively religious people described themselves as very happy at higher rates than others in 24 of the countries studied.
Civically, 69 percent of religiously active Americans vote in national elections, and 58 percent belong to at least one nonreligious group. Those rates compare to 39 percent of the religiously unaffiliated who are members of at least one nonreligious group, and 48 percent of the religiously unaffiliated who always vote in national elections.