Do You Need Religion to Enjoy the Benefits of Church Services? Social Bonding, Morality and Quality of Life Among Religious and Secular Congregations

Participation in religion has frequently been associated with high levels of wellbeing. Few studies, however, have directly compared the effect of participating in a religious versus a secular congregation. The creation of the Sunday Assembly, in effect a secular “church,” has created the opportunity to make direct comparisons between religious and nonreligious congregations. We hypothesize that a coherent moral narrative and specific moral values contribute to increased wellbeing for religious relative to secular traditions. Through a survey of three traditions (conservative religious, mainstream religious, and secular) we compared quality of life (QoL), levels of social bonding, and moral thinking. Connectedness to one’s congregation was positively associated with overall QoL, as was the degree to which participants believed their values matched those of others in their group. Actual within-group similarity of moral values was not related to connectedness or QoL. Religious theological traditions, compared with secular, predicted social and environmental health, but not other QoL domains. There were no differences between religious and secular participants for within-group moral similarity, although religious participants held a distinct set of moral values not found among secular participants. These results suggest believing one shares moral values with one’s congregation may contribute to QoL. Religious congregations appear to promote a unique moral perspective not found in secular congregations, and to promote wellbeing in some areas of life. The cause of this difference in wellbeing is unclear, although the moral values promoted by religion may be a contributing factor, and further study in this area is warranted.