Loneliness and mental health are substantial and growing concerns in the US and Australia. Vivienne Smith shows how sociological studies support the unique value of the church as a place of help and healing for loneliness. This article is part of ISCAST’s God & Science series with Eternity News.
It is no secret: we are lonely people.
In America, for example, 36 per cent report “serious loneliness”, with the youngest generation feeling the loneliest – 61 per cent of them report feeling this way.
In May 2023, the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, published a public health advisory on loneliness, naming it one of the top crises of our time.
Loneliness increases our risk of death by 26 per cent, more than smoking 15 cigarettes daily.
In the advisory, he shares data that we had back in 2015, thanks to research done by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and others: loneliness increases our risk of death by 26 per cent, more than smoking 15 cigarettes daily. It is associated with a 29 per cent increased risk of heart disease and a 32 per cent increased risk of stroke, along with anxiety, depression and dementia. This lack of connection with others is also deeply tied to the rising rates of mental illness.
Thomas Insel, former director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, recounts in his book Healing how a friend told him that the key to mental health was three Ps. Insel racked his brain and thought, “All right, three Ps. You got Prozac, Paxil, or I guess it could be psychotherapy, because technically that’s a P.”
But the friend said, “Look, it’s really simple, man. It’s people, it’s place and it’s purpose. Those are the three P’s … Of the many things I think we don’t understand about people with serious mental illness, we don’t fully appreciate how loneliness is such a major part.”
Is there anything unique about the church in its ability to create belonging and heal loneliness?
So what do we do about this epidemic of loneliness?
According to experts in the Harvard Human Flourishing Program, religious community is a large part of the answer. From meta-analyses of longitudinal studies, regular religious service attendance is associated with a 27 per cent reduction in mortality, a 33 per cent reduction in odds of depression, and 84 per cent reduction in suicide.
What, then, is it exactly about religion and going to church that is producing these amazing effects in health outcomes? Is there anything unique about the church in its ability to create belonging and heal loneliness?
It is clear that having any kind of relationship where you find emotional and practical support will no doubt have a positive effect on your mental health. To that end, I’m all for encouraging more ways to connect, whether it’s at your local library or finding new places to volunteer.
The church, however, is fundamentally different from other communities because it is built on the belief that true, fulfilling relationship emerges from the right constraints. Let’s explain this further.
While the cultural notion of relationship is “you are free to do as you want as long as it makes you happy,” the Christian belief is that this is not true freedom. There is a reality to which we are all bound.
The church is different from other communities because it is built on the belief that true, fulfilling relationship emerges from the right constraints.
Marriage, for example, is a relationship with constraint. A married person is bound to one person for the rest of their life. Yet, its constraining nature is, paradoxically, the reason we can be free to lean into fully loving this other person, without fear of them leaving. It is only by closing off other options that we learn to love when it’s not convenient, to keep showing up even when the other does nothing to benefit us or enhance our reputation.
In the same way, a premise of church community is that you don’t get to choose who you do church with, and yet we are called to love “friends-with-no-benefits”.
The foundation of that premise comes from God: that at the very center of reality is love poured out on the cross by the Son of God for all of humanity. The Son gave up his life for the unlovable. He committed himself to a people who couldn’t do anything for him. As his followers, we should do the same.
In a fascinating Nature article published in 2022, Raj Chetty and co-authors explore the two factors –“exposure” and “friending bias”– that determine whether we make friends with people of a different socioeconomic status than us; “exposure” being the frequency of interaction and “friending bias” the likelihood we become friends after interacting.
The only setting where people were more likely to have friends with a socioeconomic status different than theirs was in religious groups.
They argue that friending bias is at the core of the socioeconomic divide in America, because even though there have been many policy attempts to increase exposure across socioeconomic groups, we are still unlikely to willingly associate with those who have no benefit to us.
However, there was one surprising finding in their extensive research on how friending bias varies across settings: the only setting where people were more likely to have friends with a socioeconomic status different than theirs was in religious groups.
In every other setting, from high school to workplaces to neighbourhoods, the rich make friends with the rich and the poor with the poor. Neighborhoods were the most socioeconomically divided. The church was the only setting where relationships were made that transcended these barriers.
What, then, is the solution to this crisis of loneliness, and by extension, the looming shadow of mental illness?
I do not claim to completely know the answer to what may be one of the biggest questions this generation will face. Instead, what I know is this: we all want to be deeply known and loved beyond how much happiness we can give someone else. We desire relationships that go past social niceties, that connect to the very core of who we are. We want to believe that we will one day find a love that does not calculate nor check out when it’s inconvenient.
We may think of putting our hope in therapy, community programs or the latest AI-powered technology to alleviate our loneliness. Yet I believe the Christian church, as a religious community, can help and even heal, loneliness, because it fosters unlikely relationships in a way no urban planning policy or social connection campaign can.
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