The Spirituality-Health Connection:

An Important Link in the Chain of Life

Overview

Historically science has focused its research on what makes us sick. In fact, the positive impact of religion and spirituality on healing and health has often been discounted by mainstream science and medicine as it became increasingly mechanical from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Today, more and more health professionals and scientists are realizing that religion and spirituality are direction and strongly connected to good health and faster healing. This section provides an overview that demonstrates the importance of religion and spirituality in the chain of life.

Up until recently, the belief was that the future of health care lay almost totally in a technical direction. After all, the thinking went, isn’t this a materialistic universe and aren’t all humans nothing more than machines.

Clergy and congregations in Catholic, Protestant, Judaic, Islamic, and Eastern faith communities are in the trenches working every day on a grass-roots level with people reeling from economic stress, sickness, the loss of loved ones, and divorce. They know in their hearts and their souls that there is a direct and positive connection between God, faith and health. They know that things like religious affiliation, religious fellowship, worship, prayer and other spiritual practices are nourishing and healing.

At the same time, they are faced with doing their ministries under great duress in a Western culture and scientific establishment that treats their efforts with disdain and tries to overwhelm them with the message that the universe has no creator, no objective purpose, and no objective meaning or destiny.

BUT THE EVIDENCE IS IN—AND THE CLERGY AND THE CONGREGATIONS ARE RIGHT—THERE IS A DIRECT AND POSITIVE LINK BETWEEN RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH!

This section, The Spirituality-Health Connection: An Important Link In The Chain Of Life, explores some of the fascinating research results that are appearing regularly from researchers at such leading universities as Michigan, Yale, Duke, Berkeley, Rutgers, and Texas. Our guide is the book, God, Faith and Health by pioneering religion, spirituality, and health scientist Jeff Levin, Ph.D.

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The Book: God, Faith & Health

God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality-Healing Connection

By Jeff Levin, Ph.D.

(NY: John Wiley and Sons, 2001)

In God, Faith, and Health, Dr. Levin explores the latest compelling evidence of the connection between health and an array of spiritual beliefs and practices, including prayer, attending religious services, meditation, faith in God, and others. With examples from spiritual traditions as diverse as Christianity, Judaism, and yoga, he looks with an open mind and perceptive eye at the many ways that religious involvement and belief can prevent illness and promote health and well-being. Drawing on his own and other published studies, Dr. Levin shows how religion's emphasis on healthy behaviors and supportive relationships influences one's overall health and how the optimism and hopefulness of those who profess faith promote the body's healing responses.

Taking us into the fascinating realm of such “paranormal” healing modes as non-contact therapeutic touch, distant prayer, and mystical experiences, Dr. Levin asks if other forces could be at work in many cases of healing. Sharing compelling evidence from recent research, he offers an exciting vision of a new era in modern medicine, one in which body, mind, and something “beyond” mind—call it spirit, a higher power, or God—are brought together to promote health, prevent illness, and produce healing.

Filled with the dramatic stories of people whose health has been affected by their faith, God, Faith, and Health will alter the way we think about our bodies and our faith, and will show you the path for improving your own health through spiritual practice.

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The Evidence

Here are just a few of the research findings explored in Dr. Levin’s book.

• People who regularly attend religious services have lower rates of illness and death than do infrequent or nonattenders.
• For each of the three leading causes of death in the United States—heart disease, cancer, and hypertension—people who report a religious affiliation have lower rates of illness.
• Older adults who participate in private and congregational religious activities have fewer symptoms, less disability, and lower rates of depression, chronic anxiety, and dementia.
• Religious participation is the strongest determinant of psychological well-being in African Americans—even more important than health or financial wealth.
• Actively religious people live longer, on average, than the nonreligious. This holds true even controlling for the fact that religious folks tend to avoid such behaviors as smoking and drinking that increase the risk of disease and death.
• Dr. Levin points out that findings like these are becoming commonplace in medical journals. He states: “Scientist have begun using the phrase “epidemiology of religion” to refer to this growing field of medical research. But just several years ago, few physicians and scientists knew that such data existed. Now, thanks to these studies, researchers have begun to realize that expressions of spirituality have measurable effects on health and well-being. This information is causing a revolution in medical research, medical education, and clinical practice.

The Religion-Health Connection & Disease

Dr. Levin points out that an amazing breadth of scientific findings point to the religion difference and its impact on disease. Here are the lists:

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7 Principles of Theosomatic Medicine

Dr. Levin points out that the scientific evidence of links among body, mind and spirit challenge our assumptions about what it means to be human, how we become sick and how we can attain health. Although the body-mind approach begins with a more realistic sense of what it means to be a human being than does the body-only perspective, the evidence presented by Dr. Levin suggests that there is something more to attaining health than just good genes or the right attitude. That something, according to Dr. Levin, has to do with engaging in spiritual pursuits and deepening our relationship with God or the eternal, with our own higher self, and with fellow participants in the spiritual quest.

Dr. Levin calls this new perspective that acknowledges the spiritual determinants of health “theosomatic medicine.” Theosomatic medicine is a view of the determinants of health based on the apparent connections between God or spirit—or faith in God—and the well-being of the body. Dr. Levin’s spells out these connections in his seven principle of theosomatic medicine. The seven principles are summarized in this section.

Religious Affiliation

Principle 1
Religious affiliation and membership benefit health by promoting healthy behavior and lifestyles.

Study after study pointed to a common conclusion: Religious affiliation, whatever the religion, seemed to be associated with lower rates of disease and death, whatever the cause of illness. In the special language used by epidemiologists, lack of religious affiliation was apparently a new and potent risk factor for ill health, across the board. (page 23)

Find out more about Religious Affiliation and Health

Religious Fellowship & Spiritual Support

Principle 2
Regular religious fellowship benefits health by offering support that buffers the effects of stress and isolation.

Find out more about Religious Fellowship and Spiritual Support and Health

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The Emotional Impact of Worship

Principle 3
Participation in worship and prayer benefits health through the physiological effects of positive emotions.

Dr. Levin points out that for people 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. Dr. Levin states, “The worship experience may produce feeling 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.” (page 75)

Research findings indicate that the benefit of religious devotion for well-being extends above and beyond any benefit attributable to religious affiliation or organized religious participation.

Find out more about the Emotional Impact of Worship and Health

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Religious Beliefs, Healthy Beliefs

Principle 4
Religious beliefs benefit health by their similarity to health-promoting beliefs and personality styles.

Dr. Levin points out that decades of research have shown that personality styles and patterns of behavior, as well as specific beliefs about the world and about health, strongly influence our health-related behavior, use of health care, and actual health. Dr. Levin states: “Our personalities and belief systems condition how we define health, respond to health crises, relate to the health care system, and take care of ourselves to prevent illness and promote wellness. This effect of what we believe, who we are psychologically, and how we relate to the world is especially potent for heart disease and depression. Religious beliefs, through effects on health beliefs and psychological characteristics, are potential sources of illness and health. (page 99)

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Faith, Hope, & Optimism

Principle 5
Simple faith benefits health by leading to thoughts of hope, optimism, and positive expectation.

Many of the links between religion and health are well known and well accepted by scientists and physicians. Such a connection makes sense because of the influence of faith on action—because faith typically gets translated into religious affiliation, attendance, worship, and belief. But what about faith alone—simple heartfelt trust in God or a higher force, or the profession of religiousness—irrespective of whether it motivates further spiritual involvement? Can this type of religious expression in and of itself influence our health and well-being?

According to Dr. Levin, the idea that religious faith may be a powerful force for healing and for maintaining health and preventing illness is not new. He states: “In 1910, Sir William Osler, one of the founding fathers of modern scientific medicine, published an essay in the British Medical Journal describing “the faith that heals.” The theme was revisited in 1975 by renowned psychiatrist Dr. Jerome D. Frank. Writing in the Johns Hopkins Medical Journal, Dr. Frank noted that not only is faith in God salutary, but faith in one’s physician or in medical science may also contribute to the success of medical interventions. Indeed it may not be just the physician’s treatments themselves that are responsible for positive results. Rather, according to Dr. Frank, medical treatment may be successful principally because it serves to “mobilize the faith that heals in the patients.”

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Energy, Consciousness, & Mysticism

Principle 6
Mystical experiences benefit health by activating a healing bioenergy or life force or altered state of consciousness.

Dr. Levin points out that principles 1-5 define or reflect participation in the outer paths of spiritual traditions. Scholars call this “exoteric” religion. The exoteric features include organized denominations, religious services, officially sanctioned prayers and beliefs, and accepted ways to channel one’s faith, and research has shown that they involve behaviors, social relationships, emotions, beliefs, and thoughts that are strongly health-related.

Many people are not outwardly religious, but still affirm an inner spirituality an inner spirituality that may be nurtured through contemplative or mystical activities. Scholars call this “esoteric” religion. These people may experience the divine or sacred through meditation, personal growth activities, creative arts, bodywork, or just being with loved ones or in nature.

Dr. Levin states: “As with more traditional forms of religious behavior, scientists have investigated expressions of inner spirituality Moreover, studies have documented the health and physiological effects of meditation another esoteric practices, as well as of mystical states of consciousness. Research into numinous, or spiritually elevated, states resulting from esoteric spiritual practices is an exciting frontier for the epidemiology of religion. While purely epidemiologic research in this area is still lacking, scientific findings from other fields such as psychology, neurology, anthropology, ad sociology are beginning to answer important questions about mystical experience and its relationship to our well-being.” (page 154-155)

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To Heal is Divine

Principle 7
Absent prayer for others is capable of healing by paranormal means or by divine intervention.

Dr. Levin points out that there is one more possibility that shows the connection between religion & spirituality and health—namely that there is a God or divine presence that can choose to bless us in ways that may violate the apparent physical laws of the universe. He points out that the idea that the creator of the universe is able and willing to instill wellness, prevent illness, and even heal disease is widely accepted in the West; and variations of this idea are accepted in the East, despite different conceptions of God.

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