Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999. 367 pp. $16.95.
Strawbridge and colleagues (4) conducted a 28-year prospective assessment of more than 5,000 adults. They found that weekly attendance of religious services decreased the relative risk (RR) of dying during follow-up by 36 percent (RR, 0.64; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.53 to 0.77); adjusting for social connections and health practices reduced the effect to 23 percent (RR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.64 to 0.93). The effect in women (RR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.51 to 0.86, adjusted for covariates) approximated the effect of not smoking cigarettes. (5) Frequent attendance was a predictor of better health behaviors, improved mental health, and increased social connections. (6) these findings were replicated in a sample of 4,000 older adults followed for six years. (7) The effect was similar (RR, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.64 to 0.81, adjusted) and was strongest in women (RR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.55 to 0.76, adjusted). A random survey8 of more than 20,000 Americans found that whites who attended religious services regularly lived an average of seven years longer than those who did not, and blacks who attended regularly lived an average of 14 years longer than those who did not. After controlling for multiple covariates and explanatory factors, the risk of dying during the eight-year follow-up was 50 percent higher in persons who never attended religious services than for those who attend more than once per week. Most recently, Lutgendorf and colleagues (9) prospectively examined religious attendance and interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels as they relate to mortality rates in 557 older adults. After controlling for multiple covariates and explanatory factors, frequent attendance of religious services reduced the risk of dying in the six-year follow-up period by 78 percent (odds ratio [Or], 0.32; 95% CI, 0.15 to 0.72) compared with nonattendance; this finding seemed to be mediated by decreased serum IL-6 levels (Or, 0.34; 95% CI, 0.16 to 0.73), which replicated earlier findings. (10) High IL-6 levels are an indicator of immune system dysfunction and thus provide a possible biologic mechanism by which religious attendance may influence physical health.
Political participation, voting, and seeking office were all down sharply in the second half of the last century. Civic responsibility withered and almost died. Religious institutions of almost every kind are suffering losses of membership and of leadership, and the workplace no longer is a locus of friendship or of loyalty. Informal social connections plummeted, including such markers as entertaining friends at home, eating family meals together, or sharing a night out with another family. Even more important, examples of altruism, volunteering, and philanthropy were declining sharply. As Jewish wealth increases, for example, Jewish giving remains a stable percentage (or a smaller share) of discretionary income. Simple human trust in other people, the expectation of reciprocity and honesty have declined. The need for many more lawyers than practiced a half-century ago is largely because the old hand-shake or gentlemens agreement could no longer be trusted. Putnam suggests many causes for the loss of social capital in the era of the Baby Boomers: pressures of time and money, mobility and urban sprawl, technology and the imperialism of the media, together with many other putative causes. In any case, civic and professional associations, and even national goals and hopes, are inevitably dashed by these findings. Crime, anomie, poorer schools, even bad personal health are all symptoms of declining social cohesion. Not all organizations were ever benign; we know of the Ku Klux Klan and the German-American Bund. But the many ways that Americans met one another face to face, whether bonding with those like themselves or bridging to others across boundary lines, were mostly powerful forces for good. Perhaps religious life most of all depended, and still depends, on a community of people who are not strangers in the dark.
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