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Lauren Rodgers
Instructor D. Jizi
UWRT 1102
29th April 2016
A Higher Calling for Happiness
Growing in a non-religious religious household, I never really knew what it was
truly like to be religious, or what it really entailed. My parents did have me baptized in
the Christian faith soon after I was born, but they did not take me to church after that. I
was always curious about what it would be like to go to church since my family
celebrated all the traditional Christian holidays. As I grew up I always felt like something
was missing in my life and one day I decided that what I was missing was religion. I
attended church for about a year in my sophomore year of high school before I become
even more busy with school and social commitments, and unfortunately my religion took
a place on the back burner. I have not been back to church since junior year of high
school, until now, half way through my freshman year of college. The years I spent out
of church brought me back to the days where I felt empty and felt like I was missing
something.
After I attended church again, I found that I became happier. It was easier to deal
with the stress of school and my busy new life in a sorority. I also felt happier, now that I
had a better understanding of something that was bigger than myself, and it give me a
sense of belonging and hope for the future. Learning about God and the foundations of
Christianity in church, along with breaking down the Bible and Gods word in sermon

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really helped me understand any confusion I was going through; the information that I
took in just seemed to make sense to me.
I came to the conclusion that I was a much happier person with religion after
completing all of the reading assignments of this class. The whole theme of this class is
happiness. At first I thought I would go through the class like any other student, but this
class really hit a strong note in me. After the first couple reading assignments on
happiness I started to think to myself, what actually makes me happy? After much
reflection on my past I did come up with my solution, my faith. The foundations from
the readings in this class really did give me the steps I needed to understand happiness
better. I got way more out of this class than I ever thought I would. Through this
revelation I picked by inquiry project topic: Does active participation in religion have any
affect on an individuals overall happiness. I know in my case, my active participation in
religion has made me happier.
It is known that most people believe in some type of religion, Catholicism and
Christianity being the most popular with billions of followers (Bowker, Christianity).
The Earth has billions of inhabitants, and I am not the only one who deals with
unhappiness. Out of everyone who deals with unhappiness, at least some of them have to
be questioning religion. My research and inquiry is important to others because talking
about happiness and possible happier and healthy outlets spikes peoples attention; I
mean who does not want to be happy? Maybe my discovery and research on happiness
from this class can help others who might be feeling the same way and they can discover
what makes them happy, whether it be religion or not. Finding happiness changes
peoples lives; all people want is to be happy. Through research I have found that other

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people are happier with religion than without it. Maybe this will show other people that
religion can bring greater happiness to some than they had before it.
I started off my research with some background knowledge on a couple major
world religions. John Bowker stated in his book, The Concise Dictionary of World
Religions, that faith and practice among different groups of people created councils to
reconcile their problems, but ultimately each different thought or direction that each band
possessed evolved into a different branch of the same religion or a different religion all
together (Bowker). This gave me background information on how different churches and
thoughts about religion came about and why there are so many still practiced today. It
got me thinking about happiness among these different groups, whether one was happier
than the other, or whether unhappiness with one religions thoughts drove them to create
one in which they would be happier and benefit the worshipers lifestyles more.
Dr. Gholami Sharaian states in his academic journal entry,
Association between Religiosity and Happiness Among a Group of
Muslim Undergraduate Students, that many studies show a positive
correlation between active participation in religion and a persons
overall happiness and health, based on the Oxford Scale of Happiness,
the religions positive effect, levels of satisfaction, and negative affects
(1). This helps me come to conclusions about my question on religion
and happiness.

With many studies to back up this statement I can

trust and see that religion, at least Islam, makes its participants
happier than those who dont practice, or practice very often (Sharaian
1). This finding got me thinking about what his ultimate results meant

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on a grand scale and through his research, Dr. Sharaians results I saw
that not only is there a positive correlation between happiness and
religion, there is a relationship between mental and physical health
and religion.

Religious individuals, about two-thirds of participants,

reported fewer occurrences of cancer, hypertension, and mental illness


(Sharaian 1). This information shows that religion does not just make
you happier, it can also make you healthier and less likely to make
choices that are detrimental to ones body. After all this research on
Islam, I wanted to see if any other religions had similar results, or even
if

another

religion

reported

even

more

happier

and

healthier

individuals.
Jeff Levin focused his research, in Religion and Happiness Among
Israeli Jews, on happiness among active participators in the Jewish
faith.

He states that there is a significant association between

positive attitudes toward Judaism and greater happiness among the


fewer studies focused on Judaism and happiness. According to these
studies, Jewish followers have higher levels of mental health and well
being, providing a better stress response and less chance of mental
illness.

The better ones health was, the more they attended

synagogue services (Levin). This information showed me that active


and frequent participation in a relationship with God and religion made
people not only happier but also healthier.

Is this true with other

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sections of Christianity? Is one religion happier and healthier than the
other?
Christianity has many branches, seen by church marques on the street: Baptist,
Presbyterian, Later-day Saints, Jehovahs Witness, Lutheran, and etcetera. A general
study on the Christian population, from Leslie Francis report, Correlation between
Religion and Happiness: a Replication, showed that in a series of five recent studies, that
there is significant positive correlation between scores on the Oxford Happiness
Inventory and the Francis Scale of Attitude Toward Christianity and that all seven studies
showed results of a significant positive correlation between happiness and attitude toward
Christianity (correlation). This provides an answer to my question on happiness about
the branches of Christianity and their effect on happiness just like the other religions
listed before. It also helps proves that every major religion studied shows a positive
correlation between active practice and happiness and a great quality of health. With this
source I gathered a vast collection of information that provided the answers I needed to
prove my beliefs on religion and happiness. This source led me to my last question, and
ultimately my last source; Can religion help turn around mental illness and unhappiness?
Leslie Francis wrote in another print, Religion, Personality and Happiness, that
happiness is correlated positively with extraversion and correlated negatively with
neuroticism and psychoticism (Religion). While interpreting this data, I found that while
religion not only can increase ones satisfaction with life and happiness, it could also ward
off depression and help with some psychological disorders. This helped me justify my
experience with faith and church. I felt better by going to church and I found that I did
not feel the pang of my obsessive compulsive disorder.

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I found that Dr. Sharaians article made the most impact on me during this inquiry
project. He stated that religion helps humans mentally with happiness and physically
with health. In his article he said that people who actively participated in religion had
better qualities of life or better outlooks on life than average and had lower occurrences
of cancer and other life threatening diseases. His article also offered more information
and several other viewpoints other than a correlation with happiness. To me this really
struck it to me as to why religion is important, at least to me and others who are or want
to become or focused on religion. Through his article he explains the many benefits of
practicing religion, not just Islam which the research is about, and why it is important. I
would like to add in his article a comparison with other religions to see which data and
surveys supported a greater sense of happiness and health among its followers.
Through this inquiry project I have come to understand the importance religion
has over people and their lives. I have learned how religion helps people greatly improve
their lives in their happiness and physical and mental health. For readers, they can find a
religion that maybe they are interested in or they already practice and realize that being
active in that religion is really beneficial to them and it will give them the step that they
need to pursue a deeper connection in their beliefs. For me this inquiry opened a lot of
doors along the way and I would like to further look into how religion and prayer and
even meditation alters the brain chemistry to make happiness, to almost take a look inside
the brain and how this all biologically happens. If I knew know what direction I wanted
to end up in, I may not have chosen some of the sources that I did in the beginning and I
would have made one of the last sources one on brain chemistry and how it is affected by

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happiness and what caused the happiness. How does this happiness affect the human in
the long run, biologically and chemically?

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Works Cited
Bowker, John. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. : Oxford University
Press,

2000.

Oxford

Reference.

2003.

Date Accessed

2 Apr. 2016

<http://www.oxfordreference.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/view/10.1093/acref/978
0192800947.001.0001/acref-9780192800947-e-1248>.
Francis, Leslie J, and David Lester. "Religion, Personality and Happiness." Journal of
Contemporary Religion. 12.1 (2008): 81-86. Print.
Francis, LJ, M Robbins, and A White. "Correlation between Religion and Happiness: a
Replication." Psychological Reports. 92.1 (2003): 51-2. Print.
Levin, Jeff. "Religion and Happiness Among Israeli Jews: Findings from the Issp
Religion Iii Survey." Journal of Happiness Studies : an Interdisciplinary Forum on
Subjective Well-Being. 15.3 (2014): 593-611. Print.
Sahraian, A, A Gholami, A Javadpour, and B Omidvar. "Association between Religiosity
and Happiness Among a Group of Muslim Undergraduate Students." Journal of
Religion and Health. 52.2 (2013): 450-3. Print.

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