Church Involvement

From meerkats to macaques, social animals tend to live longer, take more time to reach maturity, and have more extended reproductive periods than their more solitary counterparts, according to research from the University of Oxford.

However, living in social groups comes with clear tradeoffs. On one hand, social animals can share resources, protect each other from predators, and help raise offspring together. On the other hand, they face increased risks of disease transmission, competition for resources, and social conflicts. Yet despite these challenges, scientists say the benefits of social living appear to outweigh the costs.

Rather than simply categorizing animals as either social or non-social, the researchers developed a novel spectrum of sociality with distinct levels. At one end are solitary animals like tigers and cheetahs, which spend most of their time alone except for breeding. In the middle are “gregarious” animals like wildebeest and zebras that form loose groups. At the far end of the spectrum are highly social species like elephants, most primates, and honeybees, which form stable, organized groups with complex social structures.

The findings have particular relevance in our post-COVID era, where humans have experienced firsthand the impacts of social isolation.

Lead author Rob Salguero-Gómez says, “This study has demonstrated that species that are more social display longer life spans and reproductive windows than more solitary species. In a post-COVID era, the impacts of isolation have been quite tangible to humans. The research demonstrates that being more social is associated with some tangible benefits.”

A young woman writer in England named Freya India (see her Substack called “Girls”) writes:

Since I was teenager, it seems like everyone has been selling a solution to Gen Z’s loneliness problem. One app after another to find new friends! Constant hashtags and campaigns to bring us together… But I’ve noticed that, recently, the latest “solutions” … aren’t encouraging face-to-face friendships.

[Instead], there are the imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends. There are imaginary therapists, a “mental health ally” or “happiness buddy” we can chat with about our problems… There are even entirely imaginary worlds now. Metaverse platforms might “solve the loneliness epidemic,” apparently. VR headsets could end loneliness for seniors. But by far the most depressing invention I’ve seen lately is a new app called SocialAI, a “private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on each post you make.”

I remember me and my friends spending hours after school writing our own songs, coming up with lyrics and drawing album covers—now we would just generate it with an AI song maker. Children are playing together less, replacing free play with screen time, and creativity scores among American children have been dropping since the 1990s. Part of that may be because children now depend on companies to be creative for them. Their imaginary worlds are designed by software engineers. Their imaginary friends are trying to sell them something. My imaginary world wasn’t trying to drag me anywhere, while algorithms now transport kids to darker and ever more extreme places.

For most of the last 30 years, the story of religion in America has been a pretty steady one: a constant, and consistent, drop in religious affiliation every year. Starting in the 1990s, the share of Americans who identified as Christian, or identified with any religion at all, began to drop precipitously. At the same time, those with no religious affiliation — nicknamed “nones” — began to spike.

That trend might be ending. Over the last five years, the share of Americans who are “nones” has stabilized at roughly 30 percent, across multiple tracking surveys — largely because of one group: Zoomers.

Sometime around or after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, young Americans began to find, or at least retain, religious belief at higher rates than previous generations.

Gen Z seems to be the key. Recently, surveys have found that Zoomers are the only generation not losing their religious affiliation. Why? There’s no unifying explanation for this trend, but it extends beyond the United States. And that suggests that there might be some structural reasons Gen Z is rediscovering faith. Something about post-Covid seems to be bringing youth back to Christianity, specifically, but also to religion in general.

There are three potential explanations:

1. Loneliness: Gen Z seeks community and connection in faith to combat widespread feelings of isolation.

2. Distrust of Institutions: Turning to religion as a countercultural response to declining trust in government and mainstream culture.

3. Political and Social Shifts: Young men are becoming more religious and politically conservative, while young women favor more liberal faiths, reflecting broader generational divides.

This 2024 report claims that "every state is number one in something." For instance, did you know that:

• Colorado tops the list as the most physically active state.
• Idaho ranks as the number one state for home ownership thanks to affordability.
• Kansas has the least number of poor roadways with less than 1% of roads considered unserviceable.
• Louisiana has the highest number of unmarried adults and thus is the best dating state.
• Michigan has the most golf courses and country clubs per capita.
• When it comes to high school graduations, Nebraska leads with an incredible 93.7% of students graduating.
• Pennsylvania has the most licensed hunters per capita, with 20 hunters per square mile.
• You can binge watch your favorite shows much faster in Tennessee, with internet speeds 50 times quicker than the national average.

You can see the results, best and worst for all 50 states here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This a fun way to set up a sermon on church vision (“our church's greatest strengths”) or spiritual gifts.

Fifteen-year-old Aaron was going through a dark time at school. He’d fallen out with his friends, leaving him feeling isolated and alone.

At the time, it seemed like the end of the world. “I used to cry every night,” said Aaron. Eventually, Aaron turned to his computer for comfort. Through it, he found someone that was available around the clock to respond to his messages, listen to his problems, and help him move past the loss of his friend group. That “someone” was an AI chatbot named Psychologist.

The chatbot’s description says that it’s “Someone who helps with life difficulties.” Its profile picture is a woman in a blue shirt with a blonde bob, perched on the end of a couch with a clipboard clasped in her hands and leaning forward, as if listening intently.

A single click on the picture opens up an anonymous chat box, which allows people like Aaron to “interact” with the bot by exchanging DMs. Its first message is always the same. “Hello, I’m a psychologist. What brings you here today?”

“It’s not like a journal, where you’re talking to a brick wall,” Aaron said. “It really responds.”

Character.AI is an AI chatbot service launched in 2022. Character.AI’s website attracts 3.5 million daily users who spend an average of two hours a day using the platform’s AI-powered chatbots. Some of its most popular bots include characters from books, films, and video games, like Raiden Shogun from Genshin Impact or a teenaged version of Voldemort from Harry Potter.

Aaron is one of millions of young people, many of whom are teenagers, who make up the bulk of Character.AI’s user base. More than a million of them gather regularly online on platforms like Reddit to discuss their interactions with the chatbots. The competitions over who has racked up the most screen time are just as popular as posts about hating reality, finding it easier to speak to bots than to speak to real people, and even preferring chatbots over other human beings. Some users say they’ve logged 12 hours a day on Character.AI, and posts about addiction to the platform are common.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since young people describe feeling addicted to chatbots, they might find themselves sitting in their rooms talking to computers more often than communicating with real people. It raises questions about how the AI boom and what the future could hold if teenagers—and society at large—become more emotionally reliant on bots.

Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, but sleet and hail will keep many churchgoers out of the pew on a Sunday. In fact, some may even skip to get a little extra sleep or watch their favorite team.

Respondents were asked how often they would skip a weekly worship service for six different scenarios—to avoid severe weather, to enjoy an outdoor activity in good weather, to get extra sleep, to meet friends, to avoid traveling when it’s raining, or to watch sports.

Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research said, “Churchgoers are not on autopilot. Each week they are faced with a choice of whether to attend church, and there is more than one tradeoff when it comes to this decision.”

Most regular churchgoers say they would miss a weekly worship service at least once a year:

To avoid traveling in severe weather (77%)

To enjoy an outdoor activity (55%)

To get some extra sleep (54%)

To meet a friend or group of friends (50%)

To not have to travel when it was raining (43%)

To watch a sporting event or their favorite team (42%)

One in 10 Protestant churchgoers (11%) say they would never skip for any of these reasons. Twice as many (22%) say they would never skip due to the five options besides severe weather situations.

Additionally, the oldest group of churchgoers (65+) and those of other ethnicities (not white, Hispanic, or African American) are among the least likely to say they’d miss for those reasons.

Giant redwoods are the most massive individual trees on earth. The redwood can grow to 270 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter. You might think that something that huge must have an incredible root system that goes down deep in order to stand that tall. This is not the case at all. The redwood tree has no tap root and remarkably shallow roots—only five or ten feet deep.

It seems to violate the laws of physics that they can stay upright for hundreds – even thousand – of years. That is, until you know one more fact: the redwoods grow in thick groves because their shallow roots are intertwined, and over time, fused together. They start out as individuals and become one with others as they mature and grow.

So, beneath the surface of these incredible statuesque trees are roots like an army of men who have their arms interlocked and supporting each other. They are preventing the adversaries of life from knocking each other down.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Holy Spirit, indwelling; Paraclete - Individual believers are supported and strengthened by the indwelling Holy Spirit who stabilizes us against temptation and the trials of life; 2) Body of Christ; Community; Support - The mutual support of our brothers and sisters in Christ can keep us upright when we otherwise might fall.

Most people continue to use AI programs such as ChatGPT, Bing, and Google Bard for mundane tasks like internet searches and text editing. But of the roughly 103 million US adults turning to generative chatbots in recent months, an estimated 13% occasionally did it to simply “have a conversation with someone.”

According to the Consumer Reports August 2023 survey results, a vast majority of Americans (69%) either did not regularly utilize AI chat programs in any memorable way. Those that did, however, overwhelmingly opted to explore OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Most AI users asked their programs to conduct commonplace tasks, such as answering questions in lieu of a traditional search engine, writing content, summarizing longer texts, and offering ideas for work or school assignments. Despite generative AI’s relative purported strength at creating and editing computer code, just 10% of those surveyed recounted using the technology to do so. However, 13% used it to have a conversation.

The desire for idle conversation with someone else is an extremely human, natural feeling. However, there are already signs that it’s not necessarily the healthiest of habits.

Many industry critics have voiced concerns about a potentially increasing number of people turning to technology instead of human relationships. Numerous reports in recent months highlight a growing market of AI bots explicitly marketed to an almost exclusively male audience as “virtual girlfriends.”

According to Consumer Reports survey results, an estimated 10.2 million Americans had a “conversation” with a chatbot in recent months. That’s quite a lot of people looking to gab.

A lot of things about work that we long took for granted have changed for good, as we settle into our remote and hybrid reality. While many of us are happy for the reduction in long commutes, sad desk lunches, and uncomfortable “business casual” clothes, there are some things we’ll miss.

There is also the importance of office friendships. Having a close relationship with people you work with not only increases your job satisfaction and loyalty, but productivity, as well. And creating and maintaining those relationships is a driving reason so many bosses claimed to want employees back in the office.

But after years of being away from the office, those relationships have eroded or disappeared. The Wall Street Journal reported the percentage of hybrid workers who claimed to have a best friend at work fell from 22% to 17% between 2019 and 2022, perhaps finally signaling the end of the “work spouse” era. While we miss out on having someone to confide in or commiserate with, more people are realizing a difficult truth: Work was never your family.

Companies, when trying to force “fun” activities on their employees as a way to entice them back to work, are seeing that many would rather spend time with their actual friends and families. If the end goal for both bosses and employees has always been a happier, more productive, more engaged workforce, then maybe it’s time we let employees prioritize a healthy disconnection from the office.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Family; Friendship; Church Involvement – This is a good reminder that our first responsibility, and true lasting relationships, are found with our “real families” at home and at church.

In 2023, an Australian man said that a chatbot had saved his life. He was a musician who had been battling depression for decades and found companionship with an AI through an app called Replika, and everything changed. He started playing the guitar again, went clothes shopping for the first time in years, spent hours conversing with his AI companion, and laughing out loud.

Though the musician felt less alone with his AI companion, his isolation from other people was unchanged. He was adamant that he had a real friendship, but understood clearly that no person was on the other side of his screen. The effect of this bond was extraordinary.

Replika, and other chatbots, have millions of active users. People turn to these apps for all sorts of reasons. They’re looking for attention and for reassurance. But the apps’ core experience is texting as you would with a buddy. They’re talking about the petty minutiae so fundamental to being alive: “Someone stole my yogurt from the office fridge;” “I had a weird dream;” “My dachshund seems sad.”

To Replika’s users, this feels a lot like friendship. In actuality, the relationship is more like the fantasized intimacy people feel with celebrities and influencers who carefully create desirable personae for our screens. These parasocial bonds are defined by their asymmetry—one side is almost totally ignorant of the other’s existence.

Jesse Fox, a communications professor at Ohio State University, said that if we continue relationships that seem consensual and reciprocal but are not, we risk carrying bad models of interaction into the real world. Fox is particularly concerned by the habits men form through sexual relationships with AIs who never say no. “We start thinking, ‘Oh, this is how women interact. This is how I should talk to and treat a woman.’”

Sometimes the shift is more subtle—researchers and parents alike have expressed concern that barking orders at devices such as Amazon’s Echo is conditioning children to become tiny dictators. Fox said, “When we are humanizing these things, we’re also, in a way, dehumanizing people.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Church; Fellowship; Friendship - This illustration highlights the wise exhortation of Scripture to “never neglect meeting together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another” (Heb. 10:25). God did not create us to be alone (Gen. 2:18) but to find fellowship, encouragement, and love in the company of others.

Freya India writes in an article titled “We Can't Compete With AI Girlfriends”:

Apparently, ads for AI girlfriends have been all over TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook lately. Replika, an AI chatbot originally offering mental health help and emotional support, now runs ads for spicy selfies and hot role play. Eva AI invites users to create their dream companion, while Dream Girlfriend promises a girl that exceeds your wildest desires. The app Intimate even offers hyper-realistic voice calls with your virtual partner.

This might seem niche and weird but it’s a fast-growing market. All kinds of startups are releasing romantic chatbots capable of having explicit conversations and sending sexual photos. Meanwhile, Replika alone has already been downloaded more than 20 million times. And even just one Snapchat influencer, Caryn Marjorie, makes $100,000 a week by charging users $1 a minute to chat with the AI version of herself.

Freya India notes that this technology creates “unrealistic beauty standards,” but even worse is the unrealistic emotional standards set by these apps. She continues:

Eva AI, for example, not only lets you choose the perfect face and body but customize the perfect personality, offering options like “hot, funny, bold,” “shy, modest, considerate” and “smart, strict, rational.” Create a girlfriend who is judgement-free! Who lets you hang out with your buddies without drama! Who laughs at all your jokes! “Control it all the way you want to,” promises Eva AI. Design a girl who is “always on your side,” says Replika.

While many Americans report that they attend church at least occasionally, that number could be slowly shrinking. Recently, people were asked in an online forum, “If you used to go to church and don’t anymore … Why not?” and the answers were interesting and insightful.

1. There Are Too Many Judgmental People - Yes, there are many, many kind, loving Christians. But there are plenty of not-so-kind ones too.

2. They Were Hurt at Church - Unfortunately, church hurt is a very real issue that way too many Christians have had to endure.

3. The Service Is Too Loud - Many former church members reported that they didn’t appreciate how loud and showy the services can be these days.

4. There Were Too Many False Teachings – Some churches have turned aside from their original purpose and turned the sermons into self-help seminars with the Word of God only occasionally sprinkled in.

5. The Church Split - Church splits are incredibly painful for those involved, and can easily lead to some walking out of church altogether.

6. Their Schedule Is Too Busy - People are busier than ever. This can mean church attendance takes a back seat to other matters.

7. They Stopped Attending During the Pandemic - Multiple people mentioned the recent pandemic as a reason, whether this was due to ongoing health concerns or simply a change in routine.

8. The Church Focused On Religion Over Relationship – The church should focus on building a good relationship with God and others, not simply following rules or measuring up to an impossible standard.

9. The Church Became Too Focused on Money - Too much emphasis on money and giving simply isn’t healthy. This is problematic if church members are treated differently due to their differences in giving.

10. They Have Social Anxiety - Anxiety is a common mental health condition, so this prevents some from regularly attending and enjoying time at church.

Editor’s Note: The original survey was conducted by Equipping Godly Women on Reddit. You can read the original survey and comments here.

In his book Adrift, New York University professor Scott Galloway writes:

We used to be more involved in our communities. In the 1990s most Americans attended some form of religious service, and large numbers got involved in community-based clubs like Rotary and enrolled their kids in team-building programs like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. But over the course of the past 30 years, something's changed. Now fewer than half of Americans go to a church, temple, or mosque, and many of us no longer talk to our neighbors.

Supporting these statements, he offers statistics like these:

Percentage of Americans with church membership in 1990: 68%. In 2020: 47% Percentage of Americans who talked to their neighbors in 2008: 71%. In 2017: 54%

More millennials attend church weekly now than before the start of the pandemic. According to a Barna Group survey of 13,000 adults, roughly 16 percent of regular churchgoers have not returned to services at all in 2022, but weekly attendance among those born between 1981 and 1996 has risen from 21 percent to 39 percent this year.

The trend can be partly explained by life stage. Across age cohorts, church attendance is highest when people have young children, drops off for “empty nesters,” and then increases again when friends start to pass away. The oldest millennials are 40 and 41

The term “deaths of despair” was coined in 2015 by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The researchers were seeking to find what was causing the decline in U.S. life expectancies in the later part of the 20th century. They discovered the dramatic increase in death rates for middle-aged, white non-Hispanic men and women was coming from three causes: drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease. Deaths from these causes have increased between 56 percent and 387 percent and average 70,000 per year.

The researchers said, “The pillars that once helped give life meaning—a good job, a stable home life, a voice in the community—have all eroded.” Those pillars are certainly important, but another factor may have an even more detrimental effect.

Research suggests a potential cause of deaths of despair could be the decline in religious participation that began in the late 1980s. The researchers found “there is a strong negative relationship between religiosity and mortality due to deaths of despair.”

In 2010, country singer Jason Aldean released a song called “Church Pew or Bar Stool” in which he complains about how he’s stuck in a “church pew or bar stool kind of town.” He sings, “There’s only two means of salvation around here that seem to work / Whiskey or the Bible, a shot glass or revival.” That’s a crude dichotomy, but it appears to increasingly be the choice many Americans face. They’ll either find hope from a community of faith or the lonely despair that leads them to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

Two Harvard health professors (one an epidemiologist) note that declining church attendance is a public health crisis.

Of course, the point of the gospel is not to lower your blood pressure, but to know and love God. ... But there are many public health benefits of church attendance. Consider how it appears to affect health care professionals. Some of my (Tyler’s) research examined their behaviors over the course of more than a decade and a half using data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 70,000 participants.

Medical workers who said they attended religious services frequently (given America’s religious composition, these were largely in Christian churches) were 29 percent less likely to become depressed, about 50 percent less likely to divorce, and five times less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended.

And, in perhaps the most striking finding of all, health care professionals who attended services weekly were 33 percent less likely to die during a 16-year follow-up period than people who never attended. These effects are of a big enough magnitude to make a practical difference and not just a statistical difference.

Our findings aren’t unique. A number of large, well-designed research studies have found that religious service attendance is associated with greater longevity, less depression, less suicide, less smoking, less substance abuse, better cancer and cardiovascular- disease survival, less divorce, greater social support, greater meaning in life, greater life satisfaction, more volunteering, and greater civic engagement.

The findings are extensive and growing.

A teen was a little mystified when he learned about the “Ding Dong Dash” student group activity at his church. With the after-hours stealth, catching homeowners unaware, and the anonymous nature of it all, Clifton Punter said he wasn't so sure about the ministry's concept.

Then Punter participated in Ding Dong Prayer Dash at St. Matthew's United Methodist Church, and he understood everything. Ding Dong Prayer Dash is a twist on "Ding Dong Ditch," a familiar children's prank involving ringing someone's doorbell and running away before it's answered.

Thus, on a recent Wednesday night, Punter and other members of the church's student group formed a circle on the lawn of a homebound church member. A nearby porchlight provided a warm glow as he led them in a prayer for the church member then hung a special door sign featuring a hopeful message on the member's front door.

Riinnnggg! Punter rang the doorbell and he and others in the student group quickly walked back to two waiting vans. And on they drove to another house to offer up another prayer for fellow church members who are generally homebound.

Punter said of the prayer activity, "When I first heard about it, it seemed a little weird. You're ringing someone's doorbell and then running away but then I realized it makes people smile because we leave them a gift basket or we leave them a note. It lets them know somebody's thinking about them.”

Jayna Sims was a recent recipient of the group's Ding Dong Prayer Dash. She was on the student's list because of the death of her father. She said the student group visited her dad earlier in the year and brought him some goodies. Sims says,

It means a lot to me—I've had a rough year. I took care of my dad this last year and along with COVID, my immune system is bad so I've been trapped at home for two years. Having them stop by every once in a while, that means a lot, it really means a lot. … my church family is still my church family, even though I can't go every week.

On the topic of work/life questions, Marie Le Conte writes in The New Statesman, that “Working From Home Is Killing Our Social Lives.” For now, there are far fewer opportunities for the WFH crowd for random, chance meet ups.

As much as loneliness has been a watchword for decades now, the post-pandemic reordering seems more acutely lonely and isolated. In a poll that the Pew Research Center conducted in May 2022, 21 percent of respondents said that socializing had become more important to them since the coronavirus outbreak. However, 35 percent said it had become less important.

Some people are probably seeing their loved ones less because of continued fear of disease. But when pressed, the typical response is, “I just got out of the habit.” This anecdotal evidence is backed up by data: Most respondents in a spring 2022 survey of American adults said they found it harder to form relationships now, and a quarter felt anxious about socializing. Many of us have simply forgotten how to be friends.

Loneliness tends to be self-perpetuating. If you’ve been seeking remote work instead of in-person work for convenience, choosing solitary activities over group ones because of awkwardness, or electing not to reestablish old friendships because of sheer torpor, you may be stuck in a pattern of learned loneliness. But it is worth noting just how vital other people are for our own wellbeing—even at the most basic level of casual friendships.

Looking for a bright spot? One study found that while the post-pandemic unhappiness of the unreligious rose, those who attended church were comparably happier.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The pandemic lockdowns and health scares have greatly affected local church attendance as well. Staying home and watching streaming church services, also harms our spiritual lives. “Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:25).

Author, songwriter, business owner, and professor Dave Yauk shares how after his life went into a tailspin, until he found Christ:

I was born and raised in a Christian home. My great-great-grandfather was Louis Talbot, one of the founders of Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology, and a preacher who worked closely alongside Billy Graham.

Yet despite this lineage of faith, I grew up as a “moralistic therapeutic deist.” I believed loosely in a divine mind that created the world, and I believed that this being would want us to be good and nice to each other. But I knew this “thing” wasn’t especially involved in my life.

I attended my family’s church until I was 11 years old. In that time, I acquired a certain cynicism about religion and ministry. In many ways, ministry became an idol in my home, and it often kept us from being a close family. Our home life was emotionally arid and devoid of intimacy, and I grew to hate whatever god would allow this.

Around age 17, I began my first serious romantic relationship. But this girl quickly became my idol. It only took a few months before I was pouring my anger onto her. I became what I had vowed never to become: an abuser.

My life went into a tailspin. I entered a 10-month depression. Not a day went by without thoughts of killing myself. I was desperate to learn how to love and be loved. So I studied psychology and read ancient holy books. One remained unopened: the Bible.

But one day, I opened a book that posed a question I couldn’t answer. The author asked, “Do you have a desire to be perfectly loved?” That’s impossible! No one can love us perfectly. And yet the author probed deeper, acknowledging that we still desire this sort of perfect love, even though no one on earth can provide it.

This was the first moment I ever entertained the possibility of a personal god. I finally opened my Bible, and almost instantly I came upon John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Suddenly it all made sense. I understood how Jesus differed from all the other religious leaders I’d encountered in my reading. Jesus sacrificed everything to come down to us!

In that moment I finally met Jesus. Becoming a Christian didn’t make my life any easier. Immediately after Christ entered my heart, he started dealing with my sin. He led me down the dark path of confronting my horrendous addictions. He revealed a stubborn tendency toward lying and deception and a violent temper burning with white-hot flames.

More and more, I came to understand why I needed Jesus’ love. It was one thing to receive the perfect love that every human being desires. It was quite another to know he had offered this perfect love while I was still a wretched sinner. When I contemplated the weight of the horror my sin had caused, it drove me to a deeper humility. The more I understood my status as a beloved son of God, bought by the precious blood of Jesus, the more I learned to welcome the Holy Spirit into my life as my comforter, counselor, convicter, and confidant.

Want your kids to do better in school? Church might be the answer, according to a study conducted by the University of Notre Dame. An article titled, “God, Grades, and Graduation,” suggests that religion can play a critical role for success.

According to the study, abiders are youth who remain active in religious communities and who have adopted their family’s faith as their own. They “are likely to have an academic advantage because religion and schools are complementary institutions.” In particular, “adolescents who thrive in one institution are likely to thrive in the other.”

Among the survey’s participants, the probability of getting grades of all or mostly A’s was about 10% higher among "abiders" than among non-religious students in the same socioeconomic group. According to Professor Horwitz, at Tulane University, a religious foundation can actually overcome challenges associated with growing up in lower socioeconomic circumstances.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our society treats faith as a game people choose to play, a tradition to be mindlessly followed. But a foundation of faith has far-reaching implications. When we lose faith, we lose our way.