For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the implications of religious engagement on personal and communal well-being.
A new set of studies based at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health will examine the ways that individual religious participation can contribute to various aspects of human flourishing over the long term. The three-year project, made possible by a $1.23 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, will offer an unprecedented examination of the potential effects of religion on happiness, life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, character, and social relationships.
The studies will be led by Tyler VanderWeele, an epidemiologist who is co-director of Harvard’s Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality, and director of the university’s Program on Integrative Knowledge and Human Flourishing. VanderWeele has already published important research showing longitudinal associations between religious participation and physical health, but the new planned studies should offer insights into other questions about religion and other categories of human flourishing.