RELIGION AND HEALTH: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

There has been a recent tendency for medical sociology to ignore the possible influence that religion may have on health. For example, religion as a social variable is now no longer routinely collected in large scale social surveys dealing with health or mortality. As Vaux speaking of America stated: “The U.S. Public Health Service, in its extensive and comprehensive analysis of health in its etiological and epidemiological dimensions, has chosen to systematically ignore the variable religion” (1,p.524). Such an attitude has been justified by recourse to arguments about the secularisation of society and in particular to the decline in the membership of the traditional churches. In this article I wish to re‐open this area for discussion by again asking the question: does religion influence health? The medical literature, from both national and ad hoc studies, considering the evidence of health effects under the headings of mortality, and physical and psychological morbidity will be reviewed. Religion however, when dealt with as a social science variable does have its problems; if correlations between religion and health are found how are they to be accounted for? I will, therefore, also look at the various types of causal mechanisms which have been put forward by researchers. Further, why certain diseases have greater prominence in the literature than others, and why certain religious groups have received greater attention than others will be considered. Finally the article concludes by outlining avenues of future research in the area and how any such work could avoid the theoretical bias of past studies.