Prayer, Meditation, and Anxiety: Durkheim Revisited
Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA
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Religions 2017, 8(9), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090191
Received: 31 July 2017 / Revised: 1 September 2017 / Accepted: 8 September 2017 / Published: 14 September 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion and Mental Health Outcomes)
Durkheim argued that religion’s emphasis on the supernatural combined with its unique ability to foster strong collective bonds lent it power to confer distinctive social benefits. Subsequent research has confirmed these propositions with respect to religion and mental health. At the same time, meditation has been linked to mental health benefits in intervention-based studies. Our investigation offers a unique test of two comparable inhibitors of anxiety-related symptoms in the general population, namely, prayer versus meditation. Using data from the 2010 wave of the Baylor Religion Survey, we find that frequent communal prayer is correlated with an increased incidence of anxiety-related symptoms whereas worship service attendance is negatively associated with reported anxiety. Attendance also combines with communal prayer to yield anxiety-reducing benefits. Meditation, measured as a dichotomous indicator, is unrelated to reported anxiety in our sample of American adults. Our study underscores the selective efficacy of collective forms of religious expression, and points to several promising directions for future research.
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Keywords:
religion; prayer; meditation; anxiety; mental health
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MDPI and ACS Style
Bartkowski, J.P.; Acevedo, G.A.; Van Loggerenberg, H. Prayer, Meditation, and Anxiety: Durkheim Revisited. Religions 2017, 8, 191. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090191
AMA Style
Bartkowski JP, Acevedo GA, Van Loggerenberg H. Prayer, Meditation, and Anxiety: Durkheim Revisited. Religions. 2017; 8(9):191. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090191
Chicago/Turabian StyleBartkowski, John P.; Acevedo, Gabriel A.; Van Loggerenberg, Harriet. 2017. "Prayer, Meditation, and Anxiety: Durkheim Revisited" Religions 8, no. 9: 191. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090191
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