How does Religion Make People Happy?

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  • 人は宗教で幸せになれるのか：
  • 人は宗教で幸せになれるのか : ウェル・ビーイングと宗教の分析
  • ヒト ワ シュウキョウ デ シアワセ ニ ナレル ノ カ : ウェル ・ ビーイング ト シュウキョウ ノ ブンセキ
  • ウェル・ビーイングと宗教の分析
  • Viewpoints of Recent Research on Religion and Well-being

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Abstract

<p>The question whether “religion” can make people “happy” is not new and has received much scholarship, especially from philosophers and theologians. However, such investigations have failed to systematically analyze which features of religion are correlated to which particular aspect of well-being. This paper aims to first define the concepts of “religion” and “well-being”, and then to explain the relationships between them by reviewing recent studies from the field of the sociology of religion. To do so, I first explain the sociological perspective regarding religion which focuses on religious consciousness, religious action, as well as on religious organization and institutions. Secondly, I consider the relationship between the above religious aspects and various dimensions of well-being, by referring to Ruut Veenhoven’s theoretical approach to categorize well-being into “four qualities of life”: livability, utility of life, life-ability of persons, and appreciation of life. Finally, I introduce the theory of welfare positions (“Wohlfahrtspositionen”) originated by Wolfgang Zapf, who suggests that the interrelation of objective welfare and its subjective evaluation results in four possible outcomes: well-being, dissonance, adaptation, and deprivation. Lastly, I use this theory to scrutinize the unique function that religions may have to promote subjective well-being through religious teaching and spiritual experience, even when believers live in a condition in which there is a gap between objective indicators and their subjective evaluation of well-being.</p>

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