Is The Debate Over? New Survey Discovers That Religious People Are Far More Likely To Be “Very Happy”

Michael Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, The American Dream Blog and The Truth. You can follow him on Twitter right here

A shocking new public opinion poll seems to have settled the debate about whether religious people or non-religious people are happier.  In recent years, more people than ever are “throwing off the shackles of religion” in an attempt to find personal happiness, but it looks like they have been running the wrong way.  According to the Pew Research Center, Americans that are “actively religious” are much more likely to say that they are “very happy” compared to “the inactively religious” and those that are “unaffiliated”.  The following comes from Breitbart…

Actively religious people are much more likely than those who are less religious to describe themselves as “very happy” according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

In the United States, 36 percent of the actively religious describe themselves as “very happy,” while only 25 percent of the inactively religious and 25 percent of the unaffiliated self-identify in this way, Pew revealed.

Of course things could potentially be very different in other parts of the world, and so the Pew Research Center asked the same question in more than two dozen countries.  And what they discovered is that actively religious people were more likely to be “very happy” in 19 of the 26 countries that they surveyed…

The trend linking greater happiness to more active religious practice held good for a remarkable 19 nations out of the 26 nations surveyed, Pew found, and where the pattern did not hold, the differences were minimal.

Wow.

And very religious people are not just happier.  According to that same survey, they are far more likely to be engaged in their communities…

Aside from being happier, the religiously active are also more engaged socially and civically, Pew discovered, with religious people being more likely to vote in elections and to join charitable organizations, including non-religious organizations, than the religiously inactive and unaffiliated.

On top of everything else, the children of those that are “actively religious” tend to do much better in school…

Children involved in a religious organization “take tougher courses, get higher grades and test scores, and are less likely to drop out of high school,” which means they also have better employment prospects, Putnam declared in his book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.

So it would appear that there are tremendous benefits to having a nation that is full of people that are “actively religious”, but unfortunately our society is running in the exact opposite direction as rapidly as it can.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “Mass Exodus From The Church: The Percentage Of Young Adults With No Religious Affiliation Has Nearly QUADRUPLED Since 1986”.

As I wrap up this article, for a moment I wanted to take a quick look at what life is like for the other side.

San Francisco is one of the most “anti-Christian” major cities in the United States, and it is certainly one of the wealthiest.

But instead of the “liberal utopia” that many that moved there had been hoping for, it is literally becoming a hellhole.  For example, San Francisco “now has more intravenous drug users than high school students”…

According to a report from the Chronicle, San Francisco now has more intravenous drug users than high school students. San Francisco, which operates 15 high schools, currently has 16,000 students enrolled grades nine through twelve.

By comparison, the northern California city currently has 24,500 “injection drug users.” That is approximately 8,500 more drug users than high school students.

In recent years the city has become known as “the poop capital of America” because of all the piles of human feces that are all over the place, and visitors to the city are often horrified by what they see.  During his recent trip, Bill Blain was stunned by the squalor that he witnessed…

I hope my American hosts will forgive me for raising this, but the squalor we saw in The City was frightful. San Francisco has always been one of favourite US cities, but the degree of homelessness, mental illness and drug abuse we saw on this trip was truly shocking. Walking round SF on a Sunday Morning and we saw sights we couldn’t believe. This must be one of the richest cities in the world – home to 4 of the 10 richest people on the planet according to Wiki. I asked friends about it, and they shrugged it off.. “The City has always attracted the homeless because of the mild weather,”.. “It’s a drug thing”.. “its too difficult”… “you get used to it..”

Well, I didn’t.

I found it quite shocking the number of folk sleeping rough on the sidewalks, the smell of weed and drug impedimenta everywhere, the filth, mental illness and degradation on view just a few meters from the financial centre driving Silicon Valley. It’s a city where the destitute seem to have become invisible to the Uber hailing elites. We found ourselves hopping on one of the beautiful F-Route Trolley Buses to find nearly every seat occupied by someone lugging around their worldly possessions around in a plastic bag. It was desperately sad.

Sadly, this is where our culture is going.

If we stay on the path that we are currently on, the entire country will eventually become just like San Francisco.

This is why we desperately need a change.  If we want our lives to be great, and if we want our country to be great, we need to have a great relationship with God.

But you can choose the other path if you want, and in the end your own life will likely resemble a miniature version of San Francisco.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Michael Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, The American Dream Blog and The Truth. You can follow him on Twitter right here