HEY NEWSOM: Study Shows Why Churches Really Are An ‘Essential Service’ During COVID

Wes WalkerDecember 9, 2020

31 4 minutes read

Closing down Churches is a really bad idea. And not just for the chilling effect it has on freedoms.

As much as closing a hair salon might be an inconvenience to workers and customers alike, the secular idealogues who have been cheering church shutdowns as a great benefit to society have made a serious miscalculation about just what role churches play in society.

It’s one thing to make that claim as merely an opinion, but something else again when you can back it up with objective data.

The science is in… closing churches is bad for people.

The opening lines of this study should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, considering the crazy year we’ve just had. From COVID to lockdowns and financial ruin, many people have been left holding the bag this year in more ways than one.

And with stressors like that, comes a personal price paid by the people caught in the crosshairs.

American mental health ratings reached their lowest point in two decades this year. Only 34 percent of U.S. adults assess their emotional well-being as “excellent” compared to 43 percent who reported the same in 2019.

The nine-point drop comes as the American self-assessment survey conducted by Gallup showed ratings relatively stable since the polling group launched its November Health and Healthcare series in 2001. –Federalist

These people are not the politicians, or work-from-home office workers, or civil servants and teachers whose jobs are secure. It’s the work-a-day crowd who might not have a job to go back to when the dust clears, and who are running out of financial options during a government-imposed lockdown.

Combine that with the social unrest paired with slashed police funding some communities are enacting, and you have a dangerous societal cocktail.

Where do many such people go to unburden themselves in such situations — if they’re not going to try to self-medicate with substances like alcohol?

The turn to their social networks and communities. In particular, their religious communities.

According to Gallup, drops in mental health ratings were most prominent among Republicans, where 41 percent reported being in “excellent” condition in the Nov. 5-19 poll, a 15-point drop from 56 percent who said the same a year ago. Republicans however, still held a higher-rate of mental well-being than Democrats, 29 percent of whom rated their mental health as “excellent.”

Those with the greatest ratings of mental well-being were attendants of weekly religious services, who were the only sub-group to report a rise in their mental health from 42 percent to 46 percent reporting their psyche of being in excellent shape.

The Gallup poll surveying 1,018 Americans over the age of 18 corroborates research suggesting that a higher importance of religious spirituality in one’s life can abate the symptoms of mental distress exacerbated by isolation and uncertainty imposed pandemic lockdowns.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in August, 2 in 5 Americans reported suffering from symptoms of anxiety, depression, trauma, or stressor-related disorder stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. One in four young adults aged 18-24 reported seriously contemplating suicide within the 30 days of completing the survey, and 16 percent said the same between the ages of 25 and 44.

The Gallup data shows individuals placing a greater value in religion illustrated a higher mental well-being as opposed to those who don’t. Forty-six percent of weekly service-goers said their mental condition remained excellent, 35 percent of those who said they attended services either nearly weekly or monthly said so, and only 29 percent of those who said they never went to religious services reported the same. –Federalist

Maybe, Gavin Newsom and Frick and Frack in New York could get their act together and enlist the help of churches in bringing life and hope to their communities instead of threatening them and taking them to court.

There are other threats out there besides just the Chinavirus… and we may yet look back to realize that suicide was a bigger one than we had suspected.

Robbing people of their networks may be good for tightening the grip of bad actors seeking to maximize their political power, but it is NOT good for society at large.

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