I’ve always appreciated the work of Dr. Ryan Burge. He focuses on the relationship between religion and society, with sharp takes that only an academic-pastor can deliver.

For someone interested in happiness, one of his most interesting articles is Religious People are Happier, published in September of 2025. In that piece, Dr. Burge finally says the “one true thing”: Religious people self-identify as happier than non-religious people. Period. End of story. High-quality data repeatedly bears this out.

Like Dr. Burge, I’m an academic. In contrast, I’m an atheist. Nobody’s perfect.

You might imagine that I found Ryan’s piece a bit unsettling, given it relegated me to a life of misery and melancholy. (See how dramatic I can be?)

This piece isn’t a direct response to Ryan’s article. Instead, I want to explain some of the “why” behind the numbers that he (and others) are citing. My obvious bias is to defend the unchurched, to show that our lives can be as happy as anyone else’s. But I promise to shove down that prejudice and get to the truth of faith and happiness.

So if you’re not churching on Sundays, bring a droopy chair and your slumped posture. I’m about to drop the real reasons why Christians say they’re happier than we are—and what we can do about it.

The Sunday Happiness Gap

My first run-in with the “Christians are happier” thesis came in 2019, when Pew noted that actively religious Americans are 44% more likely to say they are “very happy” than both inactively religious and unaffiliated respondents. To make sure, they added controls for education and income. The numbers didn’t budge.

I blew it off.

Pew. What do those pencil necks know?

Then, in 2022, Gallup added to the swell of data on Christian happiness. They found that 67% of weekly church attenders report being very satisfied with their life, versus just 48% of infrequent attenders. Those same weekly attenders experienced more positive emotions per day, especially on Sunday.

These studies dovetail with Burge’s numbers, which insist there’s a causal stream running from frequent church attendance to feeling better about your life.

Side note: Pew and Gallup both survey other religious groups (Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.). But those sample sizes are small, making comparisons with them a bit tenuous. That’s why I’ve framed this as a Christian versus secular dynamic.

What’s REALLY Making Churchgoers Happier

The descriptive statistics speak to the conclusion that piety cranks up the happy. But those statistics do little to tell us WHY this is the case or if the numbers hold up under heavy scrutiny. For all we know, happier people are more likely to go to church in the first place (AKA reverse causation).

We need to know more. And to know more, we need to get past descriptive statistics from Pew, Gallup, and the General Social Survey. This called for more sophisticated models from academics. (Yep, more pencil necks.)

First, I’ll give you a rundown of the main pathways linking active religiosity with happiness. I came across many, but to keep things simple I’ll limit it to three:

Friendship. Religious attendance → congregational friendships → social support + belonging + identity reinforcement → higher well-being
Meaning-making. Religious worldview → framework for interpreting suffering, purpose, and mortality → reduced existential anxiety → higher well-being
Positive emotions. Religious practice → awe, gratitude, hope, compassion, transcendence → broader outlook and connections → better social/psychological resources → higher well-being

Those are the active ingredients, each one with its own pathway. But there’s a least common denominator for all of them: religion breeds psycho-social benefits. And those psycho-social benefits have real impacts on life satisfaction.

But we’re running the risk of falsely assigning causality to religion as it pertains to happiness. Just look at the list above to see a case of data masquerading as truth. All of the things attributed to religious attendance actually depend on something else for the effect to exist. In other words, the effect is there but it’s indirect.

This is where academic studies are helpful.

A study led by Harvard’s Robert Putnam found that 33% of weekly attenders with 3-5 close church friends reported being “extremely satisfied” with life. Weekly attenders with no close church friends? Just 19%. More telling is that regular attenders with no friends at church fared worse than people who never attended at all. It’s not the steeple, it’s the people.
Harvard epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeele found that social support explains about 25% of Christianity’s well-being benefit. Again, the single biggest chunk of religion’s “magic” isn’t theological—it’s the built-in social network.
A large meta-analysis co-written by David Yaden, Jonathan Haidt, and others found that spiritual experiences—feelings of awe, transcendence, and connection to something bigger—pulled about three times more weight than attendance when it came to happiness. The Sunday routine matters. But the transcendent moments are doing most of the work.
Ryan Burge’s 2025 analysis of the Pew Religious Landscape Survey found that people who watch religious services online but never attend in person are no happier than people who are completely nonreligious. You can livestream the theology. You can’t livestream the potluck.

Yes, the psychosocial benefits of church are real. They are not, however, caused by God. They are the byproduct of social connectivity, spiritual experiences, and transcendence.

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to make the case that religion doesn’t matter. It’s clearly a positive force in people’s lives. I’m just trying to make the case that many of these outcomes are indirect and that Christians don’t hold a monopoly over spiritual benefits.

All that said, it’s clear that secular people have to concede the point made by Burge and others: Being an active Christian expedites many traits of a good life.

Comradery. Congregation. Coping. Compassion. Connection to something larger.

Compared to all other people, active Christians are more likely to harness the power of these forces. But “more likely” is a long way from “uniquely capable.”

The new question is, how can Sunday abstainers access these same benefits? Or, from another angle, what types of secular people are more likely to reap these spiritual rewards than others?

The Secular Plot Twist

Christians have denominations, meaning not all are alike. In a sense, so do non-believers. Some are torn from the cloth of atheism (like me). Others take up the ambiguous mantle of agnosticism (commitment issues). Still others, thanks to surveys, embrace terms like “spiritual but not religious” or “nothing in particular” (super commitment issues).

Also like Christians, the happiness outcomes of secular people vary. And this is where things get interesting. I also think it’s where we get closer to the truth behind the faith-happiness connection.

First, we have to organize secular people to create distinctions. For our purposes, the aforementioned brands of secularity are good enough—atheists, agnostics, spiritual but not religious (SBNR), and nothing in particular (“nones”).

Here’s how they size up on well-being:

Among secular Americans, atheists reported the highest levels of life satisfaction and self-rated health. (Scoreboard.)
A separate national study also found that atheists had better physical health and markedly fewer psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, paranoia, obsession, compulsion) than other secular individuals.
SBNR respondents reported the highest happiness but the lowest life satisfaction—they often feel good, but are less settled or content with their lives overall.
The strongest predictor across secular groups was whether their nonreligion feels comforting vs anxiety-provoking; comfort is associated with higher happiness.

The most telling bullet is the last one. When distance from religion produces confusion or anxiety, people suffer. If it leads to comfort, they fare much better. Sounds obvious, but there’s something there. We just need to figure out what produces secular anxiety.

More studies add perspective.

A U.S. study by Luke Galen and James Kloet found that “strong” atheists—who feel sure God doesn’t exist—had higher life satisfaction and emotional stability than “moderate” atheists (less sure) and agnostics (unsure).
Another study found nonaffiliated theists (nones) had significantly worse physical and mental health compared to atheists, and the worst outcomes of any group in the study. Another study echoed this finding.
These findings are attributed to atheists’ sense of “existential certainty” and a confident worldview.

To recap, atheists typically have the firmest beliefs among secular groups, which comes with a couple of benefits. First, their existential certainty reduces chronic rumination on questions of God and faith. This is associated with lower anxiety and, by extension, higher happiness.

Second, for atheists non-religiosity is like sweatpants—they are comfortable with it and often adopt an affirmative non-religious identity. That identity comes complete with a secular worldview rooted in secular values—science, nature, art, etc.

Agnostics and SBNR people, on the other hand, are far less sure and more conflicted. In a sense, they’ve rejected the communal and dogmatic parts of religion but haven’t built a secular alternative. They tend to be “seekers” who are exploring without settling.

They’re also the most disconnected from the infrastructure that makes religion work. According to Pew, only 2% of SBNRs attend a weekly gathering (of any type). Just 5% say they’re part of an important spiritual community. They’re not just ambivalent about God. They’re bowling alone.

In the end, Galen and Kloet concluded there was a U-shaped relationship between existential certainty and happiness, with devout believers and strong atheists at the ends and more uncertain groups in the middle.

U-curve chart showing the relationship between existential certainty and happiness. — The U-curve, visualized: certainty wins, ambivalence loses. Based on findings from Galen & Kloet (2011). The chart itself is for illustration, not based on actual data points.

What matters isn’t what you believe. It’s how settled you are in your worldview. Or, put another way, it’s not faith vs. no-faith. It’s certainty vs. ambivalence.

A coherent, committed worldview (whether religious or secular) gives you:

A stable framework for interpreting life events
Clarity about purpose and meaning
Freedom from existential churn
A consistent identity and community of like-minded people (identities tend to attract association)

Ambiguity, in contrast, costs you psychologically. If you’re not sure whether the universe has meaning, whether death is the end, whether suffering has purpose — and you haven’t settled into either a religious or a secular answer — you pay a well-being tax in the form of ongoing existential anxiety.

I should point out that most secular people identify with the uncertainty factions. A 2024 Pew report pinned the nones at 63% of non-religious people and agnostics at 20 percent. Atheists sit at just 17 percent. That’s more than 8 in 10 who score low on happiness.

Translation: The secular data on happiness is skewed toward unhappiness, simply due to the make-up of non-religious groups. When we compare strong atheists with frequent church attenders, the happiness gap almost vanishes. Not quite. But almost.

How to Get Happier

I just threw a lot of studies at you. (My bad.) Together, they tell a story about theology and happiness, and Christianity is the main protagonist. But the narrative quickly shifts when we unearth the nuances.

First, any argument claiming that religion is directly responsible for happiness is on shaky ground, simply because the data claps back at this argument. Identifying with a religion does little for a person’s well-being, as evidenced by the happiness gap between weekly attenders and non-attenders.

Second, the relationship runs through intermediaries. Rather than Christianity, this is about friendship, meaning-making, and positive emotions. To be clear, it’s not that Jesus isn’t doing some heavy lifting. He clearly helps active Christians find these benefits.

Compared with SBNRs and agnostics, Christians really do experience happiness benefits. But only if they do it a certain way. And they don’t possess a monopoly over spiritual happiness. Secular people can get there, too.

For all of us—from devout Christians to atheists and everyone in between—there’s a well-worn set of spiritual practices that build happiness.

They look like this:

Join something (and keep showing up): The research is clear. Communal participation drives well-being, not private belief. Find a group that meets weekly (or close to it), shares your values, and offers real friendships.
Settle your existential accounts: Galen and Kloet’s U-curve shows that too many big, open questions can cause existential anxiety. Is there a God? What’s my purpose? How do I deal with mortality? People with answers are happier than perpetual seekers. So learn, think, and arrive at an answer. Then commit to it. This isn’t about being right or “sure.” And it’s not cemented for life. But you’ll benefit from having a solid idea.
Practice awe on purpose: Spiritual experiences had 3 times the happiness power than religious attendance by itself. Fortunately, you don’t need a church for awe. Nature, science, music, art, and meditation produce transcendent emotional states. Schedule them like you’d schedule exercise.
Build a personal “meaning architecture”: Religious people benefit from a coherent, ready-made story about why they’re here. Meaning and purpose are served up to them on a silver platter. Secular people can have this too. But it requires intentional construction rather than passive inheritance. Engage with philosophy. Perform service. Parent your kids with passion. Find your creativity. Learn the ripples you make in the world, the impact you can have. The possibilities are endless.

Religion is a powerful happiness technology, but it’s not the only one. The mechanisms are human. The ingredients are portable. And the best time to start building is always the same: now.

Yes, Christians are happier. But not because…