Religious Factors in Aging, Adjustment, and Health: A Theoretical Overview

For nearly thirty years, gerontologists have explored the relationship over the life cycle between religious participation and measures of health and well-being, such as subjective health and person adjustment. However, findings are often contradictory, and the evidence linking religious behavior to health and well-being is largely inconclusive. ¹ A major explanation for this may lie in the general lack of attention to theoretical issues in many of these studies. While the empirical literature on religion and health in social gerontology is less atheoretical than its counterpart in social epidemiology, ² sociologists of religion have apparently neglected this field of inquiry. ³ The work of those scholars who have written in this area appears to be founded in several somewhat overlapping theoretical orientations. Implicit in each of these perspectives are expectations regarding the ways in which aging affects both the intensity of religious 134involvement and the salience of religion to health and well-being.