Meeting for coffee or church, which is better for you?

Is attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices bet­ter for your health than meet­ing friends for cof­fee?
If you attend reli­gious ser­vices reg­u­lar­ly you are less like­ly to be depressed than nonat­ten­dees, accord­ing to a study in the Jour­nal of Reli­gion and Health. Reg­u­lar atten­dees also have a more opti­mistic out­look on life.

But the study only sur­veyed women 50 and old­er. I think that’s odd. But some of the find­ings are inter­est­ing and I think they trans­fer to gen­der and age. It makes sense that if you attend a spir­i­tu­al gath­er­ing (be it in a church, a yoga stu­dio, a syn­a­gogue, etc.) you are mak­ing social con­nec­tions, which also increas­es opti­mism and health.

What do you think? Is it any dif­fer­ent than reg­u­lar­ly meet­ing a bunch of friends for cof­fee?

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