Jessica Cohen, "The Greatest Story Never Told," Utne Reader (April 1997): 68-73

Remaining much nearer to the mainstream — indeed, gathering all his data from "ordinary" medical records — is David Larson, M.D. The Greatest Story Never Told has a subtitle that says it all: "Researcher Dave Larson says that finding God can improve your health — and he has the numbers to prove it. So why aren't more people listening?"

Not a bad question for a nation where 60 percent of the population would like to discuss spirituality with their doctor and another 40 percent would like their doctor to pray with them.

Jessica Cohen finds Larson "on the road to spread the word to health professionals and other decision-makers that faith is a crucial element of the American psyche that should be taken into consideration in health care, not just in a patient's last moments but from the first time a physician — or psychotherapist — takes his or her history."

Part of his ordinary medical record is a study in Evans County, Ga., where Larson found that smokers who went to church regularly were "four times less likely to have high blood pressure than those who didn't." Even more amazing, these church-going folks have the same blood pressure as nonsmokers who did not go to church. In another survey, Larson discovered that religious people were less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, commit suicide, be depressed or divorced.

In short, the pious tend to be healthier and live longer — and even have better sex.

"I'm a numbers man," Larson tells Cohen, "I like a God who counts the hairs on my head." Cohen adds "that religion is the taboo topic that sex once was, which may be why people are as likely to turn to clergy as to mental health professions for help with their emotional problems, according to a study he conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health."

As president of his own think-tank — the National Institute for Healthcare Research — Larson is an Episcopalian who knows the difference between spiritual wheat and chaff: "While one can go through the motions of being religious without being spiritual, or be spiritual without the trappings of a religious system, spurious piety and genuine piety have different effects."

Cohen's tone is largely flattering and positive, but she asks: "So God answers only the sincere? Larson won't say. He declines to account for what he calls 'superempirical factors' in his statistics and sticks devoutly with the data. He attributes the beneficial effects of religion to an amalgam of social support, the meaning it gives life, the sense of alliance with an omnipotent force, and the stress-reducing benefits of meditations. He believes it is the good health of intrinsically spiritual churchgoers that is pulling up some his numbers. And he anticipates that as medical research becomes more precise in assessing people's religious attitudes, the benefits of intrinsic spirituality will become more impressive."

Martin E. Marty is the George B. Caldwell senior scholar-in-residence at the Park Ridge Center.