Religious engagement, and in particular, attendance of religious services has robustly been assumed to have a protective effect against loneliness. We wanted to further explore this relationship among younger adults, given reports of high rates of loneliness in this population. In various data sets including Jews and Christians, we examine several aspects of religious engagement: Sabbath dinner observance over the last year, belief in God, subjective religiosity, and religious services attendance, and their relationship to loneliness. In four data sets of Jews and Christian younger adults (Jewish: one from the organization OneTable and the other from the organization Birthright Israel; Christian: Baylor and General Social Survey), we find little evidence of an effect of religious attendance on loneliness in younger adults. We conclude with several possibilities, and questions for future research, regarding loneliness and religion in younger adults.
This research was sponsored by a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation (Grant No. TWCF-2022-30280). This manuscript is currently under peer review.