Ram Cnaan, a professor and director of the program for religion and social policy research at the University of Pennsylvania, recently stood at the podium of a religious freedom conference at BYU and presented research on religion’s key contributions to society.
Then he admitted he is not a religious man.
“I’m not a member of any faith tradition,” Cnaan told the crowd of people gathered Tuesday for BYU’s 2026 Religious Freedom Annual Review.
“I was born in Israel, but I don’t practice any religion. I look at it as a researcher … as objectively as possible, (and) the picture is extremely positive.”
Cnaan’s presentation, delivered during the event’s final session, was replete with research and findings that demonstrated how religious congregations serve as “engine(s) of economic prosperity” and social good.
People find flaws and problems in organized religion, Cnaan said. Some of their criticisms are valid, he added, but the “positive story (of religion) is hardly ever told.”
“You have to spread the word for other people that American congregations are so valued.”
Religion as a key in the pursuit of happiness
Despite not being a religious man, Cnaan’s yearslong research has led him to view religious congregations as “the most important social organization in society.”
“I cannot think about any social organization, any place where people come voluntarily, willingly and produce so much good,” Cnaan said.
According to Cnaan and his team’s research, religious congregations are the most frequent type of community organizations in the United States. There are about 22 congregations for each McDonald’s restaurant in the country, Cnaan said.
Religious congregations help combat loneliness and isolation by being places where the “most face-to-face interaction” happens in society, he explained. They also help to teach values, enhance overall health and well-being, decrease youth engagement in risky behaviors, provide social services to the broader community, and increase local economic prosperity.
Roughly 90% of American congregations provide at least one service to the benefit of needy people in the community, Cnaan said.
Through about 12 years of study and analysis, Cnaan and a team of researchers and economists have found that in places where the number of religious congregations has declined over time, the level of economic prosperity has also declined.
In essence, religion is “an engine of economic prosperity,” Cnaan said.
Religion as a key to deep, personal change
Shima Baughman, the Woodruff J. Deem Professor of Law at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, also spoke at the event’s final session and highlighted faith’s role in achieving deep, personal change; health; and happiness.
She spoke from her experience working with people in the criminal justice system for roughly 20 years and her experience researching the correlation between religion and mental health as a distinguished fellow at BYU’s Wheatley Institute.
“(This) may be one of religion’s deepest contributions to happiness,” she said. “It keeps the door of change open.”
Baughman listed several statistics highlighting problems in the criminal justice system and then detailed what studies and her own research have demonstrated is religion’s role in achieving lasting change and happiness.
“Roughly 5 million people in the U.S. live under some sort of correctional supervision, and nearly 2 million are incarcerated on any given day,” Baughman said. This is “by far the highest concentration of incarceration rates in the world.”
In the most comprehensive analysis to date, she added, “82% of those people released from state prison were rearrested within 10 years.” One of the underlying problems is that about 85% of incarcerated people have an underlying substance abuse disorder, she said.
Baughman and a colleague found, through a qualitative study, that faith and the virtues taught within the world’s religions help people involved in the criminal legal system achieve lasting change by restoring identity, belonging, purpose, accountability, discipline and hope.
“In our study, sustained transformation emerged when people were immersed in loving environments that embody prosocial values, often found in religious communities,” Baughman said.
She shared excerpts of what some of the study’s roughly 80 participants said and then shared how their experiences aligned with studies’ findings on the correlation between religion and mental health.
“The system tells you, ‘You can’t, you can’t, you can’t,’” Baughman said, quoting a study participant named Freddy, who served 12 years in federal prison.
“But you can here (in a religious community). Here, there is hope. And if you even just desire to have hope, hope grows here.”
In a sample of more than 60,000 high-quality studies, the ratio of studies reporting a positive association between religion and mental health to those reporting no positive association was approximately 10:1, Baughman said.
“When we narrowed in on studies that specifically measured positive emotion — happiness, hope, optimism, meaning, life satisfaction — 233 of 251 high-quality studies showed positive associations,” she added. “That’s 93%.”
Religion helps “keep this door open for change so that we can move from isolation, shame and despair toward God, community, accountability, love, purpose and ultimately, a more enduring happiness.”
