Our Picture of Health 1998:
Focusing on Community Health to the Year 2000CHAPTER 4: SPIRITUAL LIFE
Value
- Mesa County will improve and enhance awareness of the whole person — spiritual, physical, emotional — and consider all these dimensions when planning.
Goals
- A. Mesa County will provide for the future by ensuring that our children are exposed to and given opportunities to express spirituality.
- B. Mesa County will have an increased awareness of diversity, values and opinions which results in celebration of differences, increased interfaith communications and safety to speak freely.
Introduction
While there is great diversity in how people practice their faith, there is also much evidence to substantiate the importance of expressing faith for the health and well-being of the individual and community. An article from USA Weekend, The Denver Post, April 5-7, 1996, points out:
- 79% of those polled believe spiritual faith can help people recover from illness, injury or disease.
- 56% say their faith has helped them recover from illness, injury or disease.
- 63% believe it is good for doctors to talk to patients about spiritual faith.
Further, a June 24, 1996, Time magazine report said, "One of the best predictors of survival among 232 heart-surgery patients was the degree to which the patients said they drew comfort and strength from religious faith. Those who did not had more than three times the death rate of those who did."
Finally, according to the Search Institute's research on asset building in youth, "Youth who attended religious services at least once or twice a month (active youth) were nearly half as likely to engage in any of the at-risk behaviors that those who rarely or never attended religious services (inactive youth)."
A survey formulated with the assistance of two organizations of religious leaders, The Ministerial Alliance and COSMICOS, was conducted for the 1998 edition of Mesa County: Our Picture of Health. The purpose of the assessment was to determine the extent of citizen involvement with religious organizations. The survey was distributed to 166 different worship or gathering sites in Mesa County, representing 38 different types of religious organizations (denominations, synagogues and spiritual institutions).
Sixty of the 166 surveys distributed were returned. The responses to the institutional survey and 1,000-household telephone survey complement each other and characterize a distinct picture of the spiritual health of Mesa County.
Of the 166 religious groups in Mesa County, 25 are part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Baptist churches are next in frequency with 24, followed by 12 nondenominational groups. Fourteen denominations each have at least one site or group within the county, and group membership and attendance varies.
Reverend Rick Riddock of COSMICOS reported a general concern regarding the decline in family church membership. If parents are finding ways other than church membership to help reinforce a sense of morality and spirituality in their children, this decline may not be a problem. If children are missing this form of learning, however, they may be at increased risk of making unhealthy choices.
Participants in a community-based focus group made the observation that spiritual values seem to play a significant role in determining individual moral choices and, by extension, societal behavior that affects a large majority of the indicators in this report.
5. Source of Spiritual Support
Religious leaders reported that more than 14,000 Mesa County citizens regularly participate in services. That is approximately 13% of the population.
This finding differs from what residents told us in the Behavioral Risk Survey, that 40% receive spiritual support from their place of worship. Part of the difference can be attributed to those not responding to the Spiritual Leaders Survey. It may also be attributable to perspective. Residents may feel they derive spiritual support from a place of worship without actually attending regularly, or their definitions of regular attendance may vary.
Older adults, women and ethnic minorities more often rely on their church, synagogue or temple for spiritual support.
Figure 4-1: Chief Source of Spiritual Support
Source: 1997 Behavioral Risk Factor Survey
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