Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 23, 1995 TAG: 9509250005
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A major study of religion and death anxiety found that visits from children and friends and outside activities do not seem to reduce the fear of death among people in the final stage of life. Not even private religious activities such as prayer or Bible reading appear to significantly lessen the fear of the next life.
What does appear to make older people less fearful of dying is regular attendance at religious services, researchers Robert W. Duff of the University of Portland and Lawrence K. Hong of California State University, Los Angeles, report in this month's issue of the Review of Religious Research.
``The research indicates that it is primarily the ceremonial acts that provide the life-enriching effects of religion,'' Duff said. ``Rituals provide a sense of togetherness. They sustain us by fostering a sense of going beyond.''
The study was based on a random sample in 1988 of 674 generally healthy residents from six retirement communities in California and Oregon. The average age of respondents was 75.6 years. Community residents suffering from serious illness or severe bereavement were excluded from the survey.
Death anxiety was measured based on respondents' answers to questions such as whether they were very afraid to die or their willingness to talk to dying individuals about their upcoming deaths.
Not surprisingly, the one community oriented toward retired religious workers scored lowest on the death anxiety scale. But in testing several variables that might lower or raise death anxiety, researchers found little evidence to support other hypotheses.
For example, the findings did not indicate that living in a retirement community, with its concentration of people nearing the end of their lives, created an atmosphere fostering anxiety about death.
Other factors that could be thought to lower death anxiety, such as frequently participating in social activities or regularly visiting with friends and children, also were not statistically significant.
The only significant and strong predictor that older people would be less fearful of dying was regular attendance at religious services, Duff and Hong concluded.
In attempting to explain their finding, the researchers turned to the theories of sociologist Emile Durkheim, who argued that solidarity, shared meanings and a sense of transcendence become more powerful in public religious rites.
Durkheim said regular participation is needed to renew those emotional states, which in turn strengthen individuals and protect them from the vicissitudes of life.
Duff said group celebrations of religious rituals lift people up and give them ``a sense of continuity beyond the grave.''
Dr. Harold Koenig, director of the Program on Religion, Aging and Health at Duke University Medical Center, said he was not surprised by the finding that visits by children and friends do not significantly reduce death anxiety - ``they're not coming with you,'' he said.
But he said there is a need for further research to distinguish the benefits of public and private religious practices, both of which he said would seem to be important to older people coping with death.
Ellen L. Idler, a sociologist at Rutgers University, said the findings by Duff and Hong are consistent with her research about the positive benefits of religion for older people.
She also spoke of the continuity provided by religious rituals, where the memories of shared services with parents and grandparents and other important people in the social circle of older worshipers ``brings the presence of people who are no longer alive back into this circle again.''
The act of worship and participation in ritual, she said, ``is a quite firm foundation for older people.''
by CNB