For some time now, the percentage of U.S. adults who say they regularly attend religious services has been declining.

Studies by the Pew Research Center reveal as much as a 4 percent drop in the last four years – from 39 percent in 2013 to 35 percent in 2017.

Funny thing is I suspect we owe at least some of the drop to the internet.

The online streaming option is to make services available to the sick and shut-in, but I hear a lot of able-bodied folks are choosing bedside Baptist, forgetting Hebrews 10:25, which tells us not to forsake “assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”

Most of us (81 percent) who continue to show up do so to grow closer to God. Sixty-nine percent say they want to give their children a moral foundation, while 68 percent cite becoming a better person and 66 percent find comfort in times of trouble or sorrow.

For me, at least, all of the above have proved valid in my own life and am convinced neither my marriage nor my children would be as healthy without regular church attendance and particularly our faith.

And so I was struck recently by the findings of yet another study released by T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University.

The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found that children who were raised in a religious or spiritual environment were better protected from depression, substance abuse and other risky behaviors.

While previous studies have linked adults’ religious involvement to better health and well-being, including lower risk of premature death, this one included more than 5,000 youths who were followed for eight to 14 years.

Tyler VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s school of public health and lead author of the study, said that with adult populations, it is the communal forms of religious participation, like religious service attendance, that are most strongly associated with subsequent mental and physical health. Private spiritual practices and prayer do not seem to have much association with subsequent health.

Participation in both religious services, prayer and meditation during childhood and adolescence, however, seem strongly associated with subsequent health and well-being, VanderWeele said.

“For some outcomes, the associations with prayer/mediation were even stronger than for service attendance. This is different from adult populations,” he said. “Some of this may be that prayer/meditation in adolescence may be more predictive of adult religious service attendance than is childhood religious service, which may just reflect how committed parents are to the practice. But from our analyses, prayer/meditation also seems to have some independent effect on adult health and well-being even beyond predicting religious service attendance in adulthood.”

It’s worth noting, too, that the researchers controlled for many variables such as maternal health, socioeconomic status and history of substance abuse or depressive symptoms, to try to isolate the effect of religious upbringing.

The study results showed that people who attended religious services at least weekly in childhood and adolescence were about 18 percent more likely to report higher happiness as young adults (ages 23–30) than those who never attended services.