Not a Leap of Faith

IN RECENT YEARS there has been an explosion in empirical research on faith-based social programs. Most studies, including the most scientifically rigorous, find that faith moves social and civic mountains. Last year, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania released a report identifying over 500 scientifically sound studies in which the "faith factor" was associated with results ranging from reductions in hypertension, depression, and suicide to lower rates of drug abuse, educational failure, nonmarital teenage childbearing, and criminal behavior.

Consider the latest scientific literature on religion and crime. With all due qualifications and caveats, some 50 empirical studies report that religious influences and institutions reduce violence and delinquency. Consider, for example, the work of my Penn colleague Byron Johnson, director of the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (CRRUCS). In a 1997 Justice Quarterly study, he reported that New York state prisoners who participated intensively in Bible studies administered by Prison Fellowship ministries (on whose board I once served) were only a third as likely to be arrested a year after release as otherwise comparable prisoners who did not participate. In a forthcoming follow-up study, he finds that, on average, eight years after release, the Bible studies participants remained arrest-free over 50 percent longer than the parolees in the comparison group.

Likewise, in a just-released six-year study of a faith-based program in a Texas prison run by Prison Fellowship, Johnson reports that, two years after release, inmates who completed the 22-month program (16 months in prison plus 6 months of post-release care) were less likely to be rearrested than inmates paroled early from the program and than otherwise comparable inmates who did not participate in the program.