(Life) Satisfaction Guaranteed? Subjective Well-Being Attenuates Religious Attendance-Life Satisfaction Association

To attend religious services, people must have the physical capacity to leave their homes. This means that the positive association between religious attendance and life satisfaction could be partialled out by the effects of physical wellness. The present study investigated whether the relationship between religious attendance and life satisfaction was attenuated when self-rated health (SRH) was included within statistical models. We used cross-sectional data from the 2015 Canadian General Social Survey (N = 15,195), the 2017 Canadian General Social Survey (N = 19,116), and the 2018 American General Social Survey (N = 1,062). Results indicated that: (a) religious attendance was an inconsistent predictor of life satisfaction in Canadians; (b) religious attendance sporadically moderated the relationship between SRH and life satisfaction; (c) unhealthy individuals reported a stronger relationship between religious attendance and life satisfaction than averagely healthy and very healthy individuals; (d) the effect sizes associated with religious service attendance tended to be small and unnoteworthy; and (e) including SRH in models caused large proportional reductions in the relationship between religious attendance and life satisfaction, though these did not parlay to large absolute reductions because the initial relationship between religious attendance and life satisfaction was quite weak.