Nurturing Happiness: How Religion Shapes Emotional Practice

How does religious faith contribute to happiness? The usual answer is that religious belief relieves the anxieties of ordinary life and that religious belonging provides emotional support. But a growing body of literature suggests that happiness is more complicated than that. Happiness is not only a feeling. It is a practice that we engage in actively, that we attempt to manage, and that is in many ways managed for us — by social norms and institutions.
In Nurturing Happiness, Robert Wuthnow...