Faith, Health & Leadership: The Science Behind Spiritual Well-Being, with Harold Koenig
What if the key to a longer, healthier, and more successful life isn’t found in a diet or workout plan, but in what you believe, where your faith itself could help you live longer and thrive?
In this compelling episode of the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, host Andrew Cohn sits down with Dr. Harold Koenig, a preeminent scholar from Duke University's Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health. With over four decades of research, Dr. Koenig shares powerful, evidence-based insights on the undeniable connection between religious faith and well-being.
He reveals how faith, on average, leads to greater happiness, better mental health, and even a longer lifespan by 7-14 years. The mechanisms are clear: faith provides meaning, fosters strong social support, and encourages healthier behaviors. But what about non-believers? Dr. Koenig discusses his book, Spiritual Readiness, explaining that anyone can achieve similar benefits by cultivating a positive belief system, a strong community, and moral habits, though he notes this is often easier within a religious framework.
The conversation also explores the practical application of this research in leadership and healthcare, highlighting how faith-inspired leaders often create more inclusive and productive workplaces. This episode is a fascinating look at how nurturing our spiritual core can be a profound asset for personal and professional success.
Key Takeaways
Faith and health are scientifically linked: Decades of peer-reviewed research show that religious or spiritual belief correlates with greater happiness, longer life expectancy, and better mental health.
Mechanisms of well-being: Meaning, purpose, healthy behaviors, stress coping, and social support explain much of the health advantage among religious individuals.
Non-believers benefit too: A positive belief system, moral habits, and strong social connections can provide similar health outcomes though sustaining them without a faith tradition can be challenging.
Global evidence: Studies in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism consistently reveal similar patterns of improved health and resilience.
Leadership implications: Leaders with strong values and inclusive spiritual awareness often foster happier, more productive workplaces so long as they avoid proselytizing.
Healthcare opportunity: Despite overwhelming evidence, most healthcare systems neglect patients’ spiritual needs, though medical schools are slowly integrating this dimension into training.
In This Episode:
[00:01] Opening remarks and research overview
[00:22] Non-believers and health benefits
[00;57] Podcast introduction and guest background
[03:55] Dr. Koenig’s center and research mission
[05:04] Approaching the religion-health connection
[05:38] Community education and outreach
[06:45] Personal motivation for teaching
[07:36] Center’s and personal research objectives
[08:19] Most compelling recent research
[09:28] Epidemiological evidence and health outcomes
[10:03] Mechanisms behind health benefits
[10:53] Applicability across religions
[11:29] International research and consistency
[12:14] Health behaviors among the religious
[13:01] Addressing non-religious populations
[13:34] Human nature and self-control
[15:34] Global interest in spirituality-health research
[17:36] Acceptance and accessibility of research
[18:11] Resources for further learning
[19:23] Spirituality in the workplace
[20:22] Religious faith and leadership qualities
[21:52] Communicating research to business leaders
[22:58] Application in healthcare leadership
[23:35] Barriers to spiritual care in healthcare
[25:33] Trends in healthcare spirituality
[26:30] Optimism for future integration
[27:39] Religion and optimism
[29:18] Where to learn more
[30:13] Closing remarks
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Dr. Harold Koenig
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harold-koenig-5a1544283
Books by Dr. Harold Koenig: The Healing Power of Faith, Spiritual Readiness: A Guide for Non-Believers, and Handbook of Religion and Health (3rd Edition, 2024)
Andrew Cohn
Music:
Watch our Podcast episode
Transcript
Harold Koenig: It's been neat being able to conduct research in these different places and showing just one study after study replicating the findings. So on average, there's just no question a person with religious faith is going to be healthier.
Andrew Cohn: Do you have any sense of what might be happening on the other side of the religious fence?
Harold Koenig: About a year ago I published a book called Spiritual Readiness, A Guide for, the Non-Believer, and the points that are made in that book are simply that if a non-believer can have a positive belief system, a large social support network, and engage in healthy moral behaviors and do it regularly, that they're going to have similar benefits to those with a religious faith.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership podcast. I'm Andrew Cohn. Spirituality and Leadership is a platform for conversations with leaders at all levels about bringing our spiritual dimensions to our leadership, our teams, our workplaces, and all areas of our lives in order to achieve greater success and fulfillment and build and sustain healthier organizations. If you'd like to connect with me to talk further about these topics and or about individual or team coaching, leadership workshops, or team alignment, please go to my website, lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Andrew Cohn: In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Harold Koenig, and Harold is one of the, if not the leading scholar for the past four decades on the academic connection between religion, spirituality and health, and he has been ranked as the most published and cited author in the field. He's published 60 books over the past 40 years plus and as you'll hear in the conversation, he makes this material remarkably accessible. He has a real passion about it, and he's a researcher that is quite passionate about sharing what he has learned and just making it easy to grasp. The conversation is a bit different than some of those others in this podcast that have really been focused on business, but he does touch on business leadership and how a certain connection to religion and religious beliefs can be helpful and in fact core to effective business leadership. He talks about that. He also talks about several of his books, including Spiritual Readiness, The Healing Power of Faith and The Handbook of Religion and Health, the third edition of which was published in 2024. He's a remarkable resource, I think a very interesting man, and I'm sure you'll enjoy the conversation.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome back to the Spirituality in Leadership podcast. I'm so happy to have with me today Dr. Harold Koenig from the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at beautiful Duke University in Durham, as well as some of his other work. I don't want to limit the introduction to that and you'll talk more about this topic. But Dr. K, welcome to the podcast.
Harold Koenig: Thank you, Andrew. It's a pleasure to be on.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you. You speak so often and so broadly and so expertly about this topic. I mean, you are really one of the global experts in the field of health, religion, spirituality and health. This podcast, as you know, is about all of that and leadership, often about organizational leadership, but also personal leadership. I'd love to hear a little bit about your work. What you think our listeners might want to hear about the center, about the work that you do. I'm giving you, you know, choose a runway, Dr. K. There's so much you could talk about.
Harold Koenig: Well, I'll start with our center. So we have a center called the center for Spirituality, Theology and Health. And that center is designed to conduct research, train others to do, to actually do research, and to educate on how to integrate spirituality into patient care. That's our center here at Duke University. And my research has focused for about four decades on the connection between religion, spirituality and health. So that's kind of it.
Andrew Cohn: Okay, so where does one begin? I'm curious to know how. And take this wherever you may see fit, but how do you begin to talk with people about this connection between spirituality, religion and health when they may see as, oh, that's something that's not really connected to my health? Or where do you find to be the most effective connection points that people who may be new to this can see how it matters?
Harold Koenig: Well, I talk about the research, the research, the objective, scientific, peer-reviewed, academic research that has examined this connection between religion, spirituality and health in an objective manner. And the research from Duke University, from Harvard, from Johns Hopkins, from the best research universities in the world. So I'll start there.
Andrew Cohn: Great. And when that research is shared, is it part of your work and the work of the center to equip healthcare providers, community leaders, for example, and others to like, hey, take this research out, educate your particular constituents. Is that part of your work to outreach, community education and the like? I imagine it probably is.
Harold Koenig: Yes, Absolutely, Andrew. I do seminars, workshops, five, six, seven times a year where I train community leaders, healthcare professionals, clergy on these connections. And I encourage them to take this information out and to spread it around. I do that a lot. We just got done with six days of a research workshop and clinical applications research. We had 35 people attended from all over the world. And this is what I like to do the most, is to teach.
Andrew Cohn: Can I ask you what you like the most about it? I know it's a subjective question, but I'm curious to know what lights you up.
Harold Koenig: Well, I've got a huge background in this area after 40 years of studying it, applying it in my own clinical practice, and interacting with people about it so that really I enjoy doing it because I don't know why. It's just fun to teach and to inform and educate and equip other people who can then take it into their own communities and make a difference.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Thank you. And the world needs this. When you were introducing this earlier, I think you made a distinction between the work of the center and your own research, that perhaps the work of the center is integrating some spirituality into patient care. And your research, maybe it was a little bit broader than that, just health more broadly. Am I understanding that right?
Harold Koenig: I think my objectives and the center's objectives are basically the same, is again, to conduct research, train others to do research, and to try to teach on how to integrate these research findings into clinical care.
Andrew Cohn: I'm not even sure that this is a good question to ask you, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what at this point in time, with the state of the research as it is, and it could be that the best research was 20 years ago, the most compelling, and you're looking to get back to that milestone. I'm not sure. But what do you find to be the most compelling evidence and compelling research for people to begin to think about the impact of religion and spirituality on their health?
Harold Koenig: I think the most compelling research has come out in the past five years. It's come out of the Harvard School of Public Health. It's been led by one of the world's top biostatisticians and mathematicians, actually, who has degrees--PhDs in biostatistics and mathematics from Oxford and Harvard. I mean, these researchers at the School of Public Health, they leave no stone unturned in terms of the quality of the work that's being produced and published in academic peer review journals. And what excites me about this research that is coming out paper after paper, study after study, is that it confirms the research that I've been doing over the past 40 years and others as well. So it just adds to the growing volume of research showing this connection between a person's faith and their health.
Andrew Cohn: Does that mean that people of faith will necessarily be healthier?
Harold Koenig: Well, all of this research is what's called epidemiological, which means that it's observational research with some randomized controlled trials. But what I'm meaning by that is that not every person who is religious is going to be happy or healthy. But on average, if you're religious, you're going to be happier and healthier.
Andrew Cohn: And your research to get underneath that. Why would one be happier and healthier if they are religious?
Harold Koenig: Well, because religious beliefs provide a sense of meaning and purpose in life. They help people to cope with stressors that we're experiencing every day. They affect a person's health behaviors, they enhance a person's social support. And through those various psychological, social and behavioral mechanisms, they influence physical health and extend a person's longevity by anywhere between seven and 14 years, depending on your racial background.
Andrew Cohn: Wow. And so is that what I would assume, that that's not about a specific religious set of beliefs, but rather some set of beliefs which perhaps is why you include the word spirituality, because it's not necessarily religion. Is that a fair assumption on my part?
Harold Koenig: Well, it's about religion, but not about any specific religion. Although, you know, 80% of this research has been done in Christian populations, so we know for sure that it applies in that particular religion. But research has also been done in Islam and Judaism and Hinduism and Buddhism, and especially in Islam, is showing very similar findings that we find in Christianity.
Andrew Cohn: Wow, that's interesting. I would imagine that that research may be a little bit more recent, a little more assumption on my part.
Harold Koenig: Yeah. A little more recent in Islam. And I've been able to do a lot of that research because over the last 10 to 15 years I've gone to Saudi Arabia, I've been working with Iranian researchers, Chinese researchers in the western part of China that are largely Muslim. Yeah, it's been neat being able to conduct research in these different places and showing just one study after study replicating the findings. So on average there's just no question a person with religious faith is going to be healthier. They're going to live longer, they're going to be happier, they're going to have more friends, they're going to have better mental health and they're going to behave themselves a little better. No drinking, smoking, careful attention to exercise, diet, drug use. All of those things seem to be on the positive side among those who are more religious.
Andrew Cohn: Interesting. And do you run into, do you hear any resistance from people who may be not as religious and thinking, wait, what about us? Is it that the findings are different with other non-religious populations or simply that the research hasn't been done with others, perhaps people of some other faith who wouldn't call themselves religious? Or do you have any sense of what might be happening on the other side of the religious fence? I'm just curious to know what your perceptions are and probably answer very carefully because you're a researcher and I respect that.
Harold Koenig: Well, I just about a year ago published a book called Spiritual Readiness: A Guide for Non-Believers. And the points that are made in that book are simply that if a non believer can have a positive belief system, a large social support network and engage in healthy moral behaviors and do it regularly, that they're going to have similar benefits to those with a religious faith. The only challenge is that it's very hard to do all those things unless you have a religious faith, to be honest, to love your neighbor, to do good in the world. Certainly a lot of non-religious people are doing good in the world, but our human drives…There was a book by Richard Dawkins called The Selfish Gene and that book emphasized that we are just genetically self centered. In order to survive in the world you have to be pretty much self centered. Even those who do good, they do it for selfish reasons because it makes them feel good to do good. So in any case, it seems as though our selfish reasons, our self-centered reasons are hard to control. Hard to control, you know, desires to have sex, to drink alcohol, to get high. I mean we just, those things just take over us. To eat and to have self control is something that religion is really helpful in providing. Because again, if a person's first priority in life is their religious faith, is their relationship with God, then that is going to help them control all the other selfish drives that cause them health problems.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. And do you, you've had the benefit and you've talked about the joy of working with researchers in different parts of the world, et cetera. And I know that you have taught or perhaps continue to teach in the Middle East, for example, what is the level of interest and appetite? Are they as eager to do this research and are their constituents or the people who may be attending their seminars and workshops? Are they as keen to learn about this as we are over here in the US? I'm curious to know how it may differ in different parts of the world.
Harold Koenig: Well, you know, it depends on the religiosity of the country. So the Middle Eastern countries are very religious. They're Islam, you know, Islam is the primary religion. So they're very eager and interested in these relationships. Brazil, South America, Africa are very religious parts of the world, again, very eager. In places that are not very religious, including the United States, that is becoming less and less religious. You know, the interest has, has not been that strong actually. So again in countries that are more religious. There's more of an appetite, as you indicated, for this, because people want their beliefs to be supported because they're using these beliefs in order to cope with life's difficulties. And if your beliefs are supported, then you're gonna, they're gonna be more effective in helping people. So, people know that and they want to read stories about, you know, people's faith, that their faith has turned their life around, you know, that, that it's made them healthier and happier. They want to hear that, especially from scientists. And, you know, the research is just really, really good. There really haven't been. You would think that over the years there would be critics of this research, health care professionals, almost, at least in the last five years. There used to be some criticism about the research, but in the last five years there have been no skeptics, no critiques at all. Simply because this research is coming out of the best institutions in the world. And they're doing everything possible not to find these relationships, but they just keep popping up and they keep publishing them.
Andrew Cohn: No good, thankfully. And in the world we live in, that research is much more accessible to lay people. Because not everyone, like these researchers that you're talking about at the Harvard School of Public Health, have the background that they have. And I have. No, I'm just kidding. I couldn't possibly even be in the same room as them. But it's more available. It's one of the things I appreciate about the world we live in right now. You could actually go online and access the research or a summary of the research or something like that. Do you find that it is acceptable? Well, that's my assumption. Do you find that it is accessible for non researchers to get access to this, even if they don't have the benefit of attending one of your workshops?
Harold Koenig: Yes, it's very easily accessible. I've written 68 books on this topic. They're all available on Amazon and some are written by actual–I have co-authors who are writers, professional writers. So this information is all you have to really do is to just go to Amazon and put in my name, Harold G. And many, many of these books will come up. Probably The Healing Power of Faith is probably the most accessible. Now, if you're a scientist, then you're going to want the third edition of The Handbook of Religion and Health published in 2024. It's over 1100 pages. It's not cheap, but it's got the latest, Tthe best research that's been done, summarizes all of it and provides the clinical applications as well, for healthcare professionals, for pastors, for clergy. So it just has a huge amount of information that is–I think it's very readily accessible by anyone with a high school education.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. No, I'm so glad. That's terrific. And do you also, a lot of the focus of this podcast has been around people in organizations, in businesses and corporations. How do we talk about meaning and faith and what matters most to us? Some people have talked about meaning and purpose or what brings people alive, et cetera. And I appreciate what you said earlier about people want their beliefs to be supported. And a lot of what the conversations that we invite here are about how do we, for lack of a better term, de dogmatize the conversation and say, well, now, what's important to you, regardless of its source, what's important to you and how does it support you as a leader in this organization, and how can you be inclusive about it? Because there may be people with other beliefs. There probably are. But how do they feel that their beliefs are supported as well? And for me, that's a very important, very practical question to ask people in the working world. First of all, how do you feel about what I'm just talking about? How does that land for you? And then I have a question.
Harold Koenig: Yeah, I think that's totally–I would agree with everything you just said. I think that leaders who have a strong faith that gives them meaning and purpose, that drives the way they treat their employees and their colleagues, and they're inclusive of people with and without religious beliefs of all different kinds, I think those are going to be the best leaders. And actually, the research shows that people with a stronger religious faith are happier at work, are more productive, are just generally better workers, more responsible. Typically, they're more liked by their colleagues as long as they're not pushing their religious faith on their colleagues and being more welcoming and kind and helpful than anything.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, well, isn't that what it's all about at the core of these faiths? Of course. Have you worked? T–the answer to this question might be no, but I doubt it. A–after four decades. H, have you worked directly with people in the business world? And how do you speak in order to bridge the academic world and the perhaps religious focus of the research into a more broader, more universal pool of employees and people who lead organizations? How do you speak with business people about this? And maybe exactly the same as you do with people in hospitals? I'm not sure. I'm just asking.
Harold Koenig: Yeah, I think what you just said is correct, is that I generally speak to business leaders and I haven't had a lot of opportunities, really, to speak with business leaders because, again, I'm a healthcare professional. And so it's health care professionals that I speak to. It really, I don't change what I'm saying, whether it's to the public, whether it's to a church, whether it's to a group of colleagues at Duke University, whether it's grand rounds in psychiatry or in medicine. I just basically say the same thing, which I go over the research, I lay out the logic, and I present the findings and discuss how they are useful for people in all different settings. Whether you're sick, whether you're a healthcare professional, you're a patient, whether you're a business leader, whether you're a worker. It just applies to everybody.
Andrew Cohn: Because people are people.
Harold Koenig: People are people. Exactly, Andrew.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. And how have you seen, I'm curious to know, how have you seen healthcare? And again, my focus tends to be on leadership, healthcare leadership, and the people who are leading health organizations or even medical practices and groups. How have you seen them use this information and bring it to life? Yes, it's about patient education, but I wonder if there's also a piece about how is it used in terms of how we will operate as a hospital, how we will operate as a medical practice or a psychology practice or something. How have you seen them use this information? Because information is just information. We just pass it on. But how do we bring it to life and embody the information?
Harold Koenig: Yeah, largely, most healthcare systems are simply ignoring the information. And they're ignoring it because to address a person's religious and spiritual life takes time to, for example, uncover spiritual needs, to take a spiritual history with patients, it takes time. And healthcare professionals now don't have much time, and they're having less and less time as we go on here. And so consequently, there is resistance by hospitals to do it. It doesn't take much time, typically, but taking any time at all, with this time crunch now for doctors and nurses and psychologists and mental health professionals to see a new patient every 10 minutes, it's, you know how hospitals and many healthcare professionals are resistant. They basically ignore it. It's just faster to ignore it because they won't get sued if they ignore it. They're going to be sued if they miss something physical or not, don't do their duties that they've been required to do for most of the century. So it's largely ignored. About 10% of doctors are regularly taking a spiritual history to just learn about the person's spiritual beliefs and the role that they play in their health care and any spiritual needs related to their health that someone could address, like a chaplain or their own clergy, you know, they just don't do it. They're just too busy.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. And has that changed over the years? I imagine as healthcare has changed and become tighter and more, et cetera, et cetera, it's become tougher to have this message received.
Harold Koenig: Yeah, it's kind of there, there are two trends here. One is that healthcare professionals are learning more about the research and about the connections, and so they're more likely to want to do it, but then they're having less and less time to do it. So again, these trends of wanting perhaps to address spiritual needs because maybe that's why they went into medicine or nursing as a calling, and yet their ability to do it is becoming more and more limited.
Andrew Cohn: And so, given that you're presenting them with this compelling information, it's not landing. And you could recognize objectively why it isn't. The pressures on healthcare providers, et cetera. If I dare ask this question, are you optimistic that that might change, or do you have any thoughts about is there any other way there may be some traction to get this material into the actual functioning of healthcare?
Harold Koenig: I think that I am optimistic simply because the research base is growing and growing, and at some point you can't ignore it anymore. I don't think that medical professionals, as scientists, many medical professionals consider themselves to be scientists. They practice based on the scientific literature, and at some point it's just going to be part of good medicine. It's going to be providing holistic care that includes taking a very brief spiritual history to identify spiritual needs and get somebody referred to a chaplain. I think that is, despite the pressures on time, that is very slowly growing. You know, it's not growing fast, and most of the time it's ignored, but it is very slowly–more and more healthcare professionals are being trained to do this because it's being included in medical schools now. So I'm optimistic.
Andrew Cohn: Good. I also wonder if there's a connection. This may be a subject for a part two of this conversation, but I also wonder if there's a connection between optimism and a strong religious belief.
Harold Koenig: No doubt about it.
Andrew Cohn: Optimism itself, yes.
Harold Koenig: No doubt about that. Our recent review of the literature over the last 150 years shows that more than 80% of quantitative published academic studies are reporting that those who are more religious are more optimistic. They're more hopeful about the future, about pretty much everything about life, because again, religion gives people meaning and Purpose. And it gives them tools to deal with the things they're struggling with, like praying or being part of a faith community and getting the support of others and giving support to others. All of this is, you know, breeds optimism about the future and about life after. After this life, I mean, ultimately, we're all getting older. 100% of us are going to die. Well, what happens then?
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, right. And if we believe that something positive or useful is going to happen, then obviously that has a big impact on my outlook, for sure.
Harold Koenig: Absolutely.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Wow. I have some information that I will include in the introduction to this episode, just so you know, but where would you steer people who want to learn more about this? Would they go to the center's website? You've talked about several books. Just as we close this conversation, where do people want to go to learn more about your work?
Harold Koenig: They want to go to the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health. And all you got to do is put that in your Google search engine and it will come up at Duke University. And literally, the homepage has all of the workshops and courses that we provide. And, you know, there's a lot of free things on the website, including a free e-newsletter that you can get every month if you just sign up for it, that summarizes the latest research, you know, the various teaching endeavors, the workshops, the seminars, even where you can get research to conduct this. This research, where you can get funding to conduct this research. There's just lots of information in our E-newsletters called Crossroads. But go to our website. Everything is centered there.
Andrew Cohn: Terrific. Oh, great. Yeah. Well. And funding is its own can of worms right now in the world we're in. Well, thank you so much for your time. I hope that this was a little bit smoother for you than testimony before the U.S. senate and other things that I know you've done. But I really appreciate your time and your openness and the way you easily speak about something, because I can imagine that it could be, after four decades of research, you could be so deep into the weeds. But I appreciate the way you talk about this so clearly and openly and just make it accessible, which I think is hopefully is really what it's all about.
Harold Koenig: Thank you, Andrew. And I appreciate the questions that you asked, which really helped me to do that.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Koenig.
Harold Koenig: Thank you, Andrew.
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