Communio, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to strengthening families through partnerships with churches nationwide, conducted the study involving 19,000 Sunday church attendees from 112 evangelical, Protestant and Roman Catholic churches.

The survey revealed that while only 22% of regular churchgoers experience loneliness, there is a significant disparity in loneliness levels among married, cohabiting and single individuals who attend church services.

The study found that single churchgoers were more than three times as likely to feel lonely.

According to JP DeGance, president of Communio and the study's author, societal messages promoting career success and financial gain over marriage and family are taking a toll.

"What we're seeing in the study is that the net effect of all of that is the crisis of loneliness; that the most lonely people walking around in our churches, in our communities, are actually not the elderly or widows," DeGance told Fox News Digital.

"It's men and women in their 30s, who in every other time period — almost every other decade before this century — would have been overwhelmingly likely to be married."

"They're not today, and as a consequence, they are also the among the loneliest Americans," he added.

Loneliness as deadly as smoking

The study highlighted that nearly two-thirds of unmarried individuals in their 30s reported feelings of loneliness, surpassing the percentage among widows.

The findings coincide with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's May 2 advisory, which warned that epidemic levels of loneliness in the US could be as deadly as smoking.

DeGance asserted that most churches are not adequately addressing the marital and relational crisis faced by younger generations.

The study found that 85% of all churches in the US report allocating no funds annually for marriage and relationship ministry.

The study also shed light on the role of fathers in the home, emphasising their importance in maintaining Christian faith in the US.

Approximately 80% of Sunday church attendees across all demographics were raised in continuously married homes with both biological parents.

However, researchers identified the collapse of fathers in the home due to declining marriage rates as a significant factor contributing to the decline of Christianity.

Sources

Fox News

The Guardian

We had spent the past several hours huddled together as Hurricane Andrew battered our South Florida neighborhood with torrential rain and winds near 170 miles per hour.

We saw pieces of homes strewn across the landscape, power lines flung about like pieces of string, and sea creatures stranded in trees, having been blown far inland by the storm.

Like thousands of others, we survived the storm and the many dark days that followed because of the kindness of strangers who brought food, water, and comfort.

Hurricane Andrew forged a deep sense of connection and community in South Florida as the nation rallied around us and as we supported each other.

But slowly, as normal life resumed, the distance between people returned. We went back to our homes, our work, our schools, and our lives, and once again we grew apart.

Looking today at so many other places around the world ravaged by disasters of all kinds, I think about how often tragedy brings us together — and how fleeting that connection often is.

There is good reason to be concerned about social connection in our current world. Loneliness is a growing health epidemic.

We live in the most technologically connected age in the history of civilization, yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s. Today, over 40% of adults in America report feeling lonely, and research suggests that the real number may well be higher.

Additionally, the number of people who report having a close confidante in their lives has been declining over the past few decades. In the workplace, many employees — and half of CEOs — report feeling lonely in their roles. Continue reading

Sources

• Harvard Business Review article by Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy, who served as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States, from 2014 to 2017.
• Image: Woman's Day