Going to Church Lowers your Blood Pressure

Attending services lowers blood pressure the more you go. The Daily Mail:

Going to church at Christmas may have been good for the soul, but scientists have discovered that it may also be good for the body.

Researchers found that attending services lowers blood pressure – and the more often you go the lower it becomes.

Previous studies in the U.S. suggested the link, but as 40 per cent of Americans regularly go to church its health benefits were treated as a coincidence. So the Norwegian researchers, who had just four per cent of churchgoers among their 120,000 participants, were surprised to see they too had lower blood pressure…

Torgeir Sorensen, from the School of Theology and Religious Psychology Centre at Sykehuset Innlandet said: ‘We found that the more often the participants went to church the lower their blood pressure…

Professor Jostein Holmen from the Faculty of Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and one of the authors of the study, said: ‘The research into lifestyle and health issues mainly comes from the United States, while information from Europe is very limited.

‘Earlier studies have shown a positive correlation between humour and good health, and participation in different cultural activities and good health.

‘It would appear that the data we have been recording about religious beliefs is actually relevant to your health.

‘The fact that churchgoers have lower blood pressure encourages us to continue to study this issue.

‘We’re just in the start-up phase of an exciting research area.’

You can read more on this positive news here.

Unless of course you’re an Anglican… Then there’s plenty to shoot your blood pressure straight through the roof…

 

Christmas vs Christopher Hitchens

An infant and a corpse. They are the most common images of Christ ― the baby in the manger or his mother’s arms, the dead man on the cross ― and they offer a final refutation and a last hope for Christopher Hitchens for all time.

Hitchens, the great pugilist pundit, died a little over a week ago, and he went out with a beautiful flourish. His last essay, “Trial of the Will” in the new Vanity Fair, does what every writer dreams a last essay will do: It distills his worldview, attaches it to the moment, and leaves it as a last testimony.

It’s the last contrarian stand of a man who spent his life being contrary ― most famously in his polemical, pointed, angry book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which he used as a launching pad for a twilight career as an atheist debater.

In “Trial of the Will,” Hitchens looks at the maxim “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” and explains in brutal detail the maladies that have disproven it. He tells us how Friedrich Nietzsche (to whom the phrase is most often attributed) descended into dementia before dying painfully. He recounts how Kingsley Amis angrily begged to be killed on his death bed. Hitchens, in the throes of esophageal cancer, adds that he himself is suffering terribly as he dies.

Some things don’t make us stronger, but weaker, he says. Some things break us, and leave us without our dignity. He offers the most extreme examples of human weakness: dementia, which leaves us human shells of ourselves; or intolerable, unstoppable pain; or the helplessness of the dying.

But these are precisely the qualities of infancy. Babies can’t put two thoughts together. Babies cannot tolerate pain. Babies can do nothing for themselves but cry. The newborn baby has the mental ability of an Alzheimer’s sufferer, the helplessness of a comatose person.

Yet this is the great mystery of Christmas: Not that God became a man, but that he became a baby.

“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests,” prophesied Isaiah. “They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”

How can a helpless, trembling infant who is unable to think straight be the “God-Hero”? Because of the power of presence and love…

Continue reading here.

 

St Stephen

St Stephen (my namesake Saint) is the Saint of the Day:

All we know of Stephen is found in Acts of the Apostles, chapters Six and Seven. It is enough to tell us what kind of man he was:
At that time, as the number of disciples continued to grow, the Hellenist (Greek-speaking) Christians complained about the Hebrew-speaking Christians, saying that their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So the Twelve called together the community of the disciples and said, “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” The proposal was acceptable to the whole community, so they chose Stephen, a man filled with faith and the Holy Spirit… (Acts 6:1-5).

Acts says that Stephen was a man filled with grace and power, who worked great wonders among the people. Certain Jews, members of the Synagogue of Roman Freedmen, debated with Stephen but proved no match for the wisdom and spirit with which he spoke. They persuaded others to make the charge of blasphemy against him. He was seized and carried before the Sanhedrin.

In his speech, Stephen recalled God’s guidance through Israel’s history, as well as Israel’s idolatry and disobedience. He then claimed that his persecutors were showing this same spirit. “[Y]ou always oppose the holy Spirit; you are just like your ancestors” (Acts 7:51b).

His speech brought anger from the crowd. “But [Stephen], filled with the holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God….’ They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him…. As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit…. Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:55-56, 58a, 59, 60b).

Comment:

Stephen died as Jesus did: falsely accused, brought to unjust condemnation because he spoke the truth fearlessly. He died with his eyes trustfully fixed on God, and with a prayer of forgiveness on his lips. A “happy” death is one that finds us in the same spirit, whether our dying is as quiet as Joseph’s or as violent as Stephen’s: dying with courage, total trust and forgiving love.

Wikipedia has more on him here.

… Many churches are named in honour of Saint Stephen, but there was no official “Tomb of St Stephen” until 415. When Christian pilgrims were traveling in large numbers to Jerusalem, a priest named Lucian said he had learned by a vision that the tomb was in Caphar Gamala, some distance to the north of Jerusalem…