What does it mean to flourish? On October 18, we hosted Dr. Byron Johnson, the leader of the landmark Global Flourishing Study, to explore the foundations of flourishing—including happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, relationships, and character and virtue—and the role that faith plays in the generation and cultivation of each.

This is the third conversation in our “Faith, Freedom, and Flourishing” series in partnership with the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.

Discussion Questions

• What aspect of Byron Johnson’s remarks or the conversation was most compelling to you and why?
• How does Byron define “flourishing”? What does he see as the difference between happiness and flourishing? Does that distinction resonate with you?
• What accounts for the global surge in unhappiness and loneliness? Does the increase in misery surprise you?
• How, if at all, is individual flourishing different from community flourishing? What are the key markers of a flourishing life and/or flourishing society?
• How does faith affect flourishing at a societal level? How does your faith affect your own flourishing?

Cherie Harder: Good afternoon, and welcome to all of you joining us for this Trinity Forum Online Conversation on “Faith and Human Flourishing” with Byron Johnson. I’d like to thank our co-host and sponsor, the Pepperdine School of Public Policy, ably led by its dean, Pete Peterson. As Pete just noted, this is actually the third of a four-part series that we are hosting together on “Faith, Freedom, and Flourishing.” And we’re really excited that you’re here today to join us.

I’d like to give a special shout-out to our first-time registrants, as well as our international registrants. Of the thousand or so of you who have registered today, I understand that we have close to 80 first-time registrants. We’re really glad you’re here, as well as around 100 of you who are joining us from all over the world, from at least 22 countries that we know of, ranging from Nepal and the Netherlands to New Zealand and Nicaragua. So if you haven’t already done so, drop us a note in the chat box. Let us know where you’re joining us from. It’s always fun to see just the community of people all around the world joining in to learn more about the big questions of our time.

If you are one of those first-time registrants or otherwise new to the work of the Trinity Forum, we work to cultivate, curate, and disseminate the best of Christian thought for the common good and offer a space where leaders can wrestle together with the big questions of life in the context of faith and ultimately come to better know the Author of the answers. And we hope today’s discussion will be a small taste of that for you today.

Today we’re going to explore one of those fundamental questions of life. What exactly does it mean to lead a flourishing life? It’s a question that has occupied philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, and politicians across the world and across the millennia, but it’s also been one of the areas of vocational focus for our guest today, who is the co-leader of the largest, longest, costliest, and most complex study on human flourishing in the history of the world. The Global Flourishing study is a $40-million effort involving more than 200,000 people in over 20 countries over five years, involves dozens of experts from the Harvard University Human Flourishing Program, Baylor University’s Institute for the Studies of Religion, the Center for Open Science, and the Gallup Corporation, and it aims to study, among other things, the different domains of human flourishing, including happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, social relationships, financial and material stability, and to map what it has called the “topography of the human spirit.” And while the study is ongoing, there have already been very intriguing findings about both the nature of flourishing and the relationship between faith and flourishing, which I’m excited to dig into with our guest today, Dr. Byron Johnson.

Byron is the Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at Baylor University, the founding director of the Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion, as well as the co-executive director of the Center for Faith and the Common Good. And, as Pete mentioned, a visiting Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. He is a leading authority on the study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, and criminal justice, and his work examines the ways in which religion impacts key behaviors like volunteerism, generosity, and purpose. And as we noted, he serves, along with Harvard University’s Tyler Vanderweele, as the co-leader of the Global Flourishing Study, which we’ve invited him here today to discuss.

Byron, welcome.

Byron Johnson: Cherie, it’s so good to be with you. A long-time fan of yours and the Trinity Forum, and we’ve been together on a number of programs, but this is the first time to do a webinar, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Cherie Harder: Well, so am I. Just really delighted you’re here. And in starting out, Byron, one of the things I love to ask is you have really devoted most of your vocational life to the study of faith in the public square, how faith actually plays out in measurable ways in our own flourishing, in our relationships, in our public actions and the like. And I have heard before that for social scientists, a lot of research is actually essentially “me search.” And so as we get started, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what has led you to spend so much of your life studying faith and flourishing.

Byron Johnson: Oh, Cherie, thank you for that great, great question. And, you know, early on in my career, I started studying offenders and how their lives might be restored, and that led me to study adolescents, delinquents, substance abuse, prisoner reentry reform, and that just—. You know, back when I first started, we weren’t using the word “flourishing.” But what we were really looking at is how do people have an old identity and then a newer identity as they’re exposed to faith. And so that’s just been a journey that I’ve been on for a long time, that now really does come under this umbrella of what it means to flourish. And so over the last three or four decades, I’ve learned a lot by studying offenders about how to flourish. And I think people may think the last place that you would look to understand flourishing would be to look at a place like a prison. But as it turns out, we’re learning a lot there as well. And so it’s just been a lifelong journey to understand how, if we study other people, we might learn something that would help others.

And as a Christian, I think that’s just answering a call of sorts. And what a privilege it is to get to do it with research and numbers. And as my good friend David Larson, a mentor of mine, used to say, his favorite book was the book of numbers. And so for the social scientists, we do love numbers. And so to get a chance to communicate with numbers is really a special treat. And so in a conversation with Tyler VanderWeele at Harvard University back in 2018, that’s how this conversation began. We were at a flourishing meeting at Harvard. Tyler gave a fantastic presentation, basically saying, “Most of what we know is correlational, and most of what we know comes from the West. We can do better.” And just during one of the breaks, he and I began to think about what might we do as Christians that would really help move research along. And we both have been the beneficiaries of a number of grants from the Templeton Foundation. And Sir John Templeton, who I had the pleasure of knowing, has this model: “how little we know and how eager to learn.” And he was also a big proponent of humility. And so we’ve tried to capture that in the global flourishing study.

And so the idea was, well, if you want to move from correlation to causation, how might you do that? And since we have both been working with the Gallup organization for a long time, we posed the question to Gallup: could we do something that would be global and not just focused on the West? You know, there’s this acronym called WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. So the US is a WEIRD country, in more ways than one, but there are a lot of countries that fall into that category. But we don’t know a lot about the global South and other parts of the world. So how could we extend this knowledge on flourishing, and how can we do something that would allow us at some point to do causal studies, which for people like me who are interested in faith, that’s where you really want to head with the research eventually. And so you would have to do a longitudinal study where you follow people over time, not a different group of people every year, but the same group of people.

And so that’s what we’ve embarked upon. Launched in late ’21 a study, as you indicated at the outset, that takes us all around the world in over 40 languages on the six populated continents. And, you know, what a mammoth undertaking it has been to get the project launched. And we’ve just come so far, Cherie. We now have all data from wave one that we’ve been analyzing for the last eight months, and we’re wrapping up wave two data collection, by the way, in the next two months. And then that will be released after the first of the year.

So it’s an incredibly exciting project. There really isn’t another project—I know we try to remain humble, as Sir John says—but there isn’t something quite like it to compare it to. So, yes, we’re very excited to be able to do this work and to be pressing forward on a number of different fronts with a team of about 45 people between Harvard and Baylor, that are all working on papers right now. And so we have a special collection with the Springer Nature journals that will be coming out in early 2025. So about 80 to 90 papers that we’re frantically writing right now. And so I’m anxious to share some of that, a little bit of that, without giving away too much today.

Cherie Harder: Yeah. No, we’ll definitely want to dig into that. But before we do, one of the first questions that occurs to one is you called it the Global Flourishing Study, not the Global Happiness Study. And it does seem like there’s been a lot of happiness social science research recently. So I’d love to hear you describe what flourishing is, how you’re defining it, and how it might be different than just, say, the pursuit of happiness.

Byron Johnson: Yeah. Well, let me just start out by saying one of the reasons why we’re doing this is to learn what flourishing is. We haven’t figured that out. We don’t have all those questions answered. We have some ideas about what we think flourishing looks like, especially in the West. And Tyler VanderWeele has helped coined this definition that “if you’re doing well in all aspects of life, you could say that that person is flourishing.” But there are different components to your life. As you mentioned at the outset, there’s not just the physical, there’s the mental part of your life. There’s the social part of your life. There’s the financial part of your life. There’s meaning and purpose. So all of these things together are important.

And so, you know, we want everyone to do well. But as you know, a lot of people are not doing well. And happiness is just one marker of what it means to be flourishing. But flourishing is so much more than happiness, and a lot of people around the world are not doing well candidly. And so, you know, one of the things that we want to do is not only study why people, some, are doing well, but why is it that so many are not?

Cherie Harder: I’d love to ask you about that, actually, because that is one of the questions that I think really comes to mind in that, you know, over the last several decades, there have been so many strides made just in terms of reducing extreme poverty around the world. There has been a lot of upticks in global health. Even just beyond one’s personal sense of either prosperity or agency, the fact that infant mortality has declined—that’s a huge just trauma and grief in life that has been ameliorated for a lot of people. And yet you look at all of these different indicators—loneliness, anxiety, depression, self-reported misery, deaths of despair, neuroticism, friendlessness—and they have gone way up. And it seems like the tick up started with an especially rapid ascent after around 2016. What is going on there and why are we failing to flourish in key areas?

Byron Johnson: This is, I think, this comes as a surprise to some to hear this. And this isn’t isolated, as you indicated. It’s a global problem. And John Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, wrote a book two years ago called The Blind Spot. And this book is about what you just described. They created an index of unhappiness which combines, you know, pain—people are literally suffering pain and anxiety and depression and stress, all of these things. The cumulative effect is really terrible. This is why, of course, we have significant problems with suicide and substance addiction. So these are things that we need to understand why is this happening. It’s not just happening in a country that’s, let’s say, a third-world country. It’s happening in the developed world as well as the third world. And so I think it gives us an indication that money doesn’t buy flourishing, for example. Work, as important as it is, doesn’t either. And so that’s why I think it’s important to have this more robust definition of what flourishing looks like that goes way beyond happiness.

You know, the Global Happiness Report, you alluded to it I think earlier, it gets so much attention every March. They want to know which countries are the happiest countries in the world. And, you know, Finland, I think, has been number one now for six straight years. But it’s just one question. And it’s a question like this: “How would you rank how happy you are with zero being not at all happy and ten being very happy?” And that’s the question that’s analyzed. And so it really doesn’t give us a glimpse of what’s really going on in the lives of people. That’s why you need more robust research.

And that’s one of the things that we hope to achieve, but recognizing we have our own blind spots with this study. We’re not doing hour-long interviews with people. We don’t have the time because we’re tracking well over 200,000 people around the world. So our interviews are only 22 minutes. So they’re short. They cover a lot of topics.

So this is the question of our day. And, you know, even though there’s been no advertising just yet for the Global Flourishing Study, our phones have been ringing off the hook for the last two years from communities around the country wanting to know, would you come help our community? We want to know how to flourish. Because they recognize the things that you were just describing. And, you know, you can blame the internet for the fact that we have social isolation, but I think it probably goes a lot deeper than that. And so we’re hopeful that in some small way, the studies that will be coming out from the Global Flourishing Study will begin to give us some key insights, especially over time, and we’ll be able to do causal studies that will unpack what’s really going on. Why is it that some people do really well and other people struggle so mightily?

Cherie Harder: You mentioned that you’re getting calls from communities. One thing I’d be curious about is, you know, presumably in the course of your research, you have had to identify, even if it’s just from kind of an operational kind of perspective, the ingredients of flourishing. And would be interested in what those are both for individuals and for communities and whether or not they’re different.

Byron Johnson: So, you know, we have six domains that we really focus on, knowing that we can’t capture everything. And you mentioned these at the outset: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health—these are just huge areas of life. But meaning and purpose is so important. And meaning and purpose is one of the things that is kind of absent from a lot of the well-being studies. So flourishing being a concept or a construct that’s larger than well-being. And then character and virtue, close social relationships, and then financial and material stability. These are the kinds of things that we’re seeing. But I can tell you from the early findings of the Global Flourishing Study, what we’re finding is to be poor doesn’t mean you don’t have meaning and purpose, and to be wealthy and live in Manhattan doesn’t mean that you do have meaning and purpose.

And so, you know, one of the constants in our study is that we’re looking at the role that faith and faith communities can play, how much people participate in religious activities. Most studies leave these things out. And this is really unfortunate because we’re finding that faith is important in each of those six domains that we just mentioned. And so for many secular people, this is rather shocking, that faith could be such a powerful variable. But we had some ideas from previous research that it would show up in that way. And indeed it is showing up that way. So if you look at people who don’t attend religious gatherings at all, they actually are missing out on quite a few things that could bolster human flourishing. And even Bob Putnam, my good friend at Harvard, who we know him from his book Bowling Alone and other great books where he studied social capital, found that at least half of all social capital is spiritual capital. And where is that spiritual capital to be found? In houses of worship. So this is one of the key ingredients that runs through all of the domains.

Cherie Harder: I’d love to hear you dig into that a little bit more. And, in particular, it seems somewhat intuitive that being part of a house of worship and a congregation would impact one’s flourishing. Just the relationships that one develops and engenders, the sense that there’s a like-minded group of people where you share core convictions and you belong to them. But one thing I’d be curious about, just hearing more about that, but also what difference does the actual substance of one’s faith mean? In that, you know, Christians have a very different worldview and very different beliefs than, say, Hindus or Muslims or other faiths. What, if any, difference does the substance of one’s faith mean, apart from just the belonging in corporate worship?

Byron Johnson: Yeah. I mean, this is, of course, a fantastic question. For those who are listeners today, most of this won’t come as a surprise, that gathering with other like-minded people could be good for your health. But we have found this, and others have found this—and not just hundreds of studies, but literally thousands of empirical studies—that faith is good for you. It helps you to live a longer life with more vitality and more joy. Most of the volunteering, as you alluded to earlier, or a lot of the volunteering, comes from faith communities. And it’s not because volunteering is necessarily a fun thing to do, but a lot of people feel a compelling, a compelling to do something that’s other-minded. You know, most of us, if we’re left to our own devices, are rather self-centered. And so unless you’re compelled to think of others—which Christianity especially does but other religions do, too—then you’re probably not going to be involved in the lives of those that are around you that need help. And if you look at philanthropy, the lion’s share of philanthropy comes from people of faith. Even to secular causes, people of faith, pound for pound, out-give others.

So we see it in this critical domain, number three, on meaning and purpose, where people of faith have hope. And, you know, this is something that is profoundly important. And it takes us in another realm beyond happiness—to have hope. This is what keeps people motivated and keeps people going, even when, let’s just say, they got a cancer diagnosis. How do people flourish? I mean, I was interviewing some people in Georgia recently, and a number of them had lost loved ones recently or just found out that loved ones had a terminal diagnosis. And I said, “How are you all doing?” And to a person, each of them said, “You know what? We’re okay. And in fact, this has been one of the more important seasons of our life because of our faith.” And in some ways, people are drawn closer to God in these moments of struggle.

So again, it’s kind of a contradictory or a counterintuitive thing than what people might think from a completely secular point of view, that one could flourish in the midst of a difficult situation in their life. But we see this over and over. And, you know, Cherie, I’m studying a death-row church in Mississippi. So this is a church led by people that are waiting to be executed. And my colleague Andrew Johnson, I think, is one of the people that’s registered for today’s call. And so we were filming in death row two weeks ago, the death-row church. And here are people that are exhibiting each of these domains of flourishing in the most unlikely of places. And they would each tell you it comes from this faith that they now have found. And it’s not just the old self being replaced with a new self. They’re looking to a future self, and this future self is very powerful. It means that they’re on a journey. And that journey may end rather soon if they get a date and they’re going to be put to death. But as the pastor of the death-row church told me, he said, “Look, the only difference between you and me or people on the outside looking in at us, is that, yes, we have a death sentence, but everybody has a death sentence. I have found eternal life here. And for me, that’s the big thing.”

So the faith factor is really enormous. We can’t wait to kind of unpack it in these studies. And in a few moments, I can share with you what we are finding in the US. We’ll park the global and just look at the US to show you how important faith really is across the board for Americans.

Cherie Harder: Well, do tell.

Byron Johnson: Okay. I’m going to do it now. So we interviewed—are you ready for this?—38,000 Americans. And in most of our studies, we’ll interview 1,000 to 1,200 to 1,500 people. But in the Global Flourishing Study, we have over 38,000, which allows us to do some amazing things which we will be doing in the future, looking at not only Christianity and other religions, but different denominations. When you have an n of 38,000, you can do some pretty amazing things.

But what I would like to share with the listeners is the difference between people who say they’re Christian and people who say that they are not Christian. They have no religion. You’ve heard of the “nones”? So if you compare them on each of the 12 questions that are a part of the Human Flourishing Index, there is a gulf between Christians and the nonreligious on every single flourishing item, and it’s a statistically significant difference. And so you would think there would be some differences, but maybe some overlap. No, the differences are there on each of them. And then when you ask them an additional question about, if you were to answer the question, “Is your life a satisfying life?” Zero, not so satisfying, to very satisfying. So we’re asking them to evaluate their life. On top of all the flourishing things we see, again, a gulf between Christians and the non-religious. And then when we ask them to rank their life evaluation five years from now, this same gulf exists.

And then when we ask them questions about anxiety, depression, suffering—again, it’s not that Christians are exempt—they experience these things—but the degree to which they experience them is far less than the non-religious. But here’s where it gets really exciting. When you look at Christians and compare them. And by that I mean, look at Christians who said that—they all say they’re Christian—but how often do they actually go to religious services? And how important do they say it is in their lives? When you compare them, it looks a lot like Christian versus the nones. So people who identify as Christian, but they don’t participate, they do significantly worse on every flourishing item there is. And people who practice their faith regularly do better on all of those indicators. And it goes straight through beyond flourishing. If you look at life evaluation and anxiety and depression and these other markers, again, practicing Christians do so much better than non-practicing Christians.

So I think this is giving us a glimpse of what’s to come. And that holds not only, again, for each of those items in all six of those domains. This is a consistent finding throughout. So we haven’t looked at this just yet in this set of papers that we’re working on, but we’re very excited about this because will this finding hold when you look at other religions? We don’t know just yet. We haven’t done that analysis, but it will be incredibly important to look at people who say that they’re practicing Islam and those who say, “Yes, I’m a Muslim,” meaning “I was born a Muslim. I indicate I’m a Muslim. You know, I don’t worship at all.” So there are completely secular Muslims, just like there are secular Christians. So it’ll be interesting to unpack that as well. And since our n-size is so big, we’ll also be looking at Buddhism and other world religions.

And the thing that I’m most excited about is to look at atheists, because there’s been much said about the rise of atheism—and you and I have talked about this before—there really isn’t a rise in atheism, at least in the U.S. It’s been flat for 70 years. About 4 percent of the American population say they’re atheists. So for all that people hear about atheism, it is in fact an exaggeration. But the early indications are people with no religion are much more likely to be depressed, much more likely to be anxious, and much more likely to report less meaning and hope, etc, etc, etc.

Cherie Harder: So the rise of the nones aren’t— that doesn’t really track exactly with atheism. They’re kind of in another category. Is that right?

Byron Johnson: Yeah. You know, the nones, I think, have been kind of miscategorized because there are plenty of people we found in our surveys who say, you know, “I put ‘no religion’ on this survey because I don’t see where I go to church.” And it happens that they go to a church called Church of the Savior, let’s say, and it’s not on the list. Well, a few questions later we ask them, “Do you go to church? If you do, can you give us an address and a name for that church?” And so they give us a name and an address for that church. And then we look it up and lo and behold, it’s an evangelical church. Or it may be a non-denominational, charismatic Pentecostal church, or it could be a Latino or an African-American church that was completely overlooked. And so we like to call it the rise of the “others” instead of the rise of the nones, because if there really was this incredible rise of the nones, then why is atheism flat? You would expect it to also be rising.

So I think that, you know, people don’t like labels, and I think it really does fit for people to kind of come into these other categories. So I think it’ll be very interesting to look at how people self-identify and how well they do or don’t flourish.

Cherie Harder: Yeah. Well, maybe in a couple of years we’re going to have to have you back to give us an update on what the survey has shown you. You know, in a few minutes we’re going to take questions from our viewers. But before we do, I’d be really curious, just given the work that you’ve done so far, what you hope that the findings of this study will do. How are you hoping it will impact the lives of people out there? Public policy? How has your research so far affected your own life?

Byron Johnson: You know, every time I go into a prison, let’s just say, and I’m talking to an inmate who has become a believer or an inmate who is studying to be a minister, it affects me. I’m just taking notes. I’m recording the conversation. But how could you not be affected by it? So I’m the beneficiary of prisoners. I’ve sat in their worship services because in a number of these prisons now, you have inmates that lead congregations themselves. And so to sit in the pew and listen to someone preach has just been a real treat. And it has affected me. And I feel like there’s something to be learned from them. And, in fact, a number of prisoners have said this to me—and they haven’t said it in any kind of arrogant way—but they said that, you know, the next awakening will come from the prisons. And this is just something they think that God has shared with them. And so, you know, who am I to second guess that? So I’ve been affected by the research.

I do feel like once we have these studies, especially the ones coming out in waves two, three, four, and five, where we’re able to do longitudinal causal analyzes, I really do believe we can then begin to do policy work that will be significant. So the implications for things like health care, education are significant. A number of churches have reached out to us to say, you know, “We want to be a flourishing congregation. Is there any way in which we could do assessment of our congregation to determine how healthy we are or aren’t?” And cities are doing this, too. Mayors are reaching out to us. There’s an NBA team that we’re talking to—we’ve met with about six times—that’s interested in being a flourishing team so that they can then help their community to flourish.

And I think that that too is consistent with our faith as Christians. You know, if, in fact, our faith is real in our lives, then it should affect others around us. And I think flourishing has, as Tyler would say if he were here, it has this individual component, but it has a community component. How is my community flourishing and what am I doing to help my community to flourish? And so I think that there’s any number of ways in which you could imagine communities getting and finding out, well, we’re not doing so well in building close social relationships. You know, we all stay in our houses and we don’t even communicate to our neighbors. How might we design our communities a little bit differently so that we do actually talk to people and we don’t isolate ourselves one from another?

But the implications for business, I think, are absolutely staggering. And we convened a meeting in Italy, and we invited members of some of the world’s largest corporations to attend the meeting on flourishing. And they came. And I think there’s enormous interest from the business community, as well, in that they want their companies to flourish. And Chick-fil-A, of course, is ahead of everybody. They always are. And so we’ve been working with Chick-fil-A for a number of years, and I think many people look at them and see them as a flourishing company. And that’s exactly how they want to be perceived, as a company that’s flourishing. And they would love for that to rub off on people that are around them. So I think the policy needle is difficult to move, but I think that one way that you can do that is to put good, objective, rigorous data with publications in top journals in front of policymakers so that they have the evidence that they need to actually do evidence-based work.

Cherie Harder: That’s great. Well, Byron, the questions are pouring in. So we’re going to turn to questions from our viewers now. And just as a reminder, you can not only ask a question, you can like a question. That helps give us some idea of how popular some of the questions are. And also just want to let all of our viewers know in advance, we will not be able to get through all questions. We’ll try to get through as many as we can. So our first question comes from James Blum, and James asks, “In measuring human flourishing, how do you try to measure the individual sense of his or her own value or dignity, their sense of self-esteem? And what effect do those factors have on overall flourishing?”

Byron Johnson: Yes. So let me just read to you the two questions that we use for character and virtue. One: “I always act to promote good in all circumstances, even in difficult and challenging situations.” That’s one item. Then we ask this one: “I am always able to give up some happiness now for greater happiness later.” So these are two items that make up this domain of character and virtue. What we really wish to answer that question is that we had a 30-minute interview just on that question that was asked by the listener, because it’s an incredible question. At some level, the Global Flourishing Study is a mile wide, but not very deep, because you have to get people on a phone and talk to them, or in-person conversation, and then let them go after a few minutes of a 22-minute conversation. What you really need is like what we did a few weeks ago in Georgia, where we had an hour to talk to people one-on-one and listen to them and hear them, because a lot of them then say things that you would have never imagined.

And so the qualitative dimension is one of the things that we hope we can address, Cherie, in future work, where we can in fact go much, much deeper. That’s a blind spot that we have with the current study. And so we’re already in conversations with people about follow-on studies that would have that kind of a component where you’re able to not only ask people about how often they participate in religious activities and the kinds of activities, but to talk about the many different ways in which it affects everything that they do in their life. And so, yes, we have our limitations. And so, you know, we can’t go as deep as we would like in such a short survey, which is unfortunate.

Cherie Harder: Yeah, that’s just the way it rolls. Not surprisingly, we have had a number of questions come up on virtue. And so I want to combine two questions. And you can kind of address both of them. First question comes from Elliot Rausch. And Elliot asks, “How much is the current flourishing ideal related to Aristotle’s original understanding of virtue development or Aquinas’s extension of this, which is flourishing as a byproduct of aligning one’s life with the affinities of God?” And relatedly, we have a question on virtue from Arthur Mastrolia, who asks, “Would you say that virtuous living is a sine qua non for a flourishing lifestyle?”

Byron Johnson: I think the answer is yes. And, you know, the reality is these are incredibly significant questions that these listeners are asking that we’re not going to be able to completely answer. We’re scratching the surface of those things. But I think, to answer in the affirmative, yes. I think that what we’re trying to tap into is what Aristotle and Aquinas were talking about. You know, some people in the Christian setting would say, we’re looking for the abundant life. And we would say, yes, that is true. And so these are all areas that need much more study than what we can possibly do amongst our team of 40-some odd scholars.

And, you know, Cherie, I didn’t mention this, and I had it at the top of my list, but I forgot to. It’s an open-access study, which means this, too, is one of the first large studies in the world that is open access, which means every one of the listeners on the call today can access this data. That is really kind of unprecedented in the Templeton Foundation, which was so generous in supporting us—all three Templeton philanthropies, in fact. But it’s an open-access project, which means the data which were released on February the 13th, anyone can access by going to the Center for Open Science. They have to register to get access to the data, but they have access in real time just as soon as we have access to that data. So it’s a global resource. Doesn’t matter where you live in the world. If you have an internet connection, you can get a hold of the data and all the resources that come along with the data as well.

So, you know, we invite people to join us. And so we hope that there’ll be armies of people that will be diving into the data. The data won’t allow us to answer some of the deep, deep questions that people want to answer, because the virtue question is a dissertation in and of itself.

Cherie Harder: So our next question comes from Frederic Perez. And Frederic asks, “When I look at the early church, I see a flourishing church. This is a model we’d all love to get back to. Somehow we miss the mark. Based on what you’ve learned so far, what do you think we’re missing?”

Byron Johnson: I kind of take issue with that. When you look at the work of faith-based organizations in this country, they’re unsung heroes. Most listeners could rattle off the name of many faith-based organizations. Where do these organizations come from? They come from houses of worship. And so when you look at [hurricane] Helene and the horrific damage done in places like North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, their response was largely faith-based. And I think it’s so easy to say that the church has really dropped the ball. Can the church do more? Of course, the church can do more. But the lion’s share of philanthropy, the lion’s share of generosity and volunteering is in fact coming from the congregations all across the place. They just don’t get any credit for it. They respond to all the national disasters that we have, and they will continue to do that. We did a study on homelessness a few years ago to see where are homeless people getting services from. And we found that 60 percent of the beds are coming from faith-based groups. And we know we didn’t capture everything. And so this is— because I think people think the government is the only one responding to a big problem like homelessness. But yet on the front line are the houses of worship.

So I think that you could argue too then, there is some work that there’s a halo effect around many congregations, and the communities around them benefit from their presence. They do all kinds of good work in their communities. Now, I’m not saying this is everywhere. But when I lived in Philadelphia in the early 2000s, we produced research showing that the houses of worship in Philadelphia provided $250 million of social services to the residents of Philadelphia every year. Now, that was over 20 years ago. If you think about that for a minute, I don’t know what that would translate to into today’s dollars. So in many ways, congregations are responding. They just don’t advertise it. They don’t brag about it. And the media certainly doesn’t give them any attention. And there’s not even a footnote in any HUD study that you might look through looking at homelessness and the response of faith-based organizations. So they’re unsung heroes. And so I don’t know where we would be without them.

Cherie Harder: Yeah, that’s a great word. So, so many questions coming in. I want to combine two again. Steve Davis asked, “The six factors you identified as the key underpinnings of flourishing are so rich. Could you briefly summarize each?” And I’m actually going to combine that with a question from Lane Whitaker and Lane says, “Arthur Brooks’s research shows that the components of happiness are family, friends, faith, and work. How do these correlate with your research on flourishing?” We’ve had Arthur on as well. And so, yeah, what are the key factors and how do they correlate?

Byron Johnson: Arthur is right. Those are four key pathways through which these domains operate. Arthur’s a dear friend, and I was talking to him recently, and he said, “I’m ready, as soon as these first wave of studies come out, I’ll be writing about the findings in the Atlantic.” So, again, when we built the questionnaire—and I have behind me, I put it up for today’s call. There’s a report right there. It’s the questionnaire development report. It took us several years to develop the questionnaire. And we got feedback from scholars all across the world on it. And when we went to Gallup, we said, “We’ve got our questionnaire. Can you help us with it?” And so they did. And they said, “Well, we’re going to have to shrink it.” “Okay. How much?” “Well, we’ll need to cut like two-thirds out.” And so, so many questions had to come out. And I can’t tell you how painful that was because we couldn’t— you know, there’s fatigue issues. You can’t talk to people for an hour in a massive study like this. So these 12 items, some people would say, “That’s only 12 items.” You know, you wish it were more. And then when we ask about anxiety, when we ask about depression, we’re not using big depression scales. We wish we could. We didn’t have the opportunity because you’re making these trade-offs when you do something that’s global and you’re following over 200,000 people.

But also, Cherie, I think we’re going to put a link up on the website at the end so people can go to the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard where they can pull these items down. We’ll give them a number of links so they can see these. But the 12 items are happiness and life satisfaction. “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?” And then, “In general, how happy or unhappy do you usually feel?” That’s the one question that the Global Happiness Report uses. And then on mental and physical health, “How would you rate your overall physical health?” Again, 0 to 10. “Overall, how would you rate your mental health?” 0 to 10. And then the meaning and purpose domain: “Overall, to what extent do you feel the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?” 0 to 10. “I understand my purpose in life.” 0 to 10. And then I did the character and virtue a moment ago. And then on close social relationships, “I am content with my friendships and relationships.” The next question: “I am always able to give up some happiness now for a greater happiness later.” And then the last domain, six, financial-material stability: “How often do you worry about being able to meet normal monthly living expenses?” And, “How often do you worry about safety, food, or housing?”

So those are just the 12. And people are thinking, that’s not very many questions, but believe it or not, they stack up really well when you use them in the research. Again, we wish we could ask a lot more, but I hope that helps that one question on how do you categorize these areas?

Cherie Harder: Well, actually, our next question from an anonymous attendee seems like a perfect segue-way. So they ask, “Knowing what you know now, if you could have asked one more question in the survey to draw out something that you’ve come to believe is important, what would it be?”

Byron Johnson: Oh, great. Well, I’m a criminologist by training, and we don’t have any criminology questions in the whole survey. We did, but we had to cut them out. And so, you know, if I could have put one back in, I would have loved to put something in there that dealt with crime and delinquency since I’ve done so much work in that area. But ditto for everybody else on our team too. They all had one or two more items that they wished they could have included. So I can’t think of one right now that would be— oh, just such a great question.

And then here’s the other thing. Gallup loves “yes/no,” because everyone in the world understands “yes/no.” And so these scales that go from 0 to 10, for some people that live 100 miles from any city—because those people are just as likely to be represented in the study, since these are nationally representative samples—0 to 10, they may not have ever heard of something like that. So they’re trying to visualize what it means to respond to a scale from here to here, which takes a little bit longer to process, but it gives us more statistical strength when we analyze the data.

So these are just some of the issues that kind of go into this. And I know this wasn’t asked, but I haven’t even told the countries, Cherie, that we’re looking at. And so since you said we have 22 countries, let me list the countries that we have in this study: Indonesia, Tanzania, Egypt, Mexico, India, Kenya, Poland, Sweden, South Africa, Germany, Australia, Spain, the UK, the US, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, Philippines, Turkey, Hong Kong. We wanted to get China, but Gallup was not allowed to do work in China for a period of time, so we couldn’t. But we could get Hong Kong. So Hong Kong is in wave one. But last December we got a call that China had opened up. So we immediately went into China and we actually were able to collect data in China, but we couldn’t release it last February when we released wave one. So this coming February, when we release wave two, we will release wave one and wave two, which will include both years of China.

So that gives us a representative sample of about 64 percent of the world’s 8 billion inhabitants. So those are the countries. I know we’ve got a lot of folks on the call from different parts of the world. So if you are interested in seeing the data, you can maybe look at your own country.

And then the last thing, real quick, I wanted to mention that we’re really excited about, we’ve just now completed getting the weights for the individual states in the United States. So we’re going to be able to do kind of a state-by-state flourishing index in the US to see how states are doing. Are there regions of the country that seem to flourish versus other regions of the country? I know that this is something that people ask about regularly, and so we’re going to be able to do that kind of an analysis, because again, we have over 38,000 people participating from the US.

Cherie Harder: There’s a question asked by another anonymous attendee that seems appropriate to finish on: “How and when will these results be made available to the wider world, and especially to the general public, perhaps even to churches and other religious institutions?”

Byron Johnson: Thank you for asking that question. So we have completed about 70 studies. We have another 20 or so to complete in the next few weeks. These will be part of a special collection that will roll out probably the first week in April. And a lot of these will be appearing in scientific— well, all of them in scientific journals, some of the best journals in the world, in fact, including Nature. And then we will be also releasing at the same time a lay-friendly summary of the whole thing. And that will probably be the most widely circulated and widely read piece that we will produce because the academic papers have about 100 to 150 pages of tables for each of the papers. So if you don’t suffer from insomnia, I mean, these papers will definitely put you to sleep if you do suffer from insomnia.

But no, there’s so much exciting things in these papers that people will see. And so there’ll be a lot of publicity around the rollout. There’s actually a documentary that’s in progress, too, on the Global Flourishing Study. Stay tuned for details. But this more lay-friendly report, we’re designing it such that everyday people, especially people in the pews, could have access to this. It will be put online and people can just download it. We hope that you’ll use it in the churches itself. And we have produced another document on flourishing and the church, and I think we’re going to give people, Cherie, a link to that as well, or make that available to people, so they can see that report too, because we do talk about the issue of how and why it’s important to do an assessment for your own congregation. And so, yes, after the first of the year, these things will come rolling out, and there should be a lot of media attention around it.

Cherie Harder: That’s great. Well, Byron, this has been just really a delight. And in just a second I’m going to give you the last word. But before we do that, a few things just to share with those of you who are watching. First, immediately after we finish up, we will be sending around a survey or feedback form. We really appreciate you filling out that survey. I say this every time that we read every one of them. We try to incorporate your thoughts and suggestions to make these programs ever more valuable. And as a small token of our appreciation for filling it out, we will send you a code for a free Trinity Forum Reading download of your choice. There’s actually a number of Trinity Forum Readings that we would recommend that provide some of the wisdom of the ages to go deeper into this topic, including “On Happiness” by Aquinas, “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Vaclav Havel, “Kristin Lavransdatter,” “Wrestling with God” by Simone Weil, “A Pilgrim’s Progress,” “On Friendship” by Cicero, and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.

In addition, for everyone who registered, tomorrow we will be sending around a follow-up email that includes links to some of the resources that Byron mentioned. It’ll also include recommendations on different readings to go more deeply into the topic, and it will include discussion questions. So if you want to convene your own reading or discussion group, watch today’s program and discuss what has been happening, the discussion questions will be a resource for you to use in that way.

In addition, we would love to invite all of you watching to join the Trinity Forum Society, which is the community of people who help make Trinity Forum’s mission of cultivating, curating, and disseminating the best of Christian thought possible. If you have enjoyed these programs—we really hope you have—we hope that you will join these. We make these available for free. We really appreciate all those who tune in, and we’d love for you also to join in helping make them possible to an ever-larger audience. Now, in addition, there are benefits to being a Trinity Forum Society member, including a subscription to our quarterly Readings, a subscription to our daily “What We’re Reading” list of curated reading recommendations, and with your membership or your gift of $100 or more, we will send you, as a small token of our appreciation, a “Faith and Flourishing” bespoke Readings collection which includes “On Friendship” by Cicero, “On Happiness” by Aquinas, and several other readings as well.

Some upcoming events to let you know about. On November 6th, we’ll be hosting Yuval Levin, which will be the fourth of our four-part series on “Faith, Freedom, and Flourishing” that we’re hosting with Pepperdine. And if you happen to be in the Nashville area on November 14th, we will be there hosting an in-person evening conversation with governor Bill Haslam and sociologist James Davison Hunter on his new book, Democracy and Solidarity. We’d love to meet you in person and hope you can join us.

Finally wrapping up, I’d love to thank again our co-host and sponsor, the Pepperdine School of Public Policy, and I also want to send a shout-out to the team at Trinity Forum, my colleagues Tom Walsh, Campbell Vogel, Brian Daskam, Marie-Anne Morris, and Macrae Hanke, who put the mission of the Trinity Forum into action. Really appreciate you all.

Finally, Byron, as we close out our time together, the last word is yours.

Byron Johnson: Well, I’m going to be brief. First of all, thank you, Cherie. Thank you for all the great work you do at the Trinity Forum. It’s truly amazing. So grateful for you. Grateful for Pete Peterson, my dear friend and dean, and Pepperdine, those wonderful people out there. Grateful for them. And I just wanted to say that, on behalf of Tyler Vanderweele and our whole team, we are a grateful team. We don’t think it’s chance that this study was funded by eight different foundations, and the partners that we’ve had come alongside—the Center for Open Science and Gallup—it’s all been something that we’ve just been incredibly grateful for, grateful to our funders especially. And so it’s just a heart of gratitude. It’s been a lot of work, but the gratitude has far out-trumped the work. And so it’s just been a treat to be with you today. Thank you.

Cherie Harder: Really appreciate It, Byron. It’s been a joy. And thank you to all of you for joining us. Have a great weekend.