Faith, Health, and Gender: What Black Women Carry

Keisha Bentley-Edwards, PhD

7 hours ago

2 min read

A black woman with glasses and long earrings is standing in front of trees with her hand clasped. She is looking up and wearing a red floral shirt.

For many Black Americans, faith is central to how we cope, connect, and endure. Four studies my colleagues and I published this past year show that faith can protect our health. They also show that its benefits do not reach everyone equally.

In Aging & Mental Health, led by Dr. Eric Griffith, we used national data on Black adults and found that attending religious services more often was linked to lower dementia risk. Negative emotions were linked to higher risk, and part of the benefit of attending services ran through emotional well-being.

The picture changes when we look at racism and the heart. In the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, led by Dr. Jason Ashe, Black men who faced discrimination and leaned on religious coping had lower blood pressure and blood sugar. Black women who faced discrimination and leaned on religious coping had higher blood sugar and BMI. Our follow-up in the Journal of the American Heart Association tracked arterial plaque over roughly a decade. Religious coping weakened the harm of discrimination for men. We found no such buffer for women.

In Ethnicity & Disease, led by Dr. Paul Robbins, Baptist and Pentecostal women in their 20s and early 30s had higher obesity rates than men in their own denominations. Frequent church involvement beyond Sunday services was also linked to higher obesity.

Faith is not the problem. These findings raise a harder question: when Black women bring their stress to the church, what are they carrying back out? They serve, organize, and care for everyone else, and their physical and emotional needs may be less of a priority. The church remains one of our most trusted health partners. Health ministries should be designed with women's realities in mind, and should consider mental and physical health initiatives.

Some of these manuscripts are based on my NIH-funded project, Religion, Spirituality and CVD Risks: A Focus on African Americans. Click here for overviews and brief reports from the study.