Death anxiety and religious belief relationship is inconsistent & probably near zero; extremely religious & irreligious individuals report lower death anxiety; nonbelievers pursue nonreligious forms of literal immortality

Death anxiety and religion. Jonathan Jong. Current Opinion in Psychology, August 19 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.08.004

Highlights
• The linear relationship between death anxiety and religious belief is inconsistent and probably averages around zero.
• There is some—albeit limited and culturally specific—evidence for a quadratic relationship between death anxiety and religion, such that extremely religious and irreligious individuals report lower death anxiety than others.
• Experiences with and proximity to death do not consistently predict religious belief.
• Reminders of death probably temporarily strengthen religious belief among believers, but not nonbelievers. Early evidence suggests that nonbelievers pursue nonreligious forms of literal immortality.

Abstract: This review summarises research on the relationship between death anxiety and religiosity. The fear of death is commonly hypothesized as a motivation for religious belief. From a Terror Management Theory perspective, religious beliefs are especially attractive because they offer both literal and symbolic immortality in the form of afterlife beliefs and belonging in venerable systems of value respectively. However, the evidence for any relationship—whether correlational or causal—between death anxiety and religious belief is weak. Indeed, evidence for death anxiety under normal (i.e., non-life threatening) circumstances is surprisingly hard to find. If the fear of death motivates religiosity, it does so subtly, weakly, and sporadically.