In this new, groundbreaking paper, we measured the health and wellbeing benefits of weekly religious attendance and physical activity alongside previous work on volunteering.

We found:

• Attending church every week has the same wellbeing benefit as playing sport and physical activity.

• If you are both physically active and attend church in the same week, you get double the benefit.

• If you also volunteer - and volunteering is integral to the provision of both sport and church - you enjoy three times the wellbeing benefit.

• Therefore the best investment to benefit your wellbeing is go to church, play sport, and volunteer once a week - Faith, Hoops and Charity. 

• If an individual did all three of these activities, every week, it would be the equivalent in wellbeing terms of an unemployed person finding a job or self-employed work.