The empirical examination of the relationship between religion and health has often lacked theoretical direction. The present aim was to examine the relationship between dimensions of religiosity and health within the context of James and Wells' (2003) cognitive-behavioural framework of religion. A community sample of 177 UK adults completed measures of religious orientation, religious coping, and prayer activity alongside the SF-36 Health Survey. Consistent with the cognitive-behavioural

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... ork of religion, intrinsic religiosity and meditative prayer scores accounted for unique variance in both physical and mental health scores over a number of over religious measures. These findings suggest the potential usefulness and importance of a cognitive behavioural framework to understand the relationship between religion and health. Religion and Health . . .3 The idea that religion is beneficial to health is not a new one. For a long time researchers have been interested in the relationship between religion and health. Religion is thought to significantly influence a variety of health outcomes including heart disease, cancer, stroke, and health related behaviours such as smoking, drinking and drug use (for a review see