Reflections on the “Class of 73”

I think of 1973, during most of which I was 21, as the last year of my youth – also the last year before the gang of university-age friends I had hung with in Halifax, for what seemed at the time forever (actually only a couple of years), began to hive off into marriages, careers, and to scatter across the continent.

I will turn 50 this year, a milestone that one tends to approach with an eye in the rearview mirror, assessing how one’s life has unfolded so far, and in so doing, one’s musings inevitably include others. How has the “class of ’73” fared in life?

It is something of an exercise in arbitration to designate one’s “11 closest friends” at any stage in life, but 29-year hindsight provides a degree of helpful perspective, and for the purpose of this discussion I was able to come up with 11 names fairly easily. A few of them could have been substituted for others without altering the picture substantially.

Of the cohort of a dozen, including myself, nine are male and three female. All are still alive 29 years later, and while I haven’t laid eyes on some of them for more than a decade, we are all still friends who keep track of each other, and can pick up effortlessly more or less where we left off when we do meet.

All but two of us have married (none of the 12 to each other), I being the first to the altar in 1974, soon followed by most of the others. Among us, we have 24 children. Only one of us has divorced (twice), and of the two that did not marry, one is a single mother.

It’s an unscientific evaluation, but I suspect these demographics are extraordinary for a sampling of 12 individuals from random backgrounds now on the cusp of 50 in this culture. Over the 29-year span of this observation, general demographics would have predicted that five of the 10 members of my 1973 circle of close friends who married would divorce. Only one did.

I think the key to this anomaly is that in 1973 all 12 of us were serious Christians, by which I mean that if asked at the time we would have affirmed that our Christian faith was the most important focus of our lives. Nearly three decades later I think all of us would still make that affirmation. Not that we all share the same background. Of the 12, three are Roman Catholic, two Anglican, two Baptist, two Presbyterian, one Reformed Presbyterian, one Eastern Orthodox, and one United. Four of the 12 have become clergy – one a monk – although in 1973 none had yet embarked on that path.

I think that being devoutly Christian does make a difference, and while my little “study” of my personal friends is anecdotal, scientific research backs my hypothesis. A 28-year University of California at Berkeley study found the rate of mortality for people who attend religious services regularly is 25 to 35 per cent lower than among those who worship less frequently. Regular churchgoers were also more likely to have a vibrant social life and to stay married.

A Duke University Medical Center study indicates that people who attend religious services regularly have more robust immune systems. The 1994 University of Chicago study, “Sex in America,” found that monogamous conservative Christians reported the most satisfaction from sex. Several other studies show that married couples who attend church at least once per week are the most sexually contented segment of society.

A 1995 Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center study found that subjects who affirmed religious faith had a death rate only one-third as high as those who did not. Patients who were both religious and socially engaged were 14 times less likely to die as non-religious or isolated individuals. A study at the Eastern Virginia Medical School and the National Institute for Health Care Research, indicated that people who attend church regularly have half the risk of dying from coronary artery disease as non-churchgoers.

I don’t want to imply a sort of smug, “hooray-for-us-aren’t-we-wonderful?” dynamic here. Along with the good, the “class of ’73” has had their share of troubles, health problems, and heartaches over the years. Speaking for myself, I have mostly been a sorry example of what a Christian should be, and as St. Paul reminds us, we are all unworthy sinners, saved only by grace and not through works, “lest any man should boast.”

However, were there no other reasons to believe the Christian Gospel, I would find the positive effect I have witnessed it having on the lives of so many people, including the “class of ’73,” compelling evidence of its truth. Christian is better, even by pragmatic criteria.