Miami ? Hilda Schau says it’s a belief in God that carried her through divorce and job loss. Urologist Manuel Padron says he regularly sees the power of faith at work in his patients.

Personal beliefs such as theirs drew millions to church last week on Easter Sunday. But are they quantifiably good for you?

They are, according to Michael E. McCullough, a University of Miami researcher who has been studying the relationship between religion and health for more than a decade.

His conclusions are fueling the debate over the impact of religion on personal well-being.

“It’s kind of hard to find a downside to religion,” says McCullough, a psychology professor and one of the top researchers in the field.

In a small lab on UM’s Coral Gables campus, McCullough, 39, has conducted experiments with hundreds of people of many backgrounds, testing their ability to delay gratification, forgive and be thankful, and correlating those findings with health factors from drug use to depression. All the while, he has asked, “Do you believe in God? How much?”

McCullough’s research suggests that religious people of all faiths, by sizable margins, do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and are generally happier than their nonbelieving peers.

He has published more than a dozen studies on the subject, including a recent article in Psychological Bulletin suggesting that if you want to quit smoking, you may want to get religious about it. In the Journal of Drug Issues, he reported that in neighborhoods plagued by alcoholism, church attendance helps more than Alcoholics Anonymous.

“Religious people tend to have good self-control,” says McCullough, citing what he considers the biggest reason for their higher scores on health and prosperity indicators.

David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association in Washington, D.C., doesn’t dispute such findings, but doesn’t find them persuasive.

“The secular outlook is just as capable of bringing one inner peace, stability and happiness as any religious view,” says Niose, whose group includes atheists and promotes the view that nonbelievers should live ethically for the greater human good.

McCullough acknowledges that religion is just part of the picture, and a relatively small one at that. He says factors such as race, class and age undoubtedly play larger roles in determining life outcomes.

“Frankly, there are some downsides to religion,” he adds, noting that the same self-control that can help a believer beat an addiction can turn a zealot into a suicide bomber.

According to a survey released last month by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., 70 percent of Americans believe in God.

“Every year, I concentrate more and more on my faith,” says Toni Pallatto, 53, a marketing company owner who looks forward to Easter Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Kendall, Fla. It’s “a new beginning,” she says of the holiest day on the Christian calendar.

Rituals, whether holiday celebrations or rites such as Communion, have strong, positive psychological effects, McCullough says. While his study samples have been mostly Christian, he says the findings apply across religious beliefs.

Prayer, McCullough says, is especially powerful. Scientists have found that images of the brain in prayer resemble “that of a person interacting with somebody they love.”

Schau, 46, who attends twice-a-week services at Calvary Chapel of Doral, agrees.

“I’m incredibly in love with Jesus,” says the former administrative assistant, who now works for a temp agency. “He rocks.”

The sincerity of your faith has a bearing on its health benefits, McCullough asserts.

“You can be religious because you don’t want to embarrass your family or because you feel guilty. It’s important why you’re religious.”

He has found that religious converts and those who embraced faith later in life reap some of the greatest benefits.

Ali Elhajj, a software programmer in Weston, Fla., was born into a Muslim family in Lebanon, where he says civil war between Christians and Muslims made him “want nothing to do with religion.”

Until his mid-20s, he was an atheist. Now 36 and a member of First Baptist Church at Weston, he says he finds more meaning in life because “you are not living for yourself anymore but living for your maker.”

A belief in a power greater than one’s self is what leads to more self-control, McCullough posits. He routinely makes an offer to subjects: Take $50 today or $65 in a month. The religious ones, he says, wait for the bigger reward.

McCullough sees a corollary between the ability to delay gratification and a belief in heavenly rewards. And he sees such impulse control as a reason that “religious people are less likely to break the law, to have extramarital sex, to do drugs.”