THE RISE OF THE SECULARS IN AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE

Egon Mayer

Fifty years ago, Will Herberg's widely-read Protestant-Catholic-Jew (Doubleday & Co., 1955) laid out a view of American Jewish identity that has remained the prevailing conventional wisdom since:

“Whatever the institutional situation of the moment, it is incontrovertible that the Jewish community in the United States has become a religious community in its own understanding, as well as in the understanding of the non-Jew. Old-line secular Judaism is obsolescent. The type of secular Jewish organizations which existed around the turn of the [20th] century, and for sometime thereafter are hardly a force today. But, while Jewish community life has become more religious in this sense, it has also become more secularist in another… Much of the institutional life of the synagogue has become secularized and drained of religious content precisely at the time when religion is becoming more and more acknowledged as the meaning of Jewishness.” (pp. 196-197)

While Herberg recognized (and lamented) institutional secularization, he firmly held and promoted the view that at the individual level Jewish identification is retained solely through the medium of religious adherence and affiliation. Herberg’s argument about the Jews in particular and about American religion in general was buttressed by a wide variety of data dealing with both public opinion about religion and the growth of church and synagogue affiliation at mid-century. Central to Herberg’s argument was the factual assertion that there was near-universality to Americans’ adherence to a religion as the basis of self-identification; that religious adherence was the way in which the myriad of ethnic groups blended together to become Americans - homogeneous as a people, yet retaining elements of diversity owing to differences in faith and religious practice. At least in the mid-fifties, religion was in. Ethnicity was out.

That much of Herberg’s evidence for the centrality of religion in the American identity was based on highly constrained methods of research remained largely unnoticed. Two important methodological constraints framed Herberg’s analysis as they have framed the sociology of religion ever since: (a) the fact that the U.S. Census has avoided asking any questions about religion and (b) the fact that virtually all public opinion surveys dealing with religion have been limited to samples of less than 3,000 cases, making the study of religious minorities virtually impossible.

Those constraints made it impossible to obtain accurate, self-reported information about affiliation patterns of small minority religious groups such as Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and the like, much less the broad variety of religious beliefs and opinions among them. Those constraints have misguided our understanding of the true character of American religious life in general and all the more so have misguided our understanding of the nature of American Jewish identity.

Those constraints stimulated a new approach to the study of American religious adherence and opinion starting in 1990. The new approach involved a very large-scale canvassing of a random sample of American households known as the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). Sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations (now known as the United Jewish Communities), the key purpose of that survey was to find a representative sample of American Jews. However, the method itself yielded a representative sample of all other religious groups as well. Thus, in 1990 for the first time it was possible to describe the full extent of America’s religious diversity on the basis of how a representative cross-section of people describes themselves beyond the simple three-part label made so compelling by Herberg.

The results of that survey, published by Barry Kosmin and Seymour Lachman under the title, One Nation Under God (Crown Publishers, 1993) had begun to shift attention toward a more nuanced understanding of religious groups and their differentiated significance in different parts of the United States. In the Jewish community, that survey resulted in the now famous 1990 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS).

As the year 2000 was drawing to a close, Felix Posen approached Barry Kosmin and myself with an interest in carrying out a dispassionate scientific survey of the American Jewish population. Given all we had learned from our research experiences with NSRI and NJPS in 1990, Kosmin and I, together with Ariela Keysar decided to replicate those two studies a decade later. Thus was born the twin studies we produced: the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2001 and its companion American Jewish Identity Survey (AJIS) 2001.

From February through June 2001 we surveyed 50,238 randomly selected American adults in the 48 states of the continental USA, which included a more detailed survey of 1,668 adults living in what we have called “qualifying Jewish households.” The basis on which a household qualified as “Jewish” was if it contained at least one person who was reported as Jewish by one of the following four criteria (the same criteria used in the 1990 NJPS).

(a) The person was said to be Jewish in response to the question: What is your/his/her religion? They replied “Jewish” or “Judaism” OR IF
(b) The person was said to have a Jewish parent, OR IF
(c) The person was said to be raised Jewish, OR IF
(d)The person was said to consider himself/herself Jewish.

In 1,215 cases the person who was interviewed qualified on the basis of one of these four questions. In the remaining 453 cases the household qualified because someone other than the interviewee met at least one of the four criteria.

What we learned about religion in America today and about diversity among America’s Jews contrast sharply with some of the key observations Herberg had made in the middle of the last century.

In Herberg’s America, 95% of adults identified with a religion. Just 86% of American adults identify with a religion today.

In Herberg’s America, 68% of adults were Protestants. Today less than half of America’s adults are Protestants.

In Herberg’s America, 96% of adults professed belief in God. Today, just 79% of America’s adults do so.

In Herberg’s America, 75% of adults reported membership in or affiliation with a church, synagogue or other house of worship. Today, just 54% of America’s adults report such membership or affiliation.

In Herberg’s America, four percent of adults report their religion as Jewish. Today this category has just slightly more than one percent. It is not that Jewish people are disappearing. They simply do not identify themselves as such by religion in general or by Judaism in particular nearly as much as in the past. Jewish parentage and upbringing rather than religion link ever-larger numbers of people to their Jewishness. Where Herberg saw religion displacing ethnicity as the basis of Jewish identification, in the current cultural climate “familism” appears to have replaced both.

Fifty years of “religious triumphalism” have failed to stem the tide of secularization in American society. For America’s Jews, the triumphalist view of religion has completely failed to stem the tide of disaffection from organized Jewish life. Indeed, it has substantially contributed to it. If those who care about the collective future of the Jewish people want to address the challenge of that persistent disaffection, they will have to listen to the voices of the disaffected, and seek modes and sources of group cohesion that do not depend on the acceptance of religious beliefs, practices and figures of authority. Is it still possible to find sources of Jewish group cohesion among those who have relinquished adherence to the faith and religious practices of Judaism? That question animated the recent scientific survey of the American Jewish population, undertaken in 2001. The affirmative answer emerging from that study nonetheless poses serious challenges for the conventional wisdom about religion in general and America’s Jews in particular.

The proportion of people who are in religious groups that do not fit the Judeo-Christian model has increased from negligible insignificance in the mid-1950s to six percent of the population, and those who adhere to no religion has increased nearly threefold from five percent to 14%. This last point is of particular significance because we found that while Jews are just a little over one percent among those who adhere to a religion, they are more than three percent among those who claim no adherence to a religion.

Perhaps, the most vivid illustration of the shape of American Jewish identity today emerges from how our survey respondents responded to the four questions described earlier. Just a little more than half of all adults who make any claim of Jewishness either on the basis of parentage, upbringing, or religious or ethnic adherence say they are Jewish when asked “What is your religion, if any?” Nearly 45% of that total merely report Jewish parentage or upbringing. In numerical terms, there are about 2.4 million adults in the United States today who report being of Jewish parentage and/or upbringing, but who do not acknowledge being Jewish when asked about their religion. More than half of these adults actually report adherence to a religion other than Judaism. They are neither secular nor Jewish in the sense of religion. They have joined another religion and merely acknowledge Jewish ancestry. However, about one million of the 2.4 million report adherence to no religion. These are the people whom we call the seculars. They comprise about 20% of the 5.5 million who make up the total adult population that has some connection to the Jewish people - either by religion, parentage, upbringing or some other personal affinity. However, if one excludes from the demographic calculation those (1.4 million) who have joined another religion, the seculars then comprise about 25% of the total.

The “Jews of no religion,” whom we call the secular Jewish adult population, were a substantial proportion of the American Jewish population already in 1990. In the past decade, that population has grown to 1,120,000 out of 5,515,000 of the total adult “Jewish-descent” population. The number of children born to the secular segment of the Jewish adult population has increased from 307,000 in 1990 to 590,000. Concurrently, the number of children born to that segment of the adult Jewish population whom we call “Jewish-by-religion” has declined from 856,000 in 1990 to 700,000 in 2001.

It is not only basic demography that points to a pervasive secularism among a large and growing segment of America’s Jews. The mindset associated with the concept of secularism is reflected as well in a broad variety of questions we asked our survey respondents. Highlighted among these was the question: “When it comes to your outlook, do you regard yourself as (a) religious, (b) somewhat religious, (c) somewhat secular or (d) secular?”

We had expected that this question would clearly differentiate between those who acknowledge Judaism as their religion and those who say they are of Jewish parentage or upbringing but who say they have “no religion.” In fact the picture it produced is slightly more complex, as shown in the Exhibit below.

EXHIBIT
Type of Outlook by Jewish Identity Category

(Percent)

OUTLOOK	JEWISH-YES RELIGION	JEWISH-NO RELIGION	TOTAL (PCT)
Religious	11	6	10
Somewhat religious	41	17	34
Somewhat secular	16	12	15
Secular	26	52	34
Don't know/refused	6	13	7
TOTAL	2,800,000	1,120,000	100

SOURCE: American Jewish Identity Survey 2001

As expected, those who report adherence to no religion for the most part also describe their outlook as “secular” (52%) or “somewhat secular” (12%). Those who adhere to Judaism on the other hand for the most part describe their outlook as “religious” (11%) or “somewhat religious” (41%). Contrary to expectations, however, 42% of those who say their religion is “Jewish” or “Judaism” nonetheless describe their outlook as “secular” or “somewhat secular.” To be sure, a similar inconsistency between self-labeling with respect to religious identification and outlook is found among those who say they are of Jewish parentage or upbringing but of no religion. Of this group, 23% describe their outlook as “religious” or “somewhat religious.” But on the whole, the entirety of the Jewish population is fairly evenly divided between those who describe themselves as “secular” or “somewhat secular” (49%) and those who describe themselves as “religious” or “somewhat religious” (44%).

Surprisingly, that basic division in outlook is not reflected in the various behavioral measures of group cohesion we employed from synagogue affiliation, affiliation with other Jewish communal institutions to Jewish friendship networks to Israel visiting. Those who describe themselves as “religious” or “somewhat religious” are not significantly more likely to belong to a synagogue or a JCC, to have visited Israel, or to have mostly Jewish friends. Only a minority of either group does so. For example, 30% of those who characterize their outlook as “religious” or “somewhat religious” say their household is affiliated with a temple or synagogue. But, 23% of those who say they are “secular” or “somewhat secular” also report household affiliation with a Jewish congregation. The two groups are equally as likely to have visited Israel: 20% of the “religious” or “somewhat religious” and 19% of the “secular” or “somewhat secular.”

The critical differentiating factor between the two groups seems to be their answer to the religion question: “What is your religion, if any?” Those who answered that question with “Jewish” or “Judaism” are significantly different from those who said “I have no religion” or some variant thereof (such as “I am secular,” or “I am an agnostic,” or “I am an atheist.”) Thus, those who adhere to Judaism as a religion are significantly more likely to belong to a synagogue - regardless of whether they describe their outlook as “religious” or “secular” or points in between - than those who do not adhere to Judaism as a religion. The two groups differ likewise with respect to the other indicators of group cohesion. Those who adhere to Judaism as a religion and characterize their outlook as “religious” or “somewhat religious” are the most connected by other indicators of group cohesion. Those who do not adhere to Judaism as a religion and describe themselves as “secular” or “somewhat secular” are the least connected by any of the other indicators of group cohesion. Even visiting Israel is more than twice as likely among those who acknowledge that their religion is Judaism than those who do not - though the self-avowed secularists in each group are less likely to have visited Israel.

This pattern of relationships between adherence to Judaism as a religion, general outlook and the other indicators of group cohesion raises a profound question about the future of the Jewish community.

Herberg’s prognostication that the social magnetism of a generalized religious identity will guarantee the group solidarity of America’s Jews has clearly not succeeded. More recent contentions from some sociologists that Jewish ethnicity is on the wane and only identity grounded in religion shows some robustness, merely exacerbates the problem posed by Herberg’s analysis.

In short the problem is this.

What should a shrinking minority community like America’s Jews do about the fact that an ever-growing segment of its members is unable to identify and affiliate with or participate in its core institutions because they are not sufficiently attractive?

The magnitude of this challenge can best be grasped by observing the numbers of people who describe their outlook as “religious” against “secular” within the two broad groupings of those who say they are Jewish when asked “What is your religion, if any?” and those who say they have “no religion.”

Translating the percentages in the Exhibit into actual numbers, our analysis suggests that approximately 18% of the adult population, about 770,000 individuals, acknowledge some form of Jewish identification (either Jewish parentage and/or Jewish upbringing) but do not identify with the Jewish religion as such and describe themselves as “secular” or “somewhat secular.” It is this population that stands closest to the edge to complete assimilation. This population also tends to be younger and better educated than those who are self-identified as adherents of Judaism and are less secular. In other words, what some might call the “peripheral” Jewish population - and hence the challenge it poses for the Jewish collective future - is clearly growing.

One approach to the challenge posed by the growing secular periphery of the American Jewish population is to view it as the cost the Jewish community has had to pay for integration into American society. I happen not to share that view, which I regard as defeatist. I believe our demographic data challenge us to re-think the value of secular Jewish options to group solidarity - an approach that has been largely neglected since Herberg’s conundrum. When Herberg relegated such options to the dustbin of modern Jewish history, he had in mind the various cultural, political and social welfare organizations that were borne of the needs and experiences of first generation immigrants (the multitude of landsmanschaften, the Yiddish theater and music hall, the various hues of socialist clubs of the old Lower East Side and Brownsville). It is hardly surprising that as second generation, upwardly-mobile American Jews streamed to suburbia they adopted the institutional habits of their Christian neighbors and built an endless array of temples and synagogues that were expected to bear Jewish identity through the turbulent flood of acculturation.

What neither Herberg nor any other student of American Jewish life has anticipated is the consequence of total Jewish self-confidence on the part of America’s Jews as Americans. Our data suggest that such self-confidence has resulted in the willingness of large and growing numbers of Jews to shuck the religious rubric as the basis of self-identity. The fact that such Jews have not moved in any appreciable numbers to still existing old secular Jewish institutions is no evidence of the demise of Jewish secularism. It is evidence only of the lack of attraction such institutions have for the contemporary secular Jewish population. As I hope this analysis makes clear, the spirit of Jewish secularism is alive and well among America’s Jews. It awaits the creative genius of the galvanizing leader who can congeal that spirit into the mix, which forms the bonds of solidarity among the entire Jewish people.

Our data suggest that there exists a very substantial population of Americans whose personal sense of Jewishness, rooted essentially in the matrix of personal relationships borne of family life, remains yet to be anchored to suitable institutional arrangements and programs that can harness them into the bond of group solidarity. The challenge facing us today is whether we can devise such arrangements and programs in time to prevent losing this population into the great melting-pot over the course of the next generation or two.

Dr. Egon Mayer, a leading demographer of the Jewish population, was chair of the Sociology Department at Brooklyn College and Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Dedicated to the idea of a more inclusive Jewish community, Dr. Mayer served as the leading sociologist on the study of American Jewish Identity Survey (AJIS 2001) and American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS 2001), the first studies in North America to examine secularity as well as religiosity.

Dr. Mayer passed away in January 2004.

This article is based on the American Jewish Identity Survey 2001 (www.culturaljudaism.org/pdf/ajisbook.pdf) and appeared in Contemplate, Issue Two/2003, published by the Center for Cultural Judaism.

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