Study Portrays High Levels of Group Belonging Despite Low Levels of Religious Belief among American Jews
September 22 2008, New York , NY --When compared with Christiansbe they mainstream Protestants, evangelical Protestants, or Roman CatholicsJews in the U.S. score markedly lower on every available measure of religious belief. In fact, their belief patterns are hardly different from those of unaffiliated Americans, those who profess no attachment to any religious group. However, in terms of group belonging, Jews come close to, or even surpass, levels reported by their Christian counterparts. Jews express their belonging both in ways that are comparable to Christians (congregations and religious schools for their children), as well as in ways that are distinctive to American Jews (Jewish Community Centers, community relations organizations, Israel-related endeavors, and more). The study's authors interpret the results combining low belief with high belonging as testifying to the distinctive combination of religious with ethnic motivations as core to the identities of American Jews today.
These findings about American Jews were assembled, ordered, and interpreted by the Florence G. Heller-JCC Association Research Center, the research arm of JCC Association, and authored by sociologist Prof. Steven M. Cohen and Lauren Blitzer . The findings emerge from the Heller Center 's re-examination of results reported earlier this year by the Pew Forum in its U. S. religious landscape survey http://religions.pewforum.org/. The original Pew study encompassed well over 35,000 respondents nationwide and 682 Jews. The Pew findings were released in February and June 2008.
For their report, the JCC Association researchers drew attention to the comparisons between Jews and three major Christian groups comprising 68.3% of the American population: evangelical Protestants, mainstream Protestants, and Roman Catholics. The authors also isolated the unaffiliated, comprising 16% of all Americans and representing the most secular.
We found that on every conceivable measure of religious belieffrom belief in God to attesting to the importance of religion in their livesJews simply do not at all look like Christians, the authors noted. In fact, they most closely approximate the unaffiliated, people who must be regarded as secular, or something akin to it.
However, they continued, Jews' patterns of affiliation rival or surpass those of Christians, especially when we take into account all the ways in which Jews join together that are totally unlike churches and religious schools. Examples include Jewish Community Centers, federations, and other charitable enterprises, support for Israel , cultural endeavors, health and welfare agencies, and so many other collective activities.
As the findings reveal, Jews uniformly score lower than all three Christian groups on all available measures of religious belief. Compared to Christians, Jews are much less likely to say they believe in God in general or in a personal God, in the Bible as the word of God, in life after death, in heaven or in hell, and in miracles. Jews say that religion is less important to them than do affirming Christians. In fact, in all ways Jews' belief patterns approach those of the religiously unaffiliated. Although Jews usually, as a group, score somewhat above the unaffiliated on measures of religion, their scores on religious belief items sometimes trail those of even this very secular slice of the American population.
Jews also trail Christians in terms of their religious behavior. This generalization applies to attending services, praying privately, reading the Bible, meditating, and praying with one's children.
Against this background, it is no surprise that Jews are less favorably disposed than Christians to the involvement of religion or churches in public affairs, or to the government's role in shaping morality. Jews also part company with religiously affirming Christians on such issues as abortion and homosexuality, and more broadly on where they locate themselves on the political spectrum.
But, in one major domain of religious identity, Jews actually resemble their Christian counterparts and consistently differ from the religiously unaffiliated: religious belonging. Jews may not believe all that much; but they do belong to congregations, as this study demonstrates, and to a wide variety of other institutions, as we know from other sources. Jews' behavior with respect to joining congregations, and their relatively high levels of participation in those congregations, approaches the comparable levels of the three Christian groups. The extent to which Jews provide religious schoolingbe it full-time or part-timefor their children equals, if not surpasses, that of their Christian counterparts.
In other words, Jews' patterns of religious belief and religious behavior more closely resemble those of the religiously unaffiliated. But matters are different for their expressions of group belonging, as measured by congregational joining and sending their children to religious schools, as well as numerous other ways of group belonging that are unique to American Jews. Thus, they may believe like the religiously unaffiliated, but they belong like the religiously committed Christians.
This study reinforces something we in the Jewish Community Center Movement, with nearly one million Jewish members, have long known, commented Allan Finkelstein , president of JCC Association. Jews join together for both religious and other reasons, and they express their Jewish commitment in a wide variety of institutional and other contexts. Those who seek to privilege one way of being Jewish over another fail to recognize the multiple sources of Jewish energy, and fail to appreciate how Jewish religious, ethnic, cultural, and secular motivations all intertwine and reinforce one another. Different Jews find different sources of Jewish meaning; and, even more significantly, many find different sources of Jewish meaning at one and the same time.
This report is available for download online at http://fghjcca.org/publications.html
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JCC Association
is the leadership network of, and central agency for the Jewish
Community Center Movement, which is comprised of 350 JCC,
YM-YWHA and camp sites in the U. S. and Canada. JCC Association
offers a wide range of services and resources to strengthen
the capacity of its affiliates to provide educational, cultural,
social, Jewish identity-building, and recreational programs
to enhance the lives of North American Jews of all ages and
backgrounds. Additionally, the movement fosters and strengthens
connections between North American Jews and Israel as well
as with world Jewry. JCC Association is also the U.S. government
accredited agency for serving the religious and social needs
of Jewish military personnel, their families, and patients
in VA hospitals through JWB Jewish Chaplains Council.
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212-786-5092
grounds. Additionally, the movement fosters and strengthens
connections between North American Jews and Israel as well
as with world Jewry. JCC Association is also a U.S. government
accredited agency for serving the religious and social needs
of Jewish military personnel, their families, and patients
in VA hospitals through JWB Jewish Chaplains Council.
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