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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
Reading the results of the Williamsburg Charter Survey on Religion and Public Life gives me, a rabbi, an opportunity to assess the views of my rabbinic colleagues. While the survey did not test for general Jewish opinion, it did sample one hundred rabbis and contrast them with other religious and professional elites. Rabbinic opinion no doubt differs in degree from general Jewish opinion, but it probably does not differ in kind. We can find, I think, the opinion of many American Jews reflected in their rabbis' answers.
We know from the Gallup polls that of all American religious groups, Jews are the most secular. Their rate of belonging to religious institutions (44 percent) is lowest, as is their rate of frequency of attendance at worship services. This general picture of a highly secular and liberal community is reinforced by the current data. Particularly revealing is the similarity, in many instances, of rabbinic opinion with academic opinion, and the corresponding dissimilarity of rabbinic opinion with the answers of other clergy groups.
An earlier version of this article appeared in This World, No. 22 (Summer 1988) and is reprinted with the permission of the author and the publisher.
1. According to Gallup, 44 percent of Jews are members of a synagogue. Fifty-six percent are not. By contrast, 19 percent of Catholics and 28 percent of Protestants are nonmembers. Eighty percent of Jews did not attend worship within the last seven days, as contrasted with 51 percent of the Catholics and 59 percent of the Protestants. Religion in America: the Gallup Report no. 259, at 36–39 (Princeton, NJ, 04 1987)Google Scholar. In both the Williamsburg Charter Survey and the Gallup Report, the absolute number of Jews or rabbis interviewed was small. Therefore, the confidence with which one can interpret the data is qualified. Since the confidence interval for the rabbinic sample is /-9.8 percent, I have tried to avoid comparisons of the rabbis with other clergy where that margin of error could narrow the gap between the two groups. Nonetheless, this was not always possible. At any rate, the figures confirm my impressionistic reading of rabbinic opinion from rabbinic journals, Jewish periodicals, and professional conferences.
2. Professor Jonathan Sarna has shown that American Jews, until the final third of the nineteenth century, affirmed that America was a “religious nation.” After that point, in response to new evangelical efforts to “Christianize” America, Jews began to press the claim that America was a secular society. They changed their reading of the religion clauses and came much closer to the views of radicals and free thinkers. See Sarna, Jonathan, Christian America or Secular America? The Church-State Dilemma of American Jews, in Jerusalem Letter (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 06 1987), at 3 ffGoogle Scholar.
3. Bellah, Robert N., Madsen, Richard, Sullivan, William M., Swidler, Ann, and Tipton, Steven M., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (California, 1985)Google Scholar.