The Pew Research Center on Wednesday published an analysis of beliefs and behaviors across denominations that identifies important traits that unite people of different religious affiliations—or divide people who share the same affiliation – producing a new and revealing classification of religion in America (The Religious Typology – A new way to categorize Americans by religion).
The survey divided the US population, represented by 4,699 respondents in late 2017, into seven groups: Sunday Stalwarts – the most religious; God-and-Country Believers – less active in church hold traditional religious beliefs and tilt right politically; Diversely Devout – believe in God “as described in the Bible” as well as in psychics, reincarnation and spiritual energy of physical things; Relaxed Religious – believe in the God of the Bible, and some of them pray daily, but few of them attend religious services; Spiritually Awake – many do not believe in the biblical God, hold some New Age beliefs such as some higher power, rarely attend religious services; Religion Resisters – believe in some higher power or spiritual force but not the God of the Bible, and consider themselves spiritual but not religious, with strongly negative views of organized religion, generally liberal and Democratic in their political views; Solidly Secular – the least religious of the seven groups, relatively affluent, highly educated, mostly white and male, reject all New Age beliefs as well as belief in the God of the Bible or any higher power at all.
We recommend you read the survey’s results, which represent a valid and as such an exciting effort to gauge the American religion using current analytical tools.
What emerges from the data, in the case of the Jews of America, is an exceptionally massive pull away from the “old-time religion” on the part of close to half of those who identify themselves as Jewish.
Close to 17% of the Jewish respondents identified themselves as Sunday Stalwarts (Shabbes stalwarts, obviously); about 8% each said they were God-and-Country Believers, Diversely Devout, Relaxed Religious, or Spiritually Awake; 17% said they are Religion Resisters, and a whopping 25% called themselves Solidly Secular.
No other religious group came even close in terms of the number of members born to the group who want to have nothing at all to do with its beliefs.
The report also clarifies something intriguing: “For the purposes of this analysis, Jews are defined as people who identify their religion as Judaism – what sociologists call “Jews by religion” – and not those who say they have no religion but identify as Jewish in other ways, such as culturally or ethnically.” Meaning, those Jewish respondents reject Judaism, God, ritual, prayer and religion, but still defined themselves as Jewish in terms of their religion.
Out of the 9 Christian groups altogether, only 3.5% said they were Religion Resisters; and 4% chose to define themselves as Solidly Secular.
Among the members of the Christian group with the least ability to retain its followers – the Catholic Church, about 7% identified themselves as Religion Resisters and another 7% as Solidly Secular.
Among Muslims, under 9% suggested they were Religion Resisters and the same percentage said they were Solidly Secular.
As we noted, not one of these groups comes even close to the percentage of Jews who have completely abandoned their tradition – a stunning 42%, or, were we to still accept the figure of 6 million American Jews as having anything to do with reality, then the past few decades have witnessed a mass migration of more than 2.5 million Jews away from their Judaism.
