…new data from Gallup (shows) that for the first time in its decades of polling, fewer than half of Americans claim membership in a church, synagogue or mosque. The fall has been swift: From 70 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2020.
As an Orthodox Jew that cares about our people, I try to keep my finger on the pulse of the Jewish people. And as is widely known the ‘patient’ is barely alive. A few years ago the highly respected Pew Research organization issued a study that shows - of the 90% of the American Jewish population that is not Orthodox, 70% have married - or are currently marrying - out. Shocking as this may be, it comes as no surprise to me. Sadly!
Attempting to address the issue Douthat posits the following:
A key piece of this weakness is religion’s extreme marginalization with the American intelligentsia — meaning not just would-be intellectuals but the wider elite-university-educated population, the meritocrats or “knowledge workers,” the “professional-managerial class.”
Most of these people — my people, by tribe and education — would be unlikely models of holiness in any dispensation, given their ambitions and their worldliness…
…the American educated class is deeply committed to a moral vision that regards emancipated, self-directed choice as essential to human freedom and the good life. The tension between this worldview and the thou-shalt-not, death-of-self commandments of biblical religion can be bridged only with difficulty — especially because the American emphasis on authenticity makes it hard for people to simply live with certain hypocrisies…
Then, too, the manifest failure of many churches to live up to their own commandments, the pulse of scandal in religious life, makes their claim to offer a higher, harder wisdom seem self-discrediting.
A second obstacle is the meritocracy’s anti-supernaturalism: The average Ivy League professor, management consultant or Google engineer is not necessarily a strict materialist, but they have all been trained in a kind of scientism, which regards strong religious belief as fundamentally anti-rational, miracles as superstition, the idea of a personal God as so much wishful thinking.
This pretty well sums up what the real problem is. We live in a world where rational thinking has replaced belief to such an extent that anything that is not hard wired to scientific discovery is often treated with huge skepticism - if not completely rejected.
Added to that is the fact that so many supposedly religious people – in some cases even respected religious leaders - end up caught with their ‘hands in the till’. It isn’t too hard to see religion as one big fraud perpetrated on the populace for purposes of control.
Another reason for this phenomenon is the fact that in many cases there are contradictions between the religious sense of right and wrong and cultural sense of right and wrong.
How can religion to survive in this kind of climate? Was Nietzsche right? Is ‘God’ dead? …Or at least on life support?
Far from it. First let us acknowledge (as Douthat does) that Evangelical Christians who are generally quite devout - are flourishing. A 2014 Pew survey shows that (depending on the definition) anywhere from 6% to 35% of Americans identify as Evangelical Christians . That means that anywhere from 18 million to 105 million Americans. are devoutly religious.
As this phenomenon relates to us - the Jewish people - there is one segment that is clearly bucking the trend. Big time. Orthodox Jewry is flourishing! Growing exponentially with each generation. While it is mostly because of our high birth rate, it is not insignificant that our attrition rate comes nowhere near the attrition rate of the rest of Jewry or other religious groups.
Why, one may ask are we bucking that trend? If we’re so smart, why are we not subject to the same influences Douthat suggests is the reason for the general decline of religion? It isn’t that we are not educated enough or not immersed in the culture as much. While that might be true for some segments of Orthodoxy, clearly there are many Orthodox Jewish intellectuals and ‘meritocrats’ (to use Douthat’s word) that should have suffered the same spiritual fate as the rest of America! But with very few exceptions, we haven’t! It surely can’t be that we are irrational beings. Anyone that has attended any Yeshiva realizes just how important rational thinking is to our studies and our way of life.
I believe that the answer lies in our education. Reishis Chochma – Yiras HaShem. The beginning of wisdom is fear of God.
We are taught from the earliest of ages that God created the world and that He has a purpose for mankind. We are further taught that God gave us the physical and mental means by which to achieve that purpose. And the rules that govern those means. And a moral code which he expects us to follow. God does not expect us to reject or ignore rational thought. He expects us to use our brains to serve both Him and mankind. He gave us a world in which to live, explore, and utilize for our own well being as well as that of others.
Armed with these spiritual strengths, we are well equipped to go out into the world and embrace all knowledge in service to God and man. We do not look to externals for guidance in matters of ethics and morality. We look at what God tells us is ethical and moral. This has been the formula for our successful continuity throughout Jewish history. We don’t waver. We don’t cater to cultural influences unless they are in concert with our values. We maintain our beliefs as a group. A group that is closely tied to one another by virtue of our religious practices.
While this phenomenon might to some degree separate us from the rest of society, that is not necessarily a bad thing. By living in consonance with the ethics and values of the Torah it gives us the dignity of difference (to put it the way the late Chief Rabbi of the UK, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks did).
While there is a lot more to it that that. I believe that these are the basics - the unique things that kept us going and will continue to do so – in spite of the trend away from religion that seems to be happening to the rest of America... and has happened to many great cultures in history that are now extinct.
