Reconceptualizing religious change: ethno-apostasy and change in religion among American Jews

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2006 by Benjamin T. Phillips, Shaul Kelner

Since the 1960s, observers of American religion have recognized that individuals, through their personal choices, wield a collective power to reshape the religious landscape of the United States. Religious switching and the abandonment of religious affiliation are widely acknowledged to be inherent features of an environment where religion derives its legitimacy from the free choice of people committed to finding personal meaning. The fluidity of religious identity that results has pushed scholarship away from macrohistorical theorizing about the secularizing march of Western civilization toward a sociology of religion that increasingly speaks of consumer preferences, market share and product niches. In this environment of choice, the questions of how individuals choose and how institutions influence the decision-making process have become of central importance.

In a significant attempt to analyze the broad trends shaping American denominational mobility during the last century, Sherkat (2001) used 25 years of General Social Survey data to assess the empirical strength of various explanatory paradigms, finding some support for theories of status mobility and rational choice. Status theories explain religious switching in terms of extrareligious motivations. As originally formulated by Stark and Glock (1968b), this approach argued that switching would tend from theologically conservative denominations toward more liberal ones, as people sought the higher social status conferred by liberal denominations. Revised versions critiqued the unidirectionality of this approach, and argued instead that people who diverge from the socioeconomic status of their coreligionists would be more likely to switch denominations, preferring one whose socioeconomic profile more closely fit their own (Newport 1979; Roof and Hadaway 1979; Sherkat and Wilson 1995). Rational choice theory explains denominational switching in part through supply-side models that relate denominations' abilities to retain and attract members to the cost-benefit ratio involved in the collective production of religious goods (Finke and Stark 1992; Iannaccone 1992, 1994). It also applies demand-side models to explain religious switching. These focus on preference formation, on the role human capital plays in producing religious meaning (Iannaccone 1990; Sherkat and Wilson 1995), and on the consolidated social relations that limit choice for members of ethnic or quasiethnic religious communities such as Jews (Sandomirsky and Wilson 1990; Sherkat and Wilson 1995).

Sherkat's (2001) analysis advances our ability to place American religious trends in a coherent theoretical framework. He finds no empirical support for the claim that shifts in denominational affiliation reflect a decline in denominationalism (cf. Wuthnow 1988, 1993), presents data showing that the status-climbing model of denominational change (in its original formulation) is an historically specific explanation that accounts only for the behavior of those born prior to 1944, and brings forward evidence supporting the theoretical predictions of rational choice models.

Sherkat himself raised questions about the degree to which these conclusions could be readily generalized to minority communities. Having excluded African-Americans from the sample because they "choose denominational affiliations in what is essentially a separate religious market" (2001:1461), he decided to treat them in a separate analysis (Sherkat 2002). In that study, he derived hypotheses not from universally-applicable theoretical frameworks as above, but from culturally-and historically-specific factors associated with African-American denominations.

American Jews, in contrast, were included in Sherkat's (2001) general analysis of religious change among American denominations. Sherkat found that Jews, like other "'quasi-ethnic' religious groups," had high rates of loyalty, retaining over 80 percent of affiliates. Those who ceased identifying as members of the Jewish religion tended to claim no religious affiliation whatsoever rather than cross religious lines and assume Christian or other religious identities. Applying a rational choice framework, Sherkat explained that the "[c]onsolidation of associations" in ethno-religious communities "intensifies group pressures by linking a variety of social rewards to religious participation" (2001:1464; see also Harrison and Lazerwitz 1982). The confluence of religious and multiple extrareligious dimensions of community membership increases both the benefits of participation and costs of exiting.

The application of this theoretical perspective successfully predicted the rarity of Jewish switching to Christian and other non-Jewish denominations. Yet rather than settle the question of Jewish religious switching, the finding that American Jews are more likely to apostatize than convert raises the question in a much more complex way. In this paper, we will demonstrate that although deeper investigation into the question of religious switching among Jews may be addressed within the framework of a rational choice approach that draws on the network analytic notion of consolidated ties, the attempt is so fraught with problems that, ultimately, the effort will be better served through alternative approaches.