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

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

This has implications for both our understandings of apostasy and religious switching. With regard to apostasy, we conclude from the above discussion that the reformulation of the concept in a manner appropriate to an ethnic religion would expand the criteria to include not only the abandonment of religious faith but also the abandonment of self-proclaimed belonging in the community. This is the approach we will adopt here. For the sake of distinguishing this particular usage from the general, we will refer to it as ethno-apostasy. We should also note that American society's construction of white ethnicity as a voluntary matter makes ethno-apostasy a realistic possibility for contemporary American Jews. Such an option is less available where ethnicity is tied to race or where the majority community enforces distinct boundaries (Alba and Nee 2003).

With regard to religious switching, we are cognizant that contemporary sociological realities undermine the notion that adoption of another faith necessarily implies an abdication of Jewish religion and Jewish communal ties. (3) However, inasmuch as this understanding has deep roots both within normative Jewish tradition and scholarship on religious switching, it is not to be abandoned lightly. For the sake of the present analysis, we have decided to treat Jews who profess adherence to a non-Jewish religion as religious switchers, regardless of whether they continue to declare adherence to Judaism as well. Although this has the advantage of allowing comparability with prior research, it leaves unaddressed fundamental questions about the theoretical status of the concept of religious switching. We will address these issues in the discussion of the findings.

THE HISTORICAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF JEWISH SWITCHING

In the prediction that consolidated social relations will produce lower rates of out-migration from ethno-religious communities than from nonethnic religious communities, the unit of analysis is the ethno-religious group, which is treated as a homogenous entity. The degree to which ties are consolidated varies from community to community, however, as does the degree to which individual members are enmeshed in them or are subject to cross-cutting social ties (Blau and Schwartz 1984; Kadushin 1966; Sherkat 2001; Simmel 1955). At the individual level, the more a person is subject to crosscutting social ties that reduce the ability of the ethnic community to apply group pressures, the greater the likelihood ought to be that he or she will adopt a religious affiliation other than that of the ethnic group. Diverse social ties may also increase knowledge of available alternatives and reduce the entry costs associated with switching.

This, however, explains only why the exit may be made easier, failing to account for the incentives associated with entering another faith community. Research on Jewish conversion suggests that these are historically specific, inseparable from the power dynamics associated with Jews' minority position in different societies which afforded them different rights and statuses, and which adopted different positions regarding minority access to social resources (Endelman 1994, 1997; Klausner 1997).