FALL 1997, NUMBER 60 WASHINGTON, D.C.

Believing Without Belonging?

Data measuring religious observance and institutional attachment convincingly confirm that Western Europeans are the least religious people on earth. Rather than being "simply secular," however, they might be more accurately described as "unchurched," suggested Grace Davie at a September 29 lecture entitled "European Religion: A Memory Mutates." Davie, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Exeter in England, was the sixth speaker in the series "The Impact of Religious Conviction on the Politics of the 21st Century," jointly sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

Focusing on the countries within the tradition of Western Catholicism rather than Eastern Orthodoxy, Davie noted that the importance of Christianity in the formation of European civilization is universally acknowledged. What is in dispute is the relevance of that heritage in the contemporary and future culture of Western Europe. She argued that the marked post-war decline in religious attendance, especially in the Protestant north, has not yet resulted in "a parallel abdication of religious belief." Though no longer tied to a particular creed and often inconsistent, Davie said, religious sensitivities do persist in supposedly secular Europe. This was "amply demonstrated by the outpouring of religious sentiment surrounding the death of Princess Diana."

The strength of such sentiments casts doubt on the view that religion has become essentially peripheral to European values, Davie observed. At least for the present, Europeans seem to harbor religious feelings despite their lack of institutional attachment, to "believe without belonging." Though some religious traditions are being lost through neglect, many others are being perpetuated through art, architecture, educational systems, and the established churches. Such "collective memory" not only sustains European identity but also provides a framework in which new spiritual traditions can arise. New memories might well be created, Davie speculated, "because we need religion."

On a more somber note, Davie considered how the vagueness of Europeans' beliefs could aggravate ethnic tensions and hinder the development of genuinely pluralistic societies. Their "live-and-let-live" attitudes may, paradoxically, aggravate intolerance toward growing minority groups within Europe, such as Muslims, that are committed to stricter religious observance.

David Walsh, Grace Davie

Commentator David Walsh, professor of politics at Catholic University, called Davie's lecture "fascinating and encouraging." Fortunately, he said, "policy-making elites are no longer dismissing religion as passé." They have, at last, noticed that it continues to be a social phenomenon of prime importance. "The religious impulse is inevitable in human society," Walsh maintained. Though not a fixed quantity easily studied by social science, religion is a powerful and sometimes dangerous force that demands attention. Religious fault lines often parallel political fault lines.

Belonging Without Believing?

"Spirituality is not the answer to the Jewish problem" of declining religious commitment in America, asserted Charles S. Liebman of Israel's Bar-Ilan University. "It is the problem." Liebman offered this diagnosis in his keynote address to the Center conference on "Secularism, Spirituality, and the Jewish Future in America," held September 9­10 at the Doral Tuscany Hotel in New York City. He argued that spirituality often undermines the more central Jewish virtue of kedushah, or "holiness," particularly in times of lax order and ritual. "Spirituality points to individuality, transcendence, other-worldliness," he said, while "kedushah points to the virtuous life" and evokes "the notion of an awesome and authoritative God whom Jews are obliged to obey."

Charles S. Liebman, Sylvia Fishman

To keep and attract members in an era of declining ethnic identity among American Jews, Liebman observed, synagogues have tried to accommodate themselves to prevailing cultural norms. But satisfying the needs of members is "not necessarily good." The personal and privatized Judaism that has emerged over the last two decades "detaches individuals from the larger social collectives of which they are a part." Its emphasis on spiritual self-realization has come, Liebman said, at the expense of the commonplace, collective responsibilities emphasized in traditional Judaism.

Those responsibilities must not be forgotten as Jews consider "what kind of religiosity should mark the twenty-first century," agreed Jonathan Woocher of the Jewish Educational Service of North America, who chaired the first panel, "God, Spirituality, and the Civil Religion of American Jews." While Woocher did not fault those seeking "links to transcendence in their lives," he argued that the key tenets of Jewish civil religion--concern with Jewish survival, belief in collective action to promote Jewish interests and values, devotion to Israel, and acceptance of community obligations--lie within "the circumference of Judaism's core religious affirmations." Civil Judaism's resolutely communal ethic is as "authentic" to the religion, Woocher said, as is studying Jewish texts, performing Jewish rituals, and bringing Judaism from the public square into the home.

Discounting the significance of alleged differences between Jewish civil religion and secular Jewish culture, Ted Lapkin of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County criticized both for failing in "the intergenerational transmission of viable and vibrant Jewish identity." He suggested that secular Jewish federations might help reverse the trends of intermarriage, assimilation, and loss of Jewish affiliation by formulating more cooperative enterprises with synagogues. Reform rabbi Clifford Librach of Temple Sinai in Sharon, Massachusetts, maintained that Jewish illiteracy poses the greatest threat to Jewish continuity. The uncompromising individualism embedded in the American legal system and in American culture "runs squarely into the integrity of Jewish community," Librach said, but American Jews' appalling ignorance of their own religious doctrines allows "the language of American civics" to affect the exercise of Jewish tradition. Departing from such bleak assessments, Sylvia Fishman of Brandeis University argued that the modern values of egalitarianism and feminism have enriched American Jewish life. The constant negotiations between these new values and those of traditional rabbinic law should be understood as "a kind of fertility."

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager, author of the newsletter The Prager Perspective, chaired the second panel, "Sustaining Jewish Belief in a Secular or Christian America." It is Judaism rather than the Jewish people that is "in bad shape," he declared. "A dynamic, content-filled, serious Judaism is absent to a greater or lesser extent in Reform, Conservative, and even Orthodox Jewry." Prager said that he saw "no reason for optimism." Non-Orthodox Jews rarely observe the Sabbath, Reform Judaism "drops" rather than "reforms" Jewish law, and Orthodox Judaism relies unthinkingly on formulas that may actually contradict the spirit of that law.

Commenting on Prager's remarks, Rabbi Robert Seltzer of Hunter College suggested that contemporary Jewish thinkers might help resuscitate Judaism by concentrating on the theological challenges posed by new scientific and historical knowledge. They should follow the example of the great twelfth-century philosopher Maimonides, he said, and seek to clarify Judaism's insights into the nature of reality. David Singer, director of research at the American Jewish Committee, contended that non-Orthodox Jews could renew their communities, not by becoming Orthodox, but by learning from the Orthodox. "A lived religious experience" that recognizes that "it is God who issues the marching orders" is central to Judaism, he said. Observant Jews never can and never should shake their "sense of otherness." Taking issue with the more pessimistic opinions expressed, Neil Gillman of the Jewish Theological Seminary argued that, over the past two decades, all three branches of American Jewry have been profoundly transformed by "a turn to religion" and by significant theological activity. Fundamentalism and secularism, he proclaimed, are no longer "the only options."

In the final session, "The Rabbi, the Synagogue, and the American Jewish Community," panel chairman Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary maintained that "the centrality of youth in American synagogue life" and "questions of financing" create problems for Jewish education and religious participation that are not necessarily resolved by nurturing a sense of community. While beneficial to some congregations, focusing on community may actually hurt "the economic interests of synagogues that depend on a mass-membership base to sustain them," Wertheimer said. And it does nothing to transmit and enforce the "set of expectations" in Judaism that transcend community and are fundamental to a serious religious life.

Rabbis from the three principal branches of American Judaism then offered insights from their traditions. Conservative rabbi Harlan Wechsler of Congregation Or Zarua in New York City urged all synagogues to remember that "Jewish life really begins with the Book" and to do "anything that works" to keep Jews focused on the Bible. He and his congregation have committed themselves to keeping their synagogue small and to making it "a place where people feel they can come to learn that Book." Reform rabbi Peter Knobel of Beth Emet--The Free Synagogue in Evanston, Illinois, spoke about a "new era" in the liberal Jewish community marked by a serious desire "to serve God" through study, worship, and active involvement in the life of the synagogue. Reform Jews hunger "to become a community of observing peers," he said, and Reform rabbis should become for them "spiritual role models." Orthodox rabbi Adam Mintz of New York's Lincoln Square Synagogue discussed "three very specific challenges that face the modern Orthodox community": how, within the Orthodox system, to expand participation in services, to include women more effectively, and to incorporate a more educational element into the synagogue (particularly for women).

Speaking from a communal point of view, Barry Schrage of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston commented on the "tremendous search for meaning" among American Jews today and the likelihood of a "Jewish renaissance." The Jewish federations need to support synagogues in their efforts to be communities of religious learning, communities that "care for people," and communities that "make something real out of a vision of social justice."

Lively exchanges followed the formal presentations. Among those participating were Center president Elliott Abrams, Steven Bayme of the American Jewish Committee, Matthew Berke of First Things, Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach Program, Rabbi Maurice Corson of the Wexner Foundation, Rabbi David Dalin of Catholic University, Seth Gitell of The Forward, J. J. Goldberg of Jerusalem Report, Rabbi Irving Greenberg of the Center for Learning and Leadership, Roger Hertog and Susan Hertog of Sanford C. Bernstein and Co., Francine Klagsbrun of the Jewish Theological Seminary, David Klinghoffer of National Review, Neal Kozodoy and Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Kehillath Jeshurun, Richard Marker of Hillel--The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, Gary Rosenblatt of Jewish Week, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin of the Community Synagogue in Port Washington, New York, Michael Steinhardt of the Steinhardt Foundation, and Jeffrey Stier of the Jewish Policy Center.