Bernard Lazerwitz

Do Denominations Matter

This study focuses in the significance of denominational differentiation for American religious life. Some scholars have argued that the affiliates of the various Protestant denominations are becoming more and more alike in their socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and in religious behavior and orientations. Hence, they argue, denominational affiliation has little independent impact on either religious or secular behavior. Others have suggested that denominational affiliations continue to be important influences on individual behavior. In this paper we analyze data from a national survey of American Jews wich show that denominational differences are substantial and more influential within this highly educated and acculturated minority than they have commontly been assumed to be. These findings suggest that recent research may have underestimated the potential importance of contemporary denominational differentiation for American religious life.

A Comparison of Major United States Religious Groups

Abstract Religious, demographic, and economic data gathered on three Survey Research Center studies have been analyzed by major religious groups. The analysis indicates only slight differences in sex composition, marital status, and age structure among Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews except for a middle-aged concentration among Episcopalians and Presbyterians. People who report they are without a religion are heavily male and have a larger percentage single than does the nation as a whole. The number of children in Jewish, Episcopalian and Presbyterian families is similar, but smaller than the number in the other religious groups. On education, occupation, and income, the religious groups can be separated into three descending ranks: (1) a top-rank, having large percentages of college graduates and white collar workers, and enjoying high incomes, composed of Episcopalians, Jews, and Presbyterians; (2) a middle rank, containing smaller percentages of college graduates and white collar workers, and e...

Metropolitan Size and Participation in Religio-Ethnic Communities

This study investigated the impact of metropolitan size on participation in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish subcommunities in the United States. Hypotheses were based on Durkheims theory of community, the Blau and Schwartz macrostructural theory of group relations, and Fischers subculture theory. The major hypotheses were: 1) The larger the religio-ethnic subcommunity, the less its members participate formally (e.g., organizational membership); 2) the larger the Jewish or Catholic subcommunity, the more its members will participate informally (e.g., within-group friendship); 3) the smaller the religio-ethnic group, the more its members are affected by community size; and 4) the majority subcommunity will be relatively impervious to the effects of community size. Hypothesis 1, 3, and 4 were supported by data from the 1985-1989 General Social Surveys of the National Opinion Research Center and from the National Jewish Population Survey of 1970-71. Hypothesis 2 could be tested only in the Jewish community and was supported.

National religious context and familial religiosity within a Jewish framework

Kelley and De Graaf studied the relationship between national and familial religiosity in 15 Christian societies. They found that secular people living in religious societies acquire more orthodox Christian beliefs than similar persons living in secular societies do. We examine whether their findings can be extended to societies that are not Christian by contrasting Jewish religiosity in the United States with Jewish religiosity in Israel. Extensive surveys of American and Israeli Jews enable us to examine the impact of similar and dissimilar societal religious contexts. The survey data indicate that the overall religious level of Israeli society is on a par with the United States. We find that there is an interaction effect. On the whole, Israeli Jewry has an enhanced level of religiosity which is higher than that of American Jews, even for those who belong to the American Orthodox denomination. Israeli secular Jews are found to acquire enhanced religiosity characteristics from their surrounding majority Jewish society. Secular American Jews do acquire Christian religiosity traits and display religious service attendance levels considerably below that of their surrounding Christian society.

An approach to the components and consequences of Jewish identification

ConclusionFor this national Jewish sample, socioeconomic factors do not have much of an association with religious aid ethnic factors Among the biosocial factors, neither age nor sex explain significant variance Generation and life cycle frequently are at the moderate strength level Usually, the strongest explanatory variables for the Various Jewish identity measures are other identity variables The strongest link with activity in general community organizations is through activity in Jewish community organizationsCustomarily, but not here, activity in organizations is linked to social class Can general community organizational activity replace the effects of social class for these Jewish data? It Would seem so, with its positive link to Jewish organizations and its negative link to both the more private ethnic community involvement measure and the traditionally oriented denomination variable. For the latter, general community activity is highest for Reform Jews, followed by those who prefer the Conservative denomination Orthodox Jews and Jews without a denominational preference are about equally inactive The other identity measures have weak effects on general community activity

The Community Variable in Jewish Identification

Religious and ethnic identifications are typically regarded as produced by national factors. The question here is the extent to which locality must also be considered along with measures common throughout the country in creating models of religious and ethnic identification. Survey data on members of a large number of United States Jewish communities indicated that the national factor of denominational preference was the dominant variable. But locality, along with generations in the U. S. and family life cycle, were influential. Socio-economic factors accounted for very little identification variance. Hence, the locality complex, which involves local history, institutions, and leadership, ought to receive more attention in religious and ethnic research done at a national level.

Religiosity and fertility: how strong a connection?

Among the major findings of demographic research has been the persis tent fertility differences associated with membership in certain religious and ethnic groups. In the United States, Catholic fertility is clearly higher than Protestant fertility as shown by many studies such as Freedman, Whelpton, and Campbell (1959); Whelpton, Campbell, and Patterson (1966); and Ryder and Westoff (1971). Abroad, the same sort of Catholic lead over Protestants persists as reported by Day (1968). In Lebanon, Yaukey (1961) finds Moslems with higher fertility than Christians; in Israel, Lazerwitz (1971) reports a range of Israeli fertility with Moslem and Druze leading, followed by Oriental Jews, then Christian Arabs, with the lowest fertility found among Western Jews. Faced with such overwhelming evidence of religious and ethnic group fertility differences, it was natural for researchers to turn their attention to discerning whether variations in strength of religious and ethnic involvement within religious and ethnic groups were also associated with significant fertility differences. Here the evidence to date is both less abundant and less decisive. Lazerwitz ( 1970) reports that he could find no general associations between levels of Chicago area Protestant or Jewish identification and family size or child-spacing. Further, his measure of religious and ethnic involvement could explain no more than eight percent of the variance in present fertility, three percent of the variance in expected, future child bearing, and 11 percent of the variance in birth-order spacing. Wilson and Bumpass (1973: 593) use a dummy variable regression technique on Catholic fertility data and report that mean fertility increases sizably as one goes from Catholics who never attend communion to those who attend at least once a week. Their full model, containing age, marital duration, parity, education, income, work experience, and frequency of communion, explains just 25 percent of Catholic fertility variation. Cohen and Ritterband (1979) use 1964 and 1968 panel data from the study of 1961 United States college graduates done by Davis (1964) to explore

Religious involvement as the main gateway to voluntary association activity

This paper, using National Jew ish Population Survey data, seeks to show a general path to voluntary association participation. It finds thai public religious behavior (belonging to a synagogue or temple and attendance at services) is associated with participation in Jewish voluntary associations. Thence, a path is indicated either to lead ership within the Jewish community or to participation in general voluntary associations. Because this path is similar to one shown in the literature among U.S. Protestants, it is suggested that a general U.S. voluntary association path may be emerging, one that includes both the dominant religious community and minority ethnoreligious groups. The paper also examines the association between participa tion in voluntary associations and other variables, and finds certain idiosyncrasies in the American Jewish community.

Toward a Model of the Migration Cycle

Perhaps this reflection by one of our Australian respondents best characterizes the experience of the emigrants once they have arrived in their adopted country. They must confront the issue of whether to remain or return. For some it is a constant preoccupation and for others there is a perennial ambivalence. On what bases does the act of staying as opposed to leaving rest?

Retention or Reemigration

One of our Australian respondents, when pressed by the interviewer about the decision to remain or return to America, replied: Mainly we talk about it (returning) when people ask us about it. It isn’t something that comes up once a week or even once a month. Once a month would be generous. ... No, it sort of happened (remaining), I think. I mean, we don’t know if the right job came up or something happened, but we talk less about whether or not we’ll go back to the States, but more about where we’d like to move in Australia.