Социология религии_общее (англ.) / Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

most immigrant congregations, with the exception of evangelical Christian churches that tend to attract young people (e.g., Chinese Christian [Yang 2000a]; Korean Christian [Chai 1998]; and evangelical Hispanic churches [Leon´ 1998; Sullivan 2000a]). In fact, the issue of the second generation and its lack of interest in participating in ethnic congregations is one of the major concerns in most congregations. The future of these religious institutions rests on the participation and involvement of the next generation in congregational affairs, yet the youth are not present in large numbers.

There are four major problems that second generation members confront within their parents’ congregations: (a) many feel estranged by the ethnic ambiance of the immigrant congregation, including the heavy use of an old-country language; (b) in some cases, the young people adopt Americanized attire and/or demeanor that the older generation defines as improper and often comment on negatively; (c) sometimes the religious services themselves are defined by youth as too rigid and old-fashioned, although in most congregations, English services designed for the second-generation incorporate aspects of American youth culture such as rock music, and are less formal than the services their parents attend; and (d) in some religious institutions, adult second-generation members are denied meaningful participation in congregational affairs and access to authority roles to which they think they are entitled. These issues cut across case studies of different religions and ethnicities and are widespread (Chai 1998; George 1998; Leon´ 1998; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000b).

The participation of second-generation youth in evangelical, often nondenominational ethnic Christian churches provides an interesting exception that gives clues regarding what is meaningful and attractive to them. First, these churches emphasize the provision of special youth worship services in English, with a youth pastor who can relate to that age group, and that incorporate modern versions of hymns and musical instruments (Mullins 1987; Goette 1993; Kwon 1997; Chong 1998). Second, they emphasize social and group activities for young people in which they can interact on an informal basis, such as youth retreats, cell groups based on age, community projects, socials, and so on (George 1998; Yang 2000a). Third, youth play central roles in planning, executing, and evaluating these activities so that they, in fact, feel that they “own” them and are responsible for them (Chai 1998).

The future of immigrant congregations rests substantially on whether they can maintain the interest and commitment of the second generation. Since the majority of second-generation members among the new immigrants are only now in college or beginning their adult lives, there is little longitudinal research on their religious patterns. Large-scale studies of the second generation, including variations in degree of religious involvement, such as the current one being conducted by Mollenkopf, Kasinitz, and Waters in New York, will hopefully provide the kinds of data needed to understand the future of religion among immigrant youth.

The Role/Status of Women in Immigrant Religious Institutions

While women play a central role in reproducing cultural traditions in immigrant religious institutions, they are also beginning to assume more leadership roles and greater “voice” within them than is often the case in counterpart institutions in their homelands. Their role in reproducing traditional culture, a conservative role that women frequently play in many cultures, occurs in three basic ways: (a) by preparing and

serving ethnic foods for social events both at the central religious site and at home for religiously connected practices (Orsi 1985; Flores 1994; Leon´ 1998; Ebaugh and Chafetz 1999); (b) as central actors in domestic religious practices (Orsi 1985; Brown 1991; Jacobs 1996; Orsi 1996; Pena˜ and Frehill 1998); and (c) as teachers of children in ethnoreligious classes (e.g., Sunday school; J. H. Kim 1996; A. R. Kim 1996; Hepner 1998; Ebaugh and Chafetz 1999).

In addition, in many cases, women are organized into gender-segregated women’s groups or ministries that serve as mutual support groups (Abusharaf 1998; Ebaugh and Chafetz 1999). These groups are especially helpful for newly arrived immigrant women, many of whom do not speak English and are not working outside the home. In addition to assisting these women adjust to American society (e.g., find schools for their children, locate ethnic stores, learn to use public transportation), over time some often create consciousness-raising among the women as they share common experiences, especially regarding their role within their religious institutions.

As immigrant religious institutions become more congregational in structure and establish community centers, the number and scope of lay roles expand to the point where women’s active participation in formal roles is needed, whether or not such participation is permitted in the old country (Ebaugh and Chafetz 1999). Simultaneously, immigrant women and especially their daughters are increasingly becoming well educated and employed outside the home, providing them with the skills and self confidence required for performing leadership roles. One significant factor in the pace at which women enter such roles is men’s desires to play them. To the extent that immigrant men suffer downward mobility in the process of immigration, such as is frequently the case with Koreans (Min 1992; Kwon et al. 1997) and sometimes Indians (George 1998), they try to recoup their sense of worth by filling prestigious congregational roles. Traditional cultural norms provide them preferential access to such roles, and women are left with whatever roles men cannot fill. Whether the daughters and granddaughters of immigrants will challenge this situation remains to be seen.

Transnational Religious Ties

Within the past decade there has been increasing awareness of the fact that immigrants often remain part of transnational communities in so far as they “forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (Basch et al. 1994: 7). These economic, political and social ties are sufficiently enough widespread and sustained to lead Glick-Schiller (1999) to propose transnationalism as a new paradigm for the study of migration across the borders of nation-states and to argue for the existence of transnational communities (Nagengast and Kearney 1990; Rouse 1992; Smith 1994; Goldring 1996; Portes 1996; Levitt 1998).

The existence of religious ties between immigrants in the United States and both individuals and religious institutions in their home countries is just beginning to be documented (Levitt 1998, 2000; Popkin 1999; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000b). As was the more general case for research on the role of religion among the new immigrants, the study of the role of religious ties in forging transnational communities has also lagged behind the documentation of political, economic, cultural, and social ties. Levitt (1998) traces local level religious ties between Catholic Dominicans in Boston and their home community of Miraflores, in the Dominican Republic. In her current research, she is expanding

the study of transnational religious communities to other immigrant groups in Boston (e.g., Irish, Brazilians, Gujarati Indians). For the past two years, I have been conducting research on religion and transnational ties among Mexican, Argentine, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Guatemalans in Houston and their home communities, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Several of the Gateway Projects, described earlier, also have transnational components.

While the technological advances of e-mail, fax, rapid telephone exchanges, videos, and modern modes of travel have facilitated the rapidity and ease of maintaining transnational ties, it is important to keep in mind that earlier, nineteenth-century immigrants were also transmigrants. As a number of scholars have documented (Bodnar 1985; Alexander 1987; Morawska 1989; Chan 1990; Wyman 1993; Gutierrez 1997; Glick-Schiller 1999), seasonal migrants who came to the United States to work were a major source of capital investment on their return. Steamships, telegraph, and postal services made it possible to circulate between two societies (Rouse 1992; Glick-Schiller 1999). Remittances sent by immigrants in the United States to home communities were frequently a major source of income for both families and local churches that depended on the help of immigrants to survive (Bodnar 1985; Dolan 1985; Wyman 1993). Likewise, there were numerous organizational ties between churches in the United States and in sending communities (Wyman 1993). It is important, therefore, in analyses of transnational religious communities not to assume that the phenomenon is new. Rather, the challenge is to specify the nature of the pathways that current transnational ties take and their impact on religious institutions in both sending and receiving countries.

FUTURE RESEARCH

The recently increasing number of studies that focus on religion and the new immigrants has established the fact that religious institutions are central in the lives of immigrants. In addition, these studies have indicated the roles that religion and religious institutions play in helping immigrants to maintain their ethnoreligious identity while at the same time adapting to American society. Simultaneously, research has focused on challenges which established religious institutions face in incorporating immigrants, many of them becoming multiethnic in the process. While religion is beginning to take its place in the broader analysis of immigration, there are a number of directions on which I think future research needs to focus.

As indicated earlier, research on new immigrants that was done prior to the 1990s focused primarily on case studies of religion in specific ethnic or religious groups. These studies were valuable in delineating the centrality of religion in the lives of these immigrant communities and describing the functions that religion served in the settlement processes. The NEICP (Warner and Wittner 1998) and RENIR (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000b) projects focused on comparisons of patterns among ethnoreligious groups. By the time the Gateway Cities Projects were funded, literature existed on the major themes that characterize immigrant religions and the conditions under which various patterns seem to emerge. The major challenge in future projects is to move beyond idiosyncratic cases and to continue comparative study across a number of ethnic and religious groups, with the goal of furthering our understanding of the cultural, social, theological, historical, and structural conditions that impact the settlement process. Hopefully,

by discerning patterns of religious adaptation, we can develop generalizations that go beyond endless descriptions of specific cases and arrive at conclusions that are testable.

One of the outcomes of a strategy to develop generalizations is the ability to construct meaningful survey questions that can be utilized in broader immigration studies. Religion items could then be correlated with sociodemographic characteristics of respondents as well as their immigration histories, occupational and socioeconomic aspects of their settlement in the United States, and social networks that serve as support structures. In addition, such general surveys would provide comparisons of immigrants who are involved in religious institutions with those who are not. The inclusion of religion items in surveys, as well as in other immigration studies, would, no doubt, increase the awareness of immigration scholars of the importance of including religion in their analyses of immigrant settlement and incorporation.

Another area for future research is greater focus on religious institutions in the context of other community institutions that service the needs of immigrants, such as cultural societies, political groups, neighborhood associations, social service agencies, and home-town associations. The work of Eiesland (2000) on the social ecology of a neighborhood, as well as Becker’s (1999) study of Oakland Park, are models of the ways in which religious institutions and their members interact within a larger community context.

One difficulty with using religious congregations as the unit of analysis, as is the case in both the NEICP and RENIR projects, is the self-selection of respondents, that is, a focus on those who are part of religious institutions. What is lacking in these studies are data on immigrants who do not use religious institutions to facilitate their settlement, including those who use nonreligious organizations.

The study of transnational religious communities is in its infancy and calls for much more extensive work both in terms of individual and institutional ties between the United States and home countries. In addition to focusing on direct transnational ties, more research is needed on religious organizational networks that facilitate and coordinate religious activities between home countries and those in which immigrants have settled.

Most of the work being done on transnational religious communities focuses upon immigrants in a specific sending and receiving country. We know, however, that immigrant streams seldom follow one geographical path; rather, immigrants tend to settle in various receiving countries and communities simultaneously (Ong and Nonini 1997; Laguerre 1998). A major research question arises: What variations evolve as immigrants from the same country of origin adapt their religion to different social contexts? Are there global influences that impact not only religious ties between home and host countries but also among religious communities in various nations?

In conclusion, during the past decade the study of religion among the new immigrants has become a major research topic in the social scientific study of religion. A body of literature is developing that demonstrates the central role that religion plays in the settlement of new immigrants in the United States, as well as the impact that the new immigrants are having on American religion. In addition to providing comfortable and familiar ways of worshipping, immigrant congregations today, as they did in the past, are providing ways in which their members can reproduce and pass on to their children cultural values, customs, and language. They create a “home away from home,” a social space in which immigrants can share ethnic and religious customs with

fellow immigrants while they develop informal social ties that facilitate their settlement into American society. Given the congregational model that most immigrant groups use in establishing their religious institutions in the United States, immigrant congregations are also places where newcomers learn the civic skills necessary to participate in American democracy. Simultaneously, new immigrants are impacting established American churches as they join multiethnic congregations and challenging them to incorporate new languages, styles of worship, and social customs.

Social scientists are beginning to accumulate the types of data that indicate not only the major issues in new immigrant congregations, but generalizations about the conditions under which various patterns arise. The challenge now is to continue the kind of comparative analyses that can lead to generalizations regarding patterns of religious adaptation of new immigrant groups, not only in the United States but as global diasporic religious communities.

and the Americas.3 We begin with a review of the evolution of Jewish identity within Jewish civilization, go on to examine the conceptualization and measurement of that identity in sociology and the social sciences, review the sources (with special reference to gender) and consequences as well as the role of denominations in shaping identity, and finally offer some concluding thoughts and implications for further research.

EVOLUTION OF JEWISH CIVILIZATION AND IDENTITY

Jewish identity has generally been regarded throughout the evolutionary history of the civilization of the Jewish people4 as the result of two forces: “The consensus of thinking or feeling within the existing Jewish community in each age and the force of outside, often anti-Jewish pressure” (Hertzberg 1971: 53). The formal definition of Jewish identity that is most long lasting and harking back about two millennia is provided by religious law or halakhah (literally the “way” or the “walk” of Jewish life), namely, one is Jewish who is born of a Jewish mother or is converted to Judaism (see Zohar and Sagi 1994). As Hertzberg (1971) pointed out, this is not the oldest definition, nor the only definition, that has existed since ancient and medieval times; and later, we will compare this definition to that of social scientists.

The conceptualization of Jewish identity (and its oscillation through time and space) requires an understanding of the transformation of Jewish civilization across the multiple millennia of the existence of the Jewish people, but the need for brevity limits this discussion. (For a concise review of Jewish history, see Ben-Sasson 1971.) Suffice it to say that powerful economic and political forces in the social sphere have transformed the cultural (i.e., religious and literary traditions) as well as the personal sphere (i.e., familial and individual identities) of the Jews throughout the development of Jewish civilization from the biblical to the contemporary period.5 Jewish identity, which in biblical times, was transmitted through patrilineal descent, was changed during the rabbinic period to matrilineal descent. Deviations from this normative Jewish identity, such as the Marranos or secret Jews of Spain after the exile in 1492, were treated differently by various rabbinic authorities during the medieval period. Subsequently, modernity was ushered in by the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, which paved the way for the collapse of the physical and social ghetto in which many Jews had lived in medieval European societies. This emancipation created opportunities to give religious identity a variety of expressions through the development of denominations, especially in the Diaspora. New social contacts developed and intermarriage increased in Western countries, resulting in the notion of Jewish identity being divided between a strict halakhic religious definition as well as a non-halakhic, ethnic definition, which emerged in Israel and the Diaspora.

3By contrast, there were an estimated eighteen million Jews in the world in 1939 on the eve of World War II and the ensuing Holocaust, and they represented eight tenths of one percent

of the world’s population. The more than thirteen million Jews today represent a mere two tenths of one percent of the world’s population, a proportional decline of three fourths.

4 See Eisenstadt (1992) for an elaboration of this theme.

5The approximate time frames for the five periods of the development of Jewish civilization are as follows: 1. Biblical (origins in the fourth millennium removed from the present to the fourth century Before the Common Era or B.C.E.), 2. Second Temple/Talmudic (fourth century B.C.E. to the fifth century); 3. Medieval (fifth–eighteenth centuries), 4. Modern (later eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries); and 5. Contemporary (mid-twentieth century to the present).

CONCEPTUALIZATION OF JEWISH IDENTITY

Identity and Identification

Identity is probably the most widely used concept to define and describe the individual’s sense of who he or she is. However, in the many works dealing with identity in general (or Jewish identity in particular), different uses frequently appear. “Identity may best be understood if it is viewed first as a higher-order concept, i.e., a general organizing referent which includes a number of subsidiary facets . . . measurements of identity are carried out in terms of self-reported statements or placement in social categories, such as age, sex, and race” (Dashefsky 1972: 240).

There are two major sources of a person’s identity: the social roles that constitute the shared definitions of appropriate behavior and the individual life history. Both the person and others base their conception of identity on these two sources. Combining these two dimensions (the sources of definition, social vs. individual, and the act of definition by self and others yields four facets of identity: Social identity, self-conception, personal identity, and ego identity. Thus the facets of identity are rooted in both internal, subjective perceptions and external, objective characterizations as noted also by Horowitz (2000) and Waxman (2001) in reference to Jewish identity.

The concept of social identity refers to how others identify the person in terms of broad social categories or attributes, such as age, occupation, or ethnicity. By contrast, self-conception is a cognitive phenomenon, which consists of the set of attitudes an individual holds about himself or herself (see Fiske and Taylor 1991:195ff.). It has been operationally defined by Kuhn and McPartland (1954) through asking respondents to answer the question “Who am I?”

The concept of personal identity refers to how others define the person in terms of a unique combination of traits that come to be attached to the individual. Basically these are biographical data. By contrast, ego identity is an intrapsychic phenomenon that consists of the psychological core of what the person means to himself or herself (Erikson 1963: 261–2).

The semantic confusion that envelops the term identity, is no less clear with regard to the term identification, as Winch noted long ago (1962). “Identity in any one of its facets . . . is built up through a series of identifications” (or linkages to) “others in an organizational sense . . . or in a symbolic sense” (Dashefsky 1972: 242). “Identity thus is not the sum of childhood identifications, but rather a new combination of old and new identification fragments” (Erikson 1964: 90). Group identification is a “generalized attitude indicative of a personal attachment to the group and a positive orientation toward being a member of the group” (Dashefsky 1972: 242). The basis of the group may be religious, ethnic, and so on. In sum, it may be concluded that ethnic identification “is both a process . . . and a product . . . ” (Dashefsky 1972: 242).

JEWISH IDENTITY AND GROUP IDENTIFICATION

Having reviewed the definitions of identity and identification, let us examine whether these social psychological notions are relevant to the understanding of Jewish identity in contemporary Jewish civilization. In 1970, the Israeli Supreme Court rendered its judgment in the case of Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Shalit. Commander Shalit

had sought to register his children as Jews by nationality but without any religion. This did not conform to Israeli regulations based on Jewish religious law. The children did not meet the criteria of being born to a Jewish mother or one converted to Judaism. The mother, Anne Shalit, was of Scottish and French Christian origin, but the family professed no formal religious beliefs. The ruling handed down by the Court permitted the children to register as Jews by nationality without declaring a religion. Thus one could be a Jew in Israel if one defined oneself as such in a secular, cultural, or national sense even though not defined as one in a religious sense (Roshwald 1970).

Could this be extended to include a person who considered himself or herself a Jew by nationality, and, a non-Jew by religion? This question had already been brought before the Israeli Supreme Court in the Brother Daniel case several years before the Shalit decision. Oswald Rufeisen was born a Jew in Poland in 1922 and was active in a Zionist youth movement. World War II erupted as he was preparing to emigrate to Palestine. He twice escaped from imprisonment. While hiding in a monastery, he converted to Catholicism and he later became a Carmelite monk. Brother Daniel, as he was known in his monastic order, eventually migrated to Israel in 1958 and applied for citizenship under the Law of Return, which grants citizenship virtually automatically to any Jew who settles in Israel. He claimed that he was a Jew by nationality and a Catholic by religion. The ruling of the Supreme Court did not permit him to attain citizenship under the Law of Return, arguing that a Jew who converted to another religion severed ties to Jewry as well as to Judaism. He was, however, allowed to become a naturalized citizen (Roshwald 1970).

How do these two cases bear on Jewish identity? First, they point out the complexity of defining what it is to be a Jew. Second, they suggest that being a Jew depends on the congruence of one’s own definition and that of others. As Sartre (1948) and Eisenstadt (1970) have suggested, a Jew is someone who considers himself or herself to be Jewish and is considered by others to be one. In social psychological terms, as we have pointed out, there is some correspondence between one’s social identity and one’s self-conception. Third, these cases indicate that Jewish group identification reflects loyalty to the Jewish people, not specifically to its religious precepts, although formally adopting another religion severs the ties of peoplehood. These rulings tend to give juridical support to the linguistic overlap of the same Hebrew word, Yahadut, which stands for both Jewry and Judaism.

This complexity of Jewish identity as understood in the behavioral sciences, was first alluded to by the psychologist Kurt Lewin, who helped to bring the study of Jewish group identification to the attention of social scientists. He observed that it is “one of the greatest theoretical and practical difficulties of the Jewish problem that Jewish people are often, in a high degree, uncertain of their relation to the Jewish group, in what respect they belong to this group, and in what degree” (1948: 148). Indeed, this confusion may be understood in terms of the fact that Jewish identity contains both elements of a sense of peoplehood as well as religion and the relative balance between them varies depending on the society in which Jews live. As Elazar (1999) noted, Jews in Israel consider themselves a “nation;” in the United States, a “religion”; and, in other parts of the world, an “ethnic group.” This emphasis on religion among American Jews represents a shift away from ethnicity but is supported by Lazerwitz et al. (1998: 71–2) in their study of American Jewish denominationalism.

INTERGROUP RELATIONS AND ANTISEMITISM

The traditional sociological approach to studying religioethnic identity and identification has been to focus on intergroup hostility and prejudice and discrimination. According to a formulation by Rose and Rose, group identification occurs when “the members feel that they are the objects of prejudice and discrimination” (1965: 247). In the same vein, the authors of a classic textbook in the sociology of minorities argued that group identification is the product of discrimination (Simpson and Yinger 1972). The consequence of this approach may be to define minority group identity as simply the result of negative forces without any countervailing positive influences. Thus, as Schoenfeld observed, “In popular culture, Jews seem to be represented as either victims, neurotics, or exotics. Consequently, Jewish identity is either a curse, an illness, or something foreign – a source of shame” (1998: 111).

This theme was also readily apparent in the sociological literature about American Jewry. Consider the following statement by Goldstein and Goldscheider: “Even if the social exclusion of the Jew is declining, the fear of discrimination, and concomitant insecurity, may be a powerful factor in the identification of Jews with their own group” (Goldstein and Goldscheider 1968: 10). An even earlier formulation was provided by Wirth in The Ghetto: “What has held the Jewish community together . . . is . . . the fact that the Jewish community is treated as a community by the world at large” (1928: 270).

Wirth continued in a prescient manner: “In the past, it was the influx of a constant stream of Orthodox Jews that was relied upon to hold the community together and to perpetuate the faith. Today, however, this force can no longer be depended upon” (1928: 279). Outgroup hostility, then, clearly must be considered in the study of Jewish identity and identification, but its relative contribution may be overstated especially in the contemporary period. This point is emphasized by Lipset and Raab (1995: 199) who assert that the ethnic (or “tribal”) identity of American Jews has been weakened by the “inexorably integrative forces of American society” associated with the decline of antisemitism.

MEASUREMENT OF JEWISH IDENTITY

Farber and Waxman (1999: 191) cited a Los Angeles Times survey of 1988, which revealed the various conceptions of Jewish identity held by American Jews. The most popular expression of the personal importance of Jewish identity reported by the respondents was a commitment to social equality (54 percent), followed by support for Israel (16 percent) and religious observance (15 percent). For most of the rest, there was nothing specific they could report as to what was important to their Jewish identity: “Rather it is just there, a part of them. They feel Jewish.”

Behavioral Dimensions

Popular conceptions of feeling Jewish, notwithstanding, social scientists have offered a more detailed understanding of the dimensions of Jewish identity. Thus, a move from a theoretical discussion of Jewish identity to empirical research requires operational measurement of such involvement. Before one can assess the complex elements that define Jewish identity, one has to have an operational measure of who is a Jew. Social scientists are not limited in such definitions by rabbinic judgments or rulings by the Supreme Court of Israel as discussed in previous sections. Thus, the National Jewish