I don’t know about you, but for all the pre-midterm election gloom, I’m feeling a little smug. The world may be going to hell, but Atheists/Agnostics and Jews aced the Pew Forum’s survey on U.S. Religious Knowledge, scoring a respectable 20.9 and 20.5 (on 32 questions). The national average was 16.
As a Jewish atheist/agnostic,* I’d feel a bit smugger, though, if my own category was represented, or if I didn’t have to distribute my cultural, ethnic, and theological narcissism between two apparently separate categories. It’s true that they were the top two, but still.
Does the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life not actually know that there are Jewish atheists and agnostics? Have they ever heard of Freud? Taken a course at a university? Been to New York or Tel Aviv? And these are the people in charge of figuring out what we know?
Please don’t tell me that the survey allows people to “self-identify” as Jewish or agnostic, and thus isn’t actually imposing anything as much as letting respondents slide into whatever slot they freely choose. If I were lucky enough to have been asked to take their test (and I keep hoping someone will give me a test like that, but no one ever does), it would have been up to me to decide which is MORE true, that I’m Jewish or that I’m an atheist/agnostic.
If Jewish is just my “ethnicity,” and this was a quiz about religion, then maybe the atheist/agnostic category was more relevant. Or if the categories assumed that atheist/agnostic also meant someone who doesn’t fast on Yom Kippur, doesn’t (at this moment!) have a sukkah up on my back porch (for extra credit, Mormons, what’s a Sukkah? I know all you agnostics know), then yes, I’m a Jew. I might have failed the test, or sunk to the level of mere mainstream Protestants, just trying to figure out which of those first boxes to check. And that’s just not fair.
It’s also wrong, at least in my particular case and that of, oh, almost everyone I know. What’s wrong, I should point out, involves “religious knowledge,” one might say. Jewish does not mean “those people who believe in (a Jewish) God.” If any religious definition pertains, it’s the old one: Jews are people who believe in one God AT MOST; or Jews are the people who don’t go to synagogue (as opposed to other people, who don’t go to church); or Jews are those people who have a mother who says she’s a Jew. Who are you, Pew Forum, to tell me that Jews aren’t (often, in sizable numbers, famously, proudly) atheists/agnostics? Or that atheists/agnostics aren’t (often, in sizable numbers, famously, proudly) Jews?
Happy belated Sukkot, Pew.
*And what’s up with adding “agnostic”? Doesn’t that just mean people who aren’t all that sure? Does that mean that all those other people who checked a box (including “Jews”!) are so sure? Really? Could that be because they apparently just don’t KNOW that much about religion? Just asking.
Naomi, thanks for being a smug Jewish atheist/agonistic who makes fun of agnostics for not knowing who they are. In this new era of religions making advertisments telling how good their people are, you might be just what we need to maintain some sanity.
Thanks for pointing out serious flaws in this research. There is a continuum from belief to doubt to self-conscious agnosticism, strong agnosticism (I don't know and, get real, you don't either) and atheism. More sophisticated religion research would tease this out AND also ask for one's religious identification (which can be cultural and have nothing or little to do with 'beliefs'). Also needed are measures that capture empirically the nature-related spiritualities I've analyzed in Dark Green Religion. These stand as independent forms of religiosity or coexist, often uncomfortably, with the world's predominant religions. Pew needs to update its research if it is to keep up with religion-related phenomena in the USA and beyond.
You can actually access the full survey online. Did you bother to do so before ranting? The question was, "What is your present religion, if any?"While, yes, it's certainly possible to identify with a particular religion but still question or have doubts, it's not in fact possible to be both an atheist and an agnostic.An agnostic is not sure if there is a god.An athiest is quite sure that there is not.
Me thinks Naomi, the Yiddish Professor, doth protest too much. Although clearly she is being humorous, she comes off too much as arguing for Jewish Exceptionalism; the need to be able to count in many groups due to an inability to make the distinction between Religion "“ as to a test of belief or affiliation- and ethnicity. As such, she does not even tell in her critique of agnostics which side of the agnostic/atheist label she falls on. Perhaps that is becue even after 25-30 years she is unsettled in her self-identified apostasy. In a large population of respondents some who are Jewish agnostics will identify for survey purposes as Jewish and some as Agnostic- you make your choice and you take your chances- in all should balance out or perhaps the need for a choice forces greater clarity in one's own choosing of sides. To think her dilemma is not shared by many others who may be lapsed/fallen away Catholics or even fallen away Presbyterians, is to again see only Exceptionalism. I think it comes for her won sense of 30 years in a secular world but not seeing herself yet as linked to the last 3 generations of jewish secularists. Recognizing the survey is both looking for background /religious education as well as belief, decide where you want to be counted, but really most Yiddish secularists that I know who have sukkahs and go to shul on Yontif would chose Agnostic in such a survey, although those with Frum (Religious) back grounds would chose Jewish. I wonder how your time teaching at GTU has affected your understanding of these questions. Isn't that at least as interesting: When (Jewish) Agnostics/Atheists teach at Christian Seminaries.
I appreciate the humor, and the elegant point being made. I made a parallel point on my blog last week, though in my community, a lot of folks would like to check off at least three boxes: Jewish, Christian, atheist. Come on over and tell us how meshugenah we all are, at onbeingboth.com.
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