Orthodox Judaism

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Podcast: Why are churches closing? There are many forces at work, but doctrine still matters

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Podcast: Why are churches closing? There are many forces at work, but doctrine still matters

For years, there was a simple answer to the old question: Why do some churches grow, while others shrink?

You simply bought a copy of the 1972 book “Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion” by the late National Council of Churches leader Dean M. Kelley and that provided information answering lots (but not all) of the big questions. It was crucial that this groundbreaking book was written by a mainline Protestant insider, as opposed to a Southern Baptist or Assemblies of God leader.

Of course, everyone knew that some churches grew because of location, location, location. Also, there were always a few liberal churches that grew because of talented preachers or other strengths. Like I said: Kelley answered lots of church-decline questions, but not all of them.

What about 2022 in post-pandemic church life? For starters, many churches will never be post-pandemic — because many congregations (and maybe denominations or communions) were changed forever and we will see more evidence of that in the next few years.

All of this is an overture to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) which focuses on a must-read feature story by Godbeat veteran Bob Smietana. The headline at Religion News Service: “For a small Chicago church, closing down was an act of faith.” This was a personal, heartfelt story for Smietana, since this was a congregation that he once called home.

Like so many pastors around the United States, the Rev. Amanda Olson has kept one eye on the Bible and another on the evolving religious landscape.

She knew change was coming to the church in America.

Yet she hoped her congregation might be spared the worst of it.

“Everyone thinks that churches are going to close,” said Olson, the longtime pastor of Grace Evangelical Covenant Church on Chicago’s North Side. “But nobody thinks it is going to be their church.”


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Old, nagging conflicts will continue to dominate religion news in the coming year

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Old, nagging conflicts will continue to dominate religion news in the coming year

Yes, there will be a hotly contested U.S. election in 2022. And pretty much every secular and religious faction is keyed up awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on whether to revise or revoke its rulings that legalized abortion.

Big decisions like this typically land in late June.

Other lingering disputes on the news coverage agenda include the following.

* As the U.S. Senate struggles with a rewrite of the Catholic President Joe Biden's elephantine social-spending bill, the Catholic bishops' conference vehemently opposes any inclusion of abortion funding.

The bishops, along with Orthodox Judaism's synagogue union, also fear (.pdf here) this law will cripple funding for widespread religious preschools. In yet another church-state debate, Biden hopes to end religious exemption from anti-discrimination rules, which went into effect in January.

* Inside the world of Mainline Protestantism, the unending dispute over the Bible and LGBTQ+ issues may produce the biggest U.S. church split since the Civil War at the United Methodist Church's General Conference. Early in 2022, a commission must decide whether the twice-postponed conference, now scheduled for August 29-September 6 in Minneapolis, can finally occur despite two years of COVID-related snarls and, some say, stalling by the UMC establishment.

* The T in LGBTQ won new Methodist attention as just-retired Pennsylvania Bishop Peggy Johnson and her husband, a Methodist pastor, publicized the latter's gender transition while identifying publicly as a "cisgender" male.

Last March, a sizable body of U.S. conservatives announced plans to leave the denomination and unite with former mission churches overseas — primarily in Africa and Asia — to form the "Global Methodist Church," led temporarily by Virginia Pastor Keith Boyette (540-898-4960).


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What's going on with faith trends in American Judaism, nationally and in your locale?

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What's going on with faith trends in American Judaism, nationally and in your locale?

Since 9-11, the media have — with good cause — lavished attention upon Islam in America.

There's been less interest in the cultural and demographic challenges facing Judaism, long the nation's second-largest religion behind Christianity. Jewish news coverage in the mainstream press tends to focus on Democratic Party politics, trends in anti-Semitism and attitudes toward Israel and the unending Mideast mess.

Those are important, of course, but what about Judaism as a living 21st Century religious faith? Here, as so often, the Pew Research Center steps up with its 248-page survey on "Jewish Americans in 2020" (click here for the .pdf report).

The Guy proposes that this is the ideal moment for journalists to focus on the religion of Judaism, asking rabbis and lay synagogue leaders how Pew's trends are playing out both nationally and with their particular audiences and locales.

At one time, Jewish federations conducted such community surveys. This one follows up Pew's major survey in 2013 but direct comparisons with the 2000 numbers are iffy due to changed methodology.

As so often, Pew worked from an unusually large random sample of 4,718 Jewish adults who were interviewed between November 2019 and June 2020. To learn more about Pew's revised methodology to cope with low "response rates" among those sampled -- among factors that produced the embarrassingly wrong 2020 political polls -- see this prior Guy Memo.

As writers dig into the numbers they'll understand fears that unless things change "we are going to lose the illusion of there being a Jewish people." So says "modern Orthodox" Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, speaking with Forward.com (“Pew’s new study of American Jews reveals widening divides, worries over antisemitism”).

The bottom line: Across the board, the gap between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews is deepening. This looks very much like the gap between declining U.S. "mainline" and "liberal" Protestants over against conservative or "evangelical" believers, or the gap between traditional religious believers and the growing world of atheists, agnostics and the “religiously unaffiliated.”


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Mainstream journalists should pay attention if American Judaism gets into serious trouble  

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How many articles have we read about the inexorable demographic slide of U.S. “mainline” Protestantism, difficulties lately hitting “evangelicals,” declining Mass attendance for Catholics and the growth of religiously unaffiliated people (“Nones”) who forsake all religious ties that bind?

There’s been far less media attention to the state of Judaism, the nation’s second-largest religion though Islam is moving up. It faces far worse prospects, according to premier chronicler Jack Wertheimer, a historian and former provost at Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS).

Reporters — if American Judaism is in serious trouble, that’s a big story by any definition.

This dire, developing story is a good example of the way scholarship that deserves media coverage can be mostly hidden for an extended period yet remain pertinent and newsworthy. Wertheimer’s “The New American Judaism” (Princeton), published two years ago, only caught The Guy’s eye when boss tmatt noted a review in the current edition of the Orthodox Union magazine Jewish Action. (The Guy has not yet read the book but that lengthy review provides ample substance and quotes.)

Wertheimer sees a “recession” — if not a great depression.

More than 2 million people of Jewish parentage “no longer identify as Jews.” Many others do not see themselves as part of the Jewish religion and define themselves only in cultural or ethnic terms. Rising intermarriage means fewer Jews tomorrow. Birth rates among the non-Orthodox are so low one wonders “who will populate Jewish religious institutions in the future.”

If the religion atrophies,  can non-religious communal life thrive?


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End of the year 2019: Trying to understand the blitz of anti-Semitism that's shaking New York

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Here’s what I saw, two days before Christmas, when wrote my “On Religion” column about the Religion News Association’s poll to pick the Top 10 religion-news stories in 2019.

I saw this item: “A gunman kills 51 worshipers and wounds 39 at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. An Australian linked to anti-Muslim and white-supremacist statements faces charges. New Zealand quickly enacts new gun restrictions.” That ended up being the No. 2 story of the year.

But I also saw this: “Gunmen kill one person at a Poway, Calif., synagogue; two others outside a German synagogue; and three in a Jersey City kosher market. Other anti-Semitic attacks and threats increase, particularly in New York City.” That ended up at No. 10 in the poll.

I also saw this: “A terrorist group in Sri Lanka, claiming loyalty to the so-called Islamic State, kills more than 250 and wounds hundreds in suicide bombings at churches and hotels on Easter Sunday.” That slaughter on Christianity’s holiest day fell all the way to No. 17.

Of course, there were other attacks on believers in other sanctuaries during 2019 and I had no way to know what would happen in the next few days — especially in Texas and New York City. In the GetReligion podcast about the RNA poll, I tried to connect all of those blood-red dots (including the role anti-Semitism played in British life in 2019).

I knew that the #MeToo crisis among Southern Baptists was a huge story. Ditto for the concrete signs of schism among Southern Methodists. Still, in my column, I said:

As my No. 1 story, I combined several poll options to focus on the year's hellish uptick in attacks on worshipers in mosques, Jewish facilities and churches, including 250 killed in terrorist attacks on Easter in Sri Lanka.

What is there to say, less than two weeks later, as the sickening attacks on Jews shake New York City?


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RNS thinker about a blunt question: What is killing the (liberal) American synagogue?

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There is much to recommend in the Religion News Service commentary that ran the other day with this headline: “What is killing the American synagogue?” This is one of those think pieces that points to hard news angles, for those with eyes to see them.

The author, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, backs up that blunt headline with lots of practice observations about cultural trends that are affecting all kinds of liberal, old-line religious groups in America, these days. He admits that there are times when cultural trends are signs of serious issues of philosophy and, I would add, theology.

So what are reporters to think then they hear that another synagogue/temple is being torn down? First of all, that RNS headline really needed to include the word “Reform” or “liberal” in front of the word synagogue. Read on, to see if my judgement is accurate.

Here is some ultra-personal material from the rabbi, right near the top:

I am a product of Long Island Judaism. I spent my childhood at Temple Beth Elohim in Old Bethpage, alav ha-shalom. It closed several years ago.

I spent my teen years at Suburban Temple in Wantagh, NY. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was a booming, thriving synagogue of about 800 families. We had one hundred kids in the youth group. We were at the synagogue three nights a week.

So, too, Temple Emanu-El in neighboring East Meadow. It, too, had throngs of teenagers. I attended my first youth group dances there.

Then, in the late 1980s, I came home to become a rabbi at a synagogue on the South Shore of Long Island.

During those years, I confronted the two Bs of the apocalypse: Boca and Boynton. People were moving to Florida.

Beth Moses. People were dying, and “moving” to that cemetery in Farmingdale.

The question I would ask, as someone who has followed the liberal Jewish demographic apocalypse since the stunning Denver Jewish community intermarriage studies of the 1980s, whether Salkin needed to add a third “B,” as in “babies (or lack thereof).”

To be specific, the article didn’t address to major issues that keep showing up in studies of the Jewish future in America and in the Western world — birth rates and intermarriage.


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NPR offers a short report on the eruv: Lots more can be said about making public space sacred

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When I worked at a small daily newspaper in South Florida, the two major faith groups that I covered were Jews and Catholics. And these were plenty of Jewish readers who demanded articles with some degree of theological sophistication about their lives and beliefs.

While there was always the inevitable “best hamantaschen in Broward County” pieces, I also wrote about the building of a new eruv in a neighborhood with a fast-growing Orthodox Jewish community. Only in the Miami area — and several corners of New York City — could a religion writer cover the establishment of an eruv and have a large, vocal readership that knows what that is.

One problem with writing about an eruv is that the tradition started with the Talmud and trying to explain Talmudic law in a news story was like stepping into quicksand. You got sucked in by all the history and the details.

What is at stake was not just the eruv itself but explaining the Jewish laws that mandate Sabbath-keeping and set the stage for the building of an eruv in the first place. So I was glad to see that NPR tackled the topic in a recent report. The journalism question here is whether the story is long enough to get the job done.

A clear fishing wire is tied around the island of Manhattan. It's attached to posts around the perimeter of the city, from First Street to 126th. This string is part of an eruv, a Jewish symbolic enclosure. Most people walking on the streets of Manhattan do not notice it at all. But many observant Jews in Manhattan rely on this string to leave the house on the Sabbath.

The concept of the eruv was first established almost 2,000 years ago to allow Jews to more realistically follow the laws of Sabbath rest, particularly one — no carrying on the Sabbath.

Actually, there is no one Bible verse saying “Thou shalt not carry anything on the Sabbath.”

The closest is a verse in Jeremiah 17:21 that talks about not carrying things for sale during the Sabbath, but there’s nothing that really addresses what goes on domestically. Carrying isn’t mentioned in the traditional 39 activities prohibited on the Sabbath.


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Charity push might explain The New York Times's gentle treatment of couple's faith

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The New York Times's approach to religion reporting is often a paradox: When covering controversial moral issues, its national reporters will often drink from the well of "Kellerism." That's the GetReligion term created in honor of the paper's former executive editor, Bill Keller, who decreed there are subjects on which there's only one side of the argument worth covering, such abortion and gay rights.

On the other hand, the paper's metro reporters will just as often surprise, as in its sensitive discussion of the KKK-linked founder of an evangelical congregation in New Jersey. There, we learned the Pillar of Fire church of 2017 bore little imprint from the founder who praised the Ku Klux Klan, presented in a way that made the church look good.

Now we come to the Orthodox Jewish faith of Malkah and David Spitalny, who in 2012 resided in a second-floor apartment in the Sea Gate neighborhood of Brooklyn. When Hurricane Sandy hit, their apartment was flooded, their parrot drowned and the couple had to remain there for years afterward due to economic issues.

The paper is gracious in its treatment of the couple, because it turns out The Times has an ulterior motive, albeit a noble one. The headline is sympathetic: "Faith Moors 2 Victims of Hurricane Sandy in Life’s Storms," as is the story:

The violent wind. The relentless rain. The raging sea.
For Malkah Spitalny, the passage of time has done little to dull her vivid memories of Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the East Coast five years ago this weekend. She and her husband rode out the storm less than 500 feet from the ocean.
“It will never pass, this experience of physically going through it,” Mrs. Spitalny, 65, said this month. “The force was unimaginable. The thunders, the fires -- it was beyond comprehension.”


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Temple Mount wrap up: Where religion, nationalism and politics keep colliding

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The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict over control of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif appears over. It ended well short of its worst possible outcome, but without any finality — again.

By “worst possible outcome,” I mean a terribly bloody escalation. By “without any finality,” I mean that sooner or later the situation will again heat up because the core of the conflict -- which side has the final word on physical control of the site -- remains unsettled.

But that’s how both sides want it for now -- save for each camp’s most radical elements who would relish an explosive fight to the finish. That’s because neither side's leadership Is capable of making the tough political compromises necessary to really defuse the situation.

So this slow-boiling tribal war over land continues. (Need to catch up with recent events?  If so, read this piece from The Economist, written part way through the episode.)

Religion reporters: Jews this week observed the solemn commemoration of Tisha B’Av, which marks the destructions of the First and Second Jewish temples (plus other Jewish tragedies across history) that stood on the Old City esplanade from which the site takes it Jewish name.

While the commemoration ran from Monday evening to Tuesday evening, it's not too late to tie Tisha B’Av (literally, the ninth day of the Hebrew calendar’s month of Av)  to the current state of affairs. You might want to refer to this handy Religion News Service “‘Splainer."

I'm not qualified to speak definitively about just how the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif dispute breaks down along religious, nationalistic and political lines among ordinary Palestinians and other Muslims that support them -- as opposed to the statements of Palestinian leaders who always stress religious claims in rallying global Muslim support.

Suffice it to say that traditional Islam, far more than do contemporary Christianity or rabbinic Judaism (rabbinic, meaning post-Temple), makes little differentiation between the religious and political realms, and that for many Muslims living under undemocratic governments religion is the only outlet for political expression on any level.

However, I do know enough about the Jewish side to suggest that reporters consider the following.


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