Symbolic Religiosity

The concept of symbolic religiosity is rooted in the analysis of the assimilation and acculturation among Jews of Eastern European descent in the United States, initially presented by Herbert J. Gans in a 1956 article in Commentary magazine. This entry offers a definition of symbolic religiosity and identifies some of the ways in which it may be manifested, noting relevant research findings.

Gans later generalized the concept of symbolic religiosity in his 1994 discussion of ethnic and religious acculturation. Interestingly, the concept is meant not as a tool for better understanding religious belief and practice in the United States, but as a way to illuminate the character of the assimilation and acculturation of third- and later-generation descendants of those who emigrated to the United States from Southern and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, one of the central characteristics of symbolic religion is that its beliefs and practices pose no barrier or complication to the pursuit of socioeconomic mobility and a secular lifestyle by the third and later generations of an immigrant's family. Furthermore, as Stephen Sharot has suggested, religiosity may become a symbol or stand-in for ethnicity. This is often the case among people whose national or ethnic identity and religious identity have long been conflated, for example, Jews, Armenians, the Greek Orthodox, and Muslim Arabs. In his classic analysis, in Protestant-Catholic-Jew, of religiosity and ethnicity among immigrants to the United States in the late 18th and early 20th century and their descendants, Will Herberg argues that religious differences are more acceptable than are ethnic differences as a basis for pluralism in the United States, and hence, religiosity comes to replace ethnicity as a basis for personal identity in as little as three generations.

Symbolic religiosity is defined as the use of religious symbols for purely secular purposes and apart from regular participation in a religious culture. For example, one may attend worship services as a spectator, not as a participant. As Gans has suggested, this may be especially the case on major religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas among Christians or Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur among Jews. Symbolic religiosity may also take the form of travel to important religious sites such as the Vatican, Westminster Abbey, or the Wailing Wall as a tourist rather than as a pilgrim.

More generally, symbolic religiosity may take the form of an object culture that consists of all kinds of decontextualized religious and secular objects such as candlesticks or other ritual items, books, art using religious themes, food, or identifying jewelry such as a crucifix, cross, or Star of David.

Given that the roots of the concept of symbolic religiosity lie in Gans's analysis of the beliefs and practices of Jews in the United States, it is not surprising that most studies employing the concept are [Page 1291]of U.S. Jews. Among these are J. Alan Winter's analysis of data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey and Uzi Rebhun's analysis of both the 1990 and earlier 1970 National Jewish Population Surveys. Each study finds support for Sharot's suggestion that religiosity may have become a symbol of ethnic identity.

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