Studies Show
educated and living in a free country like Canada—that is, since they were likely to feel quite secure—I could see how religion might be less con- sequential to them. In the study, 82% of participants had at least one post- secondary credential; it certainly ap- pears there is an inverse relationship between education and religiosity. It is well worth studying wheth- er this relationship characterizes other Jewish communities in Cana- da. For example, a larger survey that included more Orthodox Jewish par- ticipants might be useful in testing this relationship between education and religiosity more closely. Modern Orthodox Jews are strongly encour- aged to study both religious and secu- lar subjects; this might confound the otherwise expected inverse relation- ship between education and religios- ity, even in a cohort that feels itself to be secure. John Cappucci is the Stephen Jarislowsky Chair in Religion and Conflict at Assumption University. His research focuses on religious minorities and their treatment by various host communities.
DOES EDUCATION DIMINISH RELGIOSITY? INSIGHTS FROM ONE CANADIAN COMMUNITY by JOHN CAPPUCCI
I REMEMBER it was the dead of January, and I was a guest of the Jew- ish community in Windsor, Ontario. I called the local Reform temple to ask if I might be able to visit on Friday night. The lay leader enthusiastically welcomed me to their small Shabbat service, and invited me to each event thereafter. The scholar in me got to wondering: Where did the commu- nity fall on the religiosity spectrum? Were there any patterns I might dis- cover in who engaged religiously and who did not? I decided to launch a research study called “Progressives and Purists: A Study of Religiosity in a Canadian- Jewish Community.” To measure religiosity, I asked community mem- bers about eight indicators in total. For the article that emerged from this
research, I focused on three of those in particular: whether respondents believe in God (58% did, 16% did not, and the rest were in between); whether they prayed (16% did daily, 42% did sometimes or on holidays, and 32% did not—with another 6% saying they talked to God), and whether they limited their activities on Shabbat (34% did). I concluded that the community did not seem particularly religious. To explain these results, I drew on work done by two esteemed political scientists, Pippa Norris and Ron- ald Inglehart. They developed a view called existential security theory, which holds that as a person’s sense of internal security increases, their religiosity decreases. Since the re- spondents in my survey were highly
“STUDIES SHOW” is a collaboration between Scribe Quarterly and the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies (ACJS) to introduce innovative new academic research about Canadian Jewry to a wider readership. For each instalment, Scribe Quarterly editors curate a selection of articles from the pages of the ACJS’s flagship journal, Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes , and work directly with their authors to create short, accessible summaries of that scholarly work. CANADIAN JEWISH STUDIES / ÉTUDES JUIVES CANADIENNES is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to original scholarship about the Canadian Jewish experience—past, present, and future. It has been published since 1993 by the ACJS, the leading organization dedicated to advancing public knowledge of the Jewish experience in Canada through scholarship, research, and community-oriented initiatives. The journal is available for free online; individual issues can also be ordered in print.
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