The points I was making were two. First, that statistics are hard to read - and in the case of religion also very hard to generate: "self-identification" turns out not to correlate with religious membership, and neither of those lines up as you might wish it did with attendance at houses of worship, reported belief in God (!), plans for a religious funeral, etc. Religious demography is a minefield. ARIS is as good as they get, asking about far more than beliefs and identifications and allowing interesting cross-referencing, but even it has no categories for those between religious traditions, those committed to more than one, and the "spiritual but not religious," etc. Most of my students (this class confirmed) fall into at least one of those categories, so it hit home.My second point had to do with two important themes from earlier in the course, and let the densely-printed tables stand in for The City: (1) Robert Orsi's insistence that urban religion is particularly interesting because the new arrival in a city can't simply build a new religious center, and probably can't continue her practices from before unaltered - the landscape is already built up, and with other people's religions - so is forced to innovate. (2) The view summarized by Anna Karpathakis: Soon after they arrive, immigrants learn that Americans are more tolerant of religious diversity than they are of ethnic diversity. Accordingly, immigrants use religion as a socially tolerated mans through which they can construct their own culture and identity.... In this sense, then, religious institutions serve different functions for immigrants than they do for white middle-class American Catholics and Protestants.” (“Conclusion: New York City’s Religions,” New York Glory: Religions in the City [NYU 2001], 390)
Imagine you're an immigrant, recently arrived in the city, I said. Someone from ARIS contacts you - you're in! you get to be part of America! But where do you fit? You do want to fit, to find a place for you! We'd been reading about non-religious Jews from the ex-USSR, who have started to construct their identity in pseudo-religious terms here. If you were one of them you could choose "No Religion/None" from the many many options. But - especially as you think of the legions of Christians in America (the interviewer's form has 47 varieties) - wouldn't you more likely pick "Jewish" out of solidarity with your religious confrères? A fit or a fiddle?
I could see all sorts of things falling into place. Who knew you could learn so much from a wall of numbers!
