Counting America's Jews: Clarifying the Procedures: A Research Note

Abstract

We have read with much interest Rodney Stark's recent essay in this journal (1987), in which he suggests procedures for correcting the data in the 1971 and 1980 Glenmary Research Center studies of church membership in the United States. Stark is concerned, in part, with the version of the 1971 Glenmary study that we created through the addition of data on American Jews taken from the American Jewish Yearbook. However, there appears to be a misunderstanding on Stark's part concerning the characteristics of these 1971 data. Our purpose here is to clarify these matters. After stipulating that the American Jewish Yearbook offers "relatively good data" (p. 69), Stark observes that many persons claiming Jewish identity "are not members of a congregation" (p. 69). Accordingly, based on estimates provided by Gallup (1978), Stark proposes to adjust the American Jewish Yearbook data for 1971 to correct for these uncounted, unaffiliated Jews. As we have noted from the earliest (Newman, Halvorson, & Brown 1977) to the more recent (Newman & Halvorson 1982, 1984, 1987) of our works with the 1952, 1971, and 1980 studies, the American Jewish Yearbook provides a "culture count" that estimates the Jewish population in communities with 100 or more such persons in residence. These data are not reports or estimates of congregational or synagogue memberships. Thus, while Stark is correct that these data entail some undercounting, he is wrong about the nature of these deficits, and perhaps about their magnitudes as well. Consequently, it is not appropriate to adjust estimates of the size of the Jewish population in 1971 according to estimates of the relative proportions of members and non-members from survey data or any other data. This is because both of these categories are already included in the "culture count" type of statistic provided in the American Jewish Yearbook. It is precisely this feature of the Yearbook data that makes them comparable to the "adherents" (as opposed to the "members") statistic found in the Glenmary studies. The Glenmary "adherents" statistic, though calculated somewhat differently by various Christian denominations, is an inclusive statistic and accounts for so-called backdoor or nominal Christians who