Dear Revealer readers,

While reading about the Russian attack on Ukraine, I recently stumbled on a buried news item that, given the global circumstances, justifiably received little attention: synagogues in the United States are facing a rabbi shortage. While the rabbi shortage does not compare to the horrors taking place in Ukraine, the story stayed with me and the situation struck me as symptomatic of religion in America.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

Currently, the rabbi shortage is most concerning among the Conservative Movement, which accounts for about 15 percent of American Jews. Movement leaders predict that in 2022, more than 80 Conservative synagogues will have vacancies for rabbis. Not nearly enough rabbinical students are about to graduate to fill those positions, and too few current rabbis are looking to move into new congregational roles. This is not the first time the country has experienced a rabbi shortage. In the 1960s, as American Jews were increasingly accepted into mainstream society and moved to the suburbs in droves, the rapid building of synagogues outpaced the training of new rabbis. But today’s rabbi shortage is for different reasons.

For the past few decades, many American Jews have chosen not to affiliate with a synagogue even as they have maintained a strong connection to Jewish communities. Because belief is not central to Jewish identity, non-Orthodox Jews have found myriad ways to express their Jewishness and contribute to Jewish culture without saying prayers or going to temple. American rabbis have responded by creating opportunities for Jewish learning in many places: at community centers, on college campuses, in museums, and at publications. Additionally, because common Jewish rituals, from Passover seders and Shabbat dinners to lighting Hanukkah candles, take place at home, the synagogue has gradually become less central to American Jewish life. And now with the pandemic, congregational rabbis, like clergy in other religious traditions, are reporting high levels of burnout and have sought early retirement and rabbinic opportunities where they can have a better work-life balance. We are consequently at a place where many rabbis and countless American Jews prefer to participate in Jewish life outside of synagogues.

The shift away from places of worship as central to religion is happening not only among American Jews; observers have noted similar trends within numerous religious communities. With that in mind, this issue of the Revealer considers how people engage with religion outside of institutions and how religion functions beyond the walls of traditional worship spaces. Our March issue opens with the first installment of Kaya Oakes’ column “Not So Sorry,” where she considers how the pope’s declaration that childless couples are “selfish” will drive people away from the Church, and she suggests how Catholics should respond. Next, in “The Buddha and the Bellagio,” Corey Wozniak reflects on the abundance of religion within Las Vegas, from the Buddhist and Hindu statues that populate Vegas nightlife to the devotion to City of Sin celebrities like Britney (a.k.a. “Godney”) Spears, and what all of that reveals about religion in the twenty-first century. Next, in “Prophetic Except for Palestine,” Martha Schoolman describes how Reform Judaism, the largest branch of American Judaism, has promoted social justice activism as a key value for decades except when it comes to addressing the treatment of Palestinians. Then, in “Religious Sisters Respond,” Renée Roden interviews Catholic sisters to get their perspective on how the media portrays them and to understand how they view their work in connection to, or outside of, the institutional Catholic Church. And the issue contains an excerpt from Erika Gault’s new book Networking the Black Church, where she describes growing up as the daughter of a Black preacher, leaving the church, and finding her way back to it through hip hop, a path that she discovered is shared by many other Black Christians.

The March issue also features the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Black Christians and Hip Hop.” Erika Gault joins us to discuss how hip hop and social media have helped people who feel ostracized by traditional churches, the connections between Christian hip hop and racial justice activism, and what the prevalence of Christian hip hop tells us about the future of Black Christianity in America. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Religions change. People change. As this issue attests, constant change does not mean religion is fading. Religious communities have been reinventing themselves for centuries. So, rather than think of rabbi shortages, Catholic sister shortages, and people leaving the Black Church as signs of religious decay, we should instead pay attention to how those declining demographics are giving way to momentous religious innovations.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.

P.S. Our issue also contains an “In the News” roundup of the best stories from around the web about religion in Ukraine and  religion’s place in the Russian attack on the Ukrainian people.