1 in 4 Americans say pandemic strengthened their faith. For US Jews, it’s 7%

JTA — A new survey found that only seven percent of American Jews feel that the coronavirus crisis has strengthened their faith, as opposed to nearly a quarter of Americans as a whole.

The survey, published Thursday by the Pew Research Center, found that Jews had the lowest percentage of respondents whose faith has been strengthened by the crisis. Along with the 7% of Jews whose faith has grown stronger, 69% said their faith hasn’t changed much and 22% said they weren’t religious to begin with.

A very small percentage, not represented numerically in the study, said their faith has gotten weaker.

In the United States as a whole, 24% of people said their faith has gotten stronger, 2% said it’s gotten weaker, 47% said it hasn’t changed much and 26% said they aren’t religious.

The group with the largest number of respondents that said their faith has gotten stronger is black Protestants, 56% of whom reported strengthening faith.

It’s possible that few Jews responded positively to the “faith” question because the question’s wording referenced “religious faith,” a terminology that tends to be less common among Jews than among Christians.