When Barry Goldwater mounted his campaign for the White House in 1964, the Jewish humorist Harry Golden took notice. “I always knew the first Jewish president of the United States,” Mr. Golden put it, “would be an Episcopalian.”
On the surface, Mr. Golden was simply stating a biographical fact. Mr. Goldwater’s Jewish father had married an Episcopalian woman and their children were raised as Christians.
The Times’s stylebook says to use “Episcopalian” only as a noun; the adjective is “Episcopal.” (In this case, of course, we could simply have dropped “woman” and used the noun “Episcopalian”; it’s obvious that his mother was a woman.)
Hmmm. I’ve found the confusion between when to use the adjective and when the noun remains surprisingly common in conversation. But certainly journalists should know better.
As for the quip about Barry Goldwater; it’s too bad he didn’t win in 1964. Britain may have gotten its first (and only) Jewish Prime Minister (Disraeli) back in the late 1800s, and we haven’t had one yet in the USA, but we do now have three Jewish Supreme Court justices, and as far as I know, none of them is an Episcopalian.
David Handy+
I would be fascinated to see if anybody has done research to see what percentage of mixed-religion marriages result in the children taking the religion of the mother. It must be over 90%.