1. Pyong Gap Min, Queen College and the Graduate Center of City University of New York
2. Sou Hyun Jang, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
關鍵詞
Asian religions; Asian-Americans; immigration; congregations; religious change; survey research
摘要
Social scientific studies of new immigrants' religious practices over the last 30 years have been based largely on ethnographic research on immigrant religious institutions. Two major themes emerging from these studies are that (1) non-Christian religious institutions have been transformed in the U.S. context, following the Protestant congregational model, and (2) immigrant religious institutions mainly serve ethnicity and social-service functions for their members. Since Asian immigrants mainly represent non-Christian religious groups, a major survey study of their religious participation sheds new light on these two themes. This study fills a gap in research on Asian immigrants' institutional religious practices by providing comprehensive statistics using survey data. As expected, our analysis produces important findings that supplement previous and mostly ethnographic studies related to the two major themes. Our major findings also indicate that Asian Protestant and Catholic immigrant groups significantly differ from their American counterparts in institutional religious practices.
目次
THE RESEARCH ISSUE AND THE MAIN OBJECTIVES 253 LITERATURE REVIEW AND TWO MAJOR THEMES 255 Non-Christian Institutions' Transformations Following the Protestant Congregational Model 255 The Ethnicity and Social-Service Functions of Religious Institutions 256 DATA SOURCES 258 Religious Distribution in Asian Countries and New Asian Immigrants' Current Religions 259 AFFILIATION WITH A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION AND PARTICIPATION IN ETHNIC CHURCH 263 FREQUENCY OF PARTICIPATION 268 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 270 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 272 REFERENCES 272
