Ebook: Asian American Religions: The Making and Remaking of Borders and Boundaries
- Series: Religion Race and Ethnicity, 21
- Year: 2004
- Publisher: New York University Press
- Language: English
- pdf
Redraws old definitions of what it means to be religious and Asian American.
Asian American Religions brings together some of the most current research on Asian American religions from a social science perspective. The volume focuses on religion in Asian American communities in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and the Silicon Valley/Bay Area, and it includes a current demographic overview of the various Asian populations across the United States. It also provides information on current trends, such as that Filipino and Korean Americans are the most religiously observant people in America, that over 60 percent of Asian Americans who have a religious identification are Christian, and that one-third of Muslims in the United States are Asian Americans.
Rather than organizing the book around particular ethnic groups or religions, Asian American Religions centers on thematic issues, like symbols and rituals, political boundaries, and generation gaps, in order to highlight the role of Asian American religions in negotiating, accepting, redefining, changing, and creating boundaries in the communities' social life.