Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America explores the challenges that Asian immigrants face when their religion--and consequently culture--is "remade in the U.S.A." Peppered with stories of individual people and how they actually live their religion, this informative book gives an overview of each religion's beliefs, a short history of immigration--and discrimination--for each group, and how immigrants have adapted their religious beliefs since they arrived. Along the way, the roles of men and women, views toward dating and marriage, the relationship to the homeland, the "brain drain" from Asia of scientists, engineers, physicians, and other professionals, and American offshoots of Asian religions, such as the Hare Krishnas and Transcendental Meditation (TM), are discussed.
The United States has long been described as a nation of immigrants, but it is also a nation of religions in which Muslims and Methodists, Buddhists and Baptists live and work side by side. This book explores that nation of religions, focusing on how four recently arrived religious communities--Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs--are shaping and, in turn, shaped by American values. For a generation, scholars have been documenting how the landmark legislation that loosened immigration restrictions in 1965 catalyzed the development of the United States as "a nation of Buddhists, Confucianists, and Taoists, as well as Christians," as Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark put it. The contributors to this volume take U.S. religious diversity not as a proposition to be proved but as the truism it has become. Essays address not whether the United States is a Christian or a multireligious nation--clearly, it is both--but how religious diversity is changing the public values, rites, and institutions of the nation and how those values, rites, and institutions are affecting religions centuries old yet relatively new in America. This conversation makes an important contribution to the intensifying public debate about the appropriate role of religion in American politics and society. Contributors: Ihsan Bagby, University of Kentucky Courtney Bender, Columbia University Stephen Dawson, Forest, Virginia David Franz, University of Virginia Hien Duc Do, San Jose State University James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia Prema A. Kurien, Syracuse University Gurinder Singh Mann, University of California, Santa Barbara Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida Stephen Prothero, Boston University Omid Safi, Colgate University Jennifer Snow, Pasadena, California Robert A. F. Thurman, Columbia University R. Stephen Warner, University of Illinois at Chicago Duncan Ryuken Williams, University of California, Berkeley
The editors bring some of the leading voices in Buddhist studies to examine the debates surrounding contemporary Buddhism's many faces. Race, feminism, homosexuality, psychology, environmentalism, and notions of authority are some of the issues confronting the religion today. 9 photos.
"Like seeds on the wind, Buddhist teachings continue to reach new lands. This outstanding book brings to light, in rich detail, the current flowering of Buddhism in the West. Long a world religion, Buddhism is now a global one."—Kenneth Kraft, author of The Wheel of Engaged Buddhism "Westward Dharma deserves a place on the growing bookshelf of contemporary Buddhist studies. Prebish and Baumann broaden our horizons from North America to the wider Western world, exploring key aspects of Buddhism's most recent geographical and cultural expansion."—Paul David Numrich, coauthor of Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America.
Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Institut für Anglistik), course: The Indian Diaspora in History, Literature and Film, language: English, abstract: In her book A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism Prema Kurien states that “Hinduism has taken different forms in the countries where it has been transplanted, depending on the interaction between the social and cultural characteristics of the particular group of immigrants and the characteristics of the receiving society.” Only recently, starting in the early-1990s, has the paramount importance of immigrant religion in the host country been acknowledged by scholars in the field of Diaspora Studies. In terms of the Hindu Diaspora of the United States, research conducted by Diana L. Eck, Pyong Gap Min and Prema Kurien has been groundbreaking. Why and how has Hinduism changed in the American setting? In the U.S. organizations of Popular Hinduism have been created that do not exist in India. These include for example Hindu student organizations, local worship and singing groups (satsangs), as well as educational groups for children (bala vihars). Practices in Hindu Temples built in the U.S. have also undergone some modifications when compared with traditional Hindu temples in India. What are the functions of those local associations and the new practices in Hindu Temples? Were they perhaps founded to build an ethnic community and to preserve Indian traditions and culture in a foreign environment? Are they a means to resist assimilation into the American host country society? Or does Hinduism, quite to the contrary, serve as a vehicle for actually becoming American? To resolve all those questions outlined above I am going to analyze select organizations of Popular Hinduism in the U.S., starting with an examination of the local worship and children educational groups. Then I will turn to the discussion of the possible functions of the new practices in Hindu temples in the United States. I will end my paper with a short summary of my findings.
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and adherents of other non-Western religions have become a significant presence in the United States in recent years. Yet many Americans continue to regard the United States as a Christian society. How are we adapting to the new diversity? Do we casually announce that we "respect" the faiths of non-Christians without understanding much about those faiths? Are we willing to do the hard work required to achieve genuine religious pluralism? Award-winning author Robert Wuthnow tackles these and other difficult questions surrounding religious diversity and does so with his characteristic rigor and style. America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity looks not only at how we have adapted to diversity in the past, but at the ways rank-and-file Americans, clergy, and other community leaders are responding today. Drawing from a new national survey and hundreds of in-depth qualitative interviews, this book is the first systematic effort to assess how well the nation is meeting the current challenges of religious and cultural diversity. The results, Wuthnow argues, are both encouraging and sobering--encouraging because most Americans do recognize the right of diverse groups to worship freely, but sobering because few Americans have bothered to learn much about religions other than their own or to engage in constructive interreligious dialogue. Wuthnow contends that responses to religious diversity are fundamentally deeper than polite discussions about civil liberties and tolerance would suggest. Rather, he writes, religious diversity strikes us at the very core of our personal and national theologies. Only by understanding this important dimension of our culture will we be able to move toward a more reflective approach to religious pluralism.
"Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States from European colonization up to the 21st century.... The writing is strong throughout."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "One can hardly do better than Religion in American Life.... A good read, especially for the uninitiated. The initiated might also read it for its felicity of narrative and the moments of illumination that fine scholars can inject even into stories we have all heard before. Read it."--Church History This new edition of Religion in American Life, written by three of the country's most eminent historians of religion, offers a superb overview that spans four centuries, illuminating the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in our nation's history. Beginning with the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization and continuing through to the present, the book covers all the major American religious groups, from Protestants, Jews, and Catholics to Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Buddhists, and New Age believers. Revised and updated, the book includes expanded treatment of religion during the Great Depression, of the religious influences on the civil rights movement, and of utopian groups in the 19th century, and it now covers the role of religion during the 2008 presidential election, observing how completely religion has entered American politics.
Read the story of two worlds that converge: one of Hindu immigrants to America who want to preserve their traditions and pass them on to their children in a new and foreign land, and one of American spiritual seekers who find that the traditions of India fulfil their most deeply held aspirations. Learn about the theoretical approaches to Hinduism in America, the question of orientalism and 'the invention of Hinduism'. Read about: · how concepts like karma, rebirth, meditation and yoga have infiltrated and influenced the American consciousness · Hindu temples in the United States and Canada · how Hinduism has influenced vegetarianism · the emergence of an increasingly assertive socially and politically active American Hinduism. The book contains 30 images, chapter summaries, a glossary, study questions and suggestions for further reading.
