Networks, Homes, or Congregations: Exploring the Locus of Immigrant Religiosity

The sociology of religion in the United States has considerable experience with the study of immigrant religion. Unfortunately, the assimilationist model that has dominated this study is only partly relevant to contemporary transnational migrations. This chapter assesses the latest version of this assimilationist model, R. Stephen Warner’s “new congregationalism”. While rightly focusing attention on the role that local congregations play in adjusting immigrants to American life, this approach underplays two key aspects of contemporary immigrant religiosity: 1) the transnational religious networks that make immigration no one-way street; and 2) the importance of non-churched religious practices, with their implications for the sustenance of religious identity. These two structural matters, along with the issue of race, question the completeness of the new congregationalism as a paradigm for under- standing immigrant religion. They also throw doubt on any point of view that focuses primarily on religion’s role in adjusting immigrants to their host societies.https://inspire.redlands.edu/oh_chapters/1043/thumbnail.jp