230 Helen Rose Ebaugh
largest immigrant points-of-entry cities in the United States, were selected, in addition
to the earlier funding for the study in Houston.
There is no doubt that Religion and the New Immigrants became a “hot topic” for
research during the 1990s (there were some twenty-five papers at the 2000 Society for
the Scientific Study of Religion meetings in Houston, Texas) and that the interest will
continue, in part stimulated by the cohort of young scholars and graduate students who
have participated and are participating in the research projects focused on the topic.
Monographs and professional papers from the Gateway Cities Projects will, no doubt,
appear throughout the first decade of the new millennium, thus sustaining interest in
the area.
THEMES AND ISSUES
From the increasing body of research published in the 1990s, a number of central issues
arose, along with tentative generalizations concerning: (a) the central role religious in-
stitutions play in the reproduction of ethnic identity; (b) the role of religion as an agent
in the incorporation of immigrants into American society; (c) congregationalism as the
primary form of organization; (d) conflict and segregation within multiethnic congre-
gations; (e) the relationship between the second generation and immigrant religious
institutions; (f) the role and status of immigrant women as impacted by their religious
congregations; and (g) transnational religious ties between immigrants in the United
States and their home communities.
The Reproduction of Ethnic Identity
Religious institutions provide social and physical space and social networks that help
the immigrants reproduce and maintain their values, traditions, and customs in the
midst of an often alienating and strange American society. Religion is intricately in-
terwoven with cultural values and practices so that it becomes a way of reproducing
many aspects of immigrants’ native cultures for themselves and their children. Collec-
tive memory and symbolic rituals are major strategies for maintaining and passing on
cultural values, norms, and practices (Cook 2000; Hervieu-Leger 2000), and it is within ́
ethnic congregations that symbolic representations are often most evident.
In reflecting on the immigrants who came to America in earlier waves, Will Herberg
(1960) argued that immigrants were expected to give up virtually everything they
brought with them (e.g., language, nationality, manner of life) except their religion.
In fact, religious identity often replaced ethnic identity and became more important
to them in their new country than it was in their homeland. Similar patterns exist
for the new immigrants, who frequently comment that they are more “religious” in
the United States than they were prior to immigration (Conzen 1991; Pozzetta 1991;
Abusharaf 1998; Kurien 1998; Warner 1998; Badr 2000). In addition to immigration
itself being a “theologizing” experience (T. Smith 1978), being part of a minority reli-
gion in an overwhelmingly Christian country often makes immigrants more conscious
of their religious identity and practices (Yang and Ebaugh 2001).
As well as using native languages, one major way that congregations reproduce
ethnicity is by physically reproducing aspects of home-country religious structures,
such as temples, pagodas, golden domes, statues, ikons, steeples, and the use of native
construction materials. Many immigrant groups, such as Chinese, Vietnamese, and