Religion and the New Immigrants 239
fellow immigrants while they develop informal social ties that facilitate their settlement
into American society. Given the congregational model that most immigrant groups
use in establishing their religious institutions in the United States, immigrant congre-
gations are also places where newcomers learn the civic skills necessary to participate
in American democracy. Simultaneously, new immigrants are impacting established
American churches as they join multiethnic congregations and challenging them to
incorporate new languages, styles of worship, and social customs.
Social scientists are beginning to accumulate the types of data that indicate not
only the major issues in new immigrant congregations, but generalizations about the
conditions under which various patterns arise. The challenge now is to continue the
kind of comparative analyses that can lead to generalizations regarding patterns of
religious adaptation of new immigrant groups, not only in the United States but as
global diasporic religious communities.