Mapping the Moral Order 345
populate the same moral order space as people attracted to the therapeutic utopias of
the 1970s and, more recently, “new age” religion. We can empirically observe these re-
lationships developing. Paul Numrich (1996) has identified the phenomenon of “par-
allel congregations” in Buddhist temples where Euro-American converts often share
space with immigrant Buddhists. ISKCON (aka Hare Krishna) is a Hindu-related move-
ment formerly dominated by Euro-Americans, but it now finds itself largely serving
an immigrant Indian population and depending on them for institutional survival.
At the opposite southeast corner of the map we find Muslims and African-American
Protestants sharing space in the moral order. Given this, it is not particularly surpris-
ing that African-American converts are such a rapidly growing sector of Islam in the
United States. In American cities, this religious affinity also has important effects on
the relationship of Arab immigrants to African-American communities, both within
the mosques and on “the street.”
These juxtapositions raise some interesting questions regarding immigrant identity
in a pluralistic U.S. culture. For example, will the dominant culture be more likely to
view Muslim immigrants as “black” and Hindu or Buddhist immigrants as “white?” Or,
will Muslims’ location in a more familiar sector of the moral order lead to an easier
legitimation of their religious identity while Hindus and Buddhists remain “exotic?”
Second, we can use the moral order map to make some observations or raise ques-
tions about religious change experienced by new immigrant groups. Some observers
have suggested that the typical pattern is for immigrant religions to “Americanize,”
often in the direction of what Warner (1994) has called “de facto congregationalism.”
For Warner, this refers primarily to structural changes in the organization of immi-
grant religions. Ironically, perhaps, this form of Americanization may help immigrant
groups to resist cultural or religious assimilation. This points to the complexity of con-
cepts like “assimilation” or “Americanization.” They are not unidimensional nor are
they all-or-nothing propositions. Portes and Rumbaut’s (1996) concept of “segmented
assimilation” has captured this notion and enriched the study of immigrant change.
The moral order map provides a way to speak more concretely about the cultural or
religious changes that may or may not follow from structural changes like de facto
congregationalism. It also suggests that this process may occur differently for different
groups.
For Hindus and Buddhists, movement toward the mainstream could occur in one
of two ways. A group could move toward the religious left by adopting communalism,
that is, coming to view the moral project as collective. The phenomenon of “engaged
Buddhism” in the United States, where Buddhists become actively involved in social
concerns would be an example of such a trend. A group might also move toward the
religious right by collectivizing moral authority. Kurien (1998) describes this process for
two Hindu temples in Los Angeles. In our Chicago-area research, we have observed a
similar process in a Hindu temple located in a Republican stronghold in suburban Cook
County. By contrast, the inner-city temples in our study are the only ones that have
become involved in community political action (even though this is still a relatively
rare occurrence). Thus, the direction in which a group moves may be influenced by its
context.
But accommodation and Americanization are not inevitable, nor are they uni-
dimensional. Some groups may use religious identity (even “Americanized” congre-
gational forms of it) to resist cultural assimilation. Religion may thus become more