346 Fred Kniss
important for some immigrants than it was in their country of origin. Again, location
within the moral order may have an important influence on whether religion is accom-
modative or sectarian. On the basis of the moral order map, we might hypothesize that
Korean Presbyterians, because of their location on the mainstream diagonal, would be
more likely than Korean Buddhists to use religion as an Americanizing cultural resource.
Since Buddhism and Hinduism are so closely linked to ethnicity for immigrants, these
religions may serve to resist assimilation.
For Muslim immigrants, the question is still more complex. For them, cultural or re-
ligious Americanization would involve a move toward modernism (individual as moral
authority) in one direction, or libertarianism (individual as moral project) in the other.
The observer can find examples of both these alternatives in Muslim immigrant com-
munities. It may be, however, that the pressure toward religious assimilation is not as
great for Muslims as it is for Hindus and Buddhists. Note that there are many more
American neighbors in the southeast corner of the moral order map where Muslims are
located than in the northwest corner where we find Hindus and Buddhists. Muslims
can look to numerous other U.S. sectarian religious groups as role models if they wish
to use their religion to resist cultural accommodation.
Finally, what impact might the influx and growth of new immigrant religions have
on the larger moral order? Here again, a map of the moral order is instructive. If the
number of groups located off the mainstream diagonal is increasing, and the groups
themselves are growing relative to established groups, then the mainstream diagonal
may eventually no longer be the mainstream. The dotted line separating the religious
right from the left in Figure 23.2 may become an important realm of discourse in its own
right. Phenomena such as the emergent Catholic-Buddhist dialogue may be indicators
that this is already happening.^5
Post–1965 immigration may well be creating a significant shift in the moral order,
such that no discourse can claim dominance. Under those conditions, the center’s realm
of ambiguity may expand. Religious politics may increasingly make strange bedfellows
with widespread religious change and innovation the result. By contrast, if interreli-
gious encounters are conflictual rather than dialogical, religious differences may be
heightened, and groups may withdraw into their “corners.” In this case, religious iden-
tity is more likely to become sectarian, sharpening the distinctions between groups.
The path that religious change ultimately takes will be shaped by contextual factors
that exist outside the moral order as I have mapped it. But the map gives us some basis
for understanding change as it occurs, and predicting where the important tensions are
likely to appear.
CONCLUSION
In this essay, I have argued that the U.S. religious and cultural terrain, that is, the “moral
order,” is best depicted in multidimensional terms, rather than the unidimensionality
of earlier bipolar conceptions. The map I propose includes most of the bipolar opposi-
tions that others have identified. Creating a two-dimensional space, however, enables
a more precise mapping and thus a more nuanced analysis of specific conflicts and
(^5) One of the most prominent and longest-running of these is the Los Angeles Buddhist-Catholic
Dialogue, begun in 1987 (see http://www.kusala.org/bccontent.html)..)