Immigration and Religion

This review synthesizes research about religion in the lives of post-1965 immigrants to the United States. Such research consists primarily of case studies, published since 1990, focused on individual religious organizations started and attended by immigrants. We analyze these case studies to demonstrate the different ways religion influences immigrants’ adaptation in the United States. We then consider how religion informs immigrants’ ethnic and gender-based identities, their experiences of civic and political life, and the lives of the second generation. We argue that current research is more descriptive than analytic overall, and we highlight a series of research questions and comparisons to enrich theoretical thinking. In particular, we advocate a comparative approach to examining immigrants’ religious organizations and increased attention to a “lived religion” perspective, which takes seriously the ways religion is important for immigrants outside of religious organizations in social institutions, including civic organizations, families, workplaces, schools, and health-care organizations.