Final Essay

Due to the diverse culture, people, and religious beliefs, each religion interacts with each other in America, and meanwhile different religious beliefs shape the mainstream of American religion. In addition, traditional religious beliefs have been challenged by socio-cultural phenomenon of American life. Eastern religions first came to America during nineteenth century; however, Americans have expressed religious expansion in turning to Eastern religious forms, and Eastern believers have shown expansiveness by adopting aspects of an American religious style. [1] The spiritual figures from Eastern religions have become some popular icons in American culture. The fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism (Theravada) has become one of most recognizable spiritual figures in American society, and indeed Americans love Dalai Lama. [2] Furthermore, the minority monks of Tibetan Buddhism have a special political mission fighting for their physical, cultural and spiritual existence, which leads Tibetan Buddhism into the public eye.

Many other spiritual figures and religious beliefs from Eastern countries also have impacted public and cultural realities of American life. Individual religious figures (gurus, sages, swamis, masters, teachers) from a variety of ethnic background point to a diverse filed of encounter, but they are homogenized within American popular consciousness and culture. [3] Meanwhile, the diversity of races and religious identities brought a social phenomenon-racialization of religion in American society. Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam are three different belief systems, but they share some of the major outcomes of racialization in America. Some South Asian American Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims are a problematically situated “other”-brown-skinned, non-Christians who are therefore multiple foreign. [4] Besides, their own traditional practices, such as hijab among Muslim women, kufi worn by Muslim men, and the bindi or forehead “dot” worn by Hindu women, are some cultural markers of their religious identities in American society. As a result, the distinction of different denominations within each religion has been ignored. As racial similarity allows for the presumption that Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam are theologically related, and the shared phenomenon of brown skin erased the difference between Sunni and Shi’a Islam. [5]

The first Africans came to America from West Africa, and some of them believed Islam and many of practitioners followed their traditional African religions. However, the African-American religion had been strongly influenced by Western religions in America.  Due to the enslavement and isolation of African-Americans from those who came from their community or spoke their language, African-Americans reconstructed a new situation of their religion with materials from Christian traditions and the religions of their masters. [6] African-American religious ritual expresses spiritual beliefs with God in gesture, dance, and song. There was correspondence that obtained between African religions and Protestantism. For instance, in the emotional preaching and ecstatic behavior of Baptist and Methodist revival services, African-American slaves encountered a ritual equivalent to the spirit possession ceremonies of Africa. [7] Gradually, many African-Americans who were converted to Christians embraced American Protestantism. Nevertheless, African-American Christians suffered some unequal rights in American society, which prohibited them entering white churches.  The segregation of black and white churches signified the existence of two Christianities, and the deep chasm divided them across racial lines in American society during that period. [8]

When Christopher Columbus first arrived in North America, he brought some “New Christians.” They were Spanish Jews, and in fear of the Inquisition, they had converted to Christianity. [9] Hence, the Western religious beliefs began to form and later dominate American religious history. The Native Americans developed own cultures and religious beliefs, but by sixteenth-century, Spanish Catholics and French missionaries started “interruption” with religious beliefs and theologies among Native Americans.  Some politically active Christians encouraged Native Americans to develop Theology of Liberation against injustice in American society. [10] However, Christians had a different way of going about the struggle for justice than most Native Americans in a variety ways. The liberation theology preoccupied with Exodus story was inappropriate way for Native Americans to think about liberation. [11] In addition, religious combination occurred between Native American religions and Christianity. Different from traditional Native American beliefs and practices, they added some Catholic ceremonies on the ceremonial calendars in the various pueblos during eighteenth-and nineteenth-centuries. [12] Meanwhile, some new religious practices of Native American occurred in American religious history, and government passed American Indian Religious Freedom Act that allows Native Americans to have own religious beliefs and practices.

Diverse traditions and religious beliefs shape the structure of American religions. The public and socio-cultural realities of American life also challenge traditional religions from different countries in American society. Meanwhile, many new religious practices and denominations have been created in American religious history.

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1.     Catherine L. Albanese, "Manyness: Patterns of Expansion and Contraction" in American Religions & Religion, (Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 1999), 205.

2.     Jane Naomi Iwamura, “The Oriental Monk In American Popular Culture” in Religion and Popular Culture in America, edited by Bruce David Forbes and Jeffery H. Mahan, (California: UC Press 2000), 26.

3.     Iwamura, 27.

4.     Khyati Y. Joshi,  “The Racialization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in the United States” in Equity & Excellence in Education, (Routledge, 2006), 214.

5.     Joshi, 220.

6.     Albanese, 140.

7.     Albert J. Raboteau, “A Fire in the Bones” in Reflections on African-American Religious History, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 189.

8.     Rabotrau, 188.

9.     Albanese, 42.

10. Robert Allen Warrior, “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today” in Native and Christian Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada, edited by James Treat, (London: Rouledge, 1996), 94.

11. Warrior, 95.

12. Albanese, 36.