PANA Institute for Leadership Development

Thien-Ninh Huong, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA:  ninh@usc.edu

Emerging studies on the second generation, children of post-1965 immigrants, are inconclusive over the relationship between religious participation and ethnic identity. In the trajectory of adapting to life in the U.S. for these individuals, does involvement in their religious communities reinforces or revitalizes their ethnic identity?  Or is the positive relationship between engagement in religious community life and ethnic identity oversimplified?  My qualitative research engages in this theoretical debate with a case study of second-generation Vietnamese American Caodais in southern California. I explore the following research question:  how do second-generation Vietnamese American Caodai immigrants articulate their Vietnamese ethnicity and relationship with Vietnam through Caodaism? If Smith (1978) is convincing when he argues that immigration is a “theologizing” experience, then examining the dynamics of religious participation in the context of immigration may illuminate profound insights into how these second-generation individuals experience the process of “becoming Americans.”