Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordo
None of this is different from what I said, and I'm certainly not talking about them joining an American church (where in the world did you get that from?). I said that you'll tend to see religious abandonment (as in, not changing religions, but abandoning religion entirely or simply becoming less outwardly religious), but of course this won't happen immediately. I'd be shocked to see evidence that second generation immigrants in LA are not less religious than first generation (assuming that we're talking about immigrants from less developed countries - it'll stay roughly the same for immigrants from rich countries, at least typically).
The only cases that I've seen where this isn't true are situations where immigrants are fleeing religious prosecution and keep the practice up as a means of defiance against their former government. A good example of this was Russian immigrants in SF/LA for half a century, though now that communism has fallen and Putin has sort of embraced the Russian Orthodox Church again, many of the Russian congregations in California are losing folks.
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I know several 3rd-generation Japanese-Americans who are very active at their Buddhist temples; one of them even helps organize the annual Obon Festival at her temple. Younger Americans might be abandoning Christianity (woo hoo!), but there are other religions out there that people are adhering to--converting to, even. Quite a number of westerners go to the Soto Zen Buddhist temple my partner and I go to.