De Facto Congregationalism and the Religious Organizations of Post-1965 Immigrants to the United States: A Revised Approach

Abstract

Arguments about de facto congregationalism dominate recent research about the religious organizations started and attended by post-1965 immigrants to the United States. These arguments are limited in scholars' failures to consistently define the organizational field, and to recognize variation in what forms organizations take and what processes account for their developments. Due to these limitations, I argue that current conceptions of de facto congregationalism are best conceived of as propositions about what features immigrants' religious organizations might share rather than as assertions about actual similarities. I develop this argument by expanding the existing theoretical approaches and by analyzing the case of Thai Buddhist temples in America. I suggest that immigrants' religious organizations are more organization-ally diverse than previously imagined and that the processes through which immigrants adapt their organizations to the American religious context are multidimensional rather than linear, including a phase in which diverse organizational forms exist side by side.