Immigration and Religion in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives. Ed. by Richard Alba, Albert J. Raboteau, and Josh DeWind. (New York: New York University Press, 2009. vi, 407 pp. Cloth, $78.00, isbn 978-0-8147-0504-9. Paper, $26.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-0505-6.)

Abstract

In contrast with scholarship on previous immigrations, many early studies of post-1945 immigrant groups showed only a minor interest in religion. The September 11, 2001, tragedy, religious upheaval in regions from which those immigrants hailed, and the success of their religions in the United States have drawn attention to the religious context of immigration. As a consequence, the Social Science Research Council's International Migration Program “organize[d] a project to support research and convene scholars to examine relations between Religion, Migration, and Civic Life” (p. 3). Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, social science immigration experts joined religious studies and humanities-based scholars to explore religion as an institution and as a system of meaning in select communities. The resulting volume of essays pairs the study of religion in one “new” immigrant group with a related, well-studied immigrant group that had arrived earlier: Mexican immigration is explored and compared to the Italian experience; the Korean experience is compared with that of the Japanese; the Arab Muslim experience is compared with the immigration experience of Jews; and—in a slight methodological departure—the Haitian immigration experience is contrasted with the post-World War I Great Migration of Af rican Americans within the United States. For each of the four paired groups, the editors wrote a comprehensive introduction focusing on religion. The first substantive essays in each section look at religious development in an older immigrant group to establish continuities and differences as compared with the newer group. The remaining essays in each section provide descriptive narratives and conceptual investigation into religion's role among the new populations.