Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience. By Carolyn Chen. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. xii + 230 pp. $38.50 cloth.

摘要

When non-white groups immigrate to the United States, they form conservativenreligious organizations that act as ethnic enclaves, preserving ancient Old World traditions that hinder their assimilation into American culture—right?nNot necessarily, as Carolyn Chen’s fine new study, Getting Saved innAmerica, demonstrates. Chen’s narrative instead shows how in some casesnnewer immigrants become significantly more religious than they were inntheir home countries, how this religious activity often takes the form ofnmodernist, more “rational” Christian and Buddhist spirituality than the formsnthey experienced at home, and how this increasing religiosity actually servesnto inculcate or express decidedly American values as its practitionersntransition into their new society.