Religion-based ethnicities

SIGNIFICANCE: Like ethnicity itself, religion is a primary basis of group identity. For this reason, religion has played an important role in the solidarity and consciousness of many different race and ethnic groups. Religion has also played an important role in shaping the response of one group to the movement of another group into its territory, its economy, or its social world.

The United States was founded on the principle of freedom of religion and has been defined as a “nation of immigrants” ever since the arrival of the Pilgrims in New England. The history of both the United States and Canada can be viewed as a history of multiple and complex interrelationships among groups with ethnic origins all over the world and representing the diverse religions of the world.

European Protestants and Native Peoples

When Protestant groups fleeing religious discrimination in England and northern Europe arrived in New England, they were greeted by diverse tribes of native peoples whose religious beliefs and spiritualities were poorly understood and frequently dismissed as “pagan” or “primitive” belief systems. Viewing native religions as grossly inferior to Protestant faiths was an important ingredient in the dehumanization of Indigenous peoples and their removal from their lands during the American Indian Wars and the push westward to the Pacific coast by the European settlers. Similarly, the boarding-school movement, in which the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs removed Indigenous children from their families and sent them to live in residential schools in which their languages and religions were to be eliminated, is a more recent example of the profound and harsh consequences of failing to understand and respect the religious beliefs of a different ethnic group. The Ghost Dance and Sun Dance movements among Indigenous peoples during the late 19th century and early 20th century are examples of an ethnic minority group’s attempt to retain a sense of group identity based on religion in the face of attacks on its culture by the White Christian majority group.

The War with Catholic Mexico for the Southwest

When the territorial ambitions of the Protestant “pioneers” turned to the lands owned by Mexico, the second conquest of an existing population occurred. The Catholic Mexicans whose lands became Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico were profoundly affected by this clash of cultures, or “chocacultura.” The Protestants were more individualistic, more acquisitive, more competitive, less reverent, less familistic, and less respectful of women than the Catholic Mexicans. Roman Catholic Marianism, which gives central place to Mary, mother of Jesus, in Catholic religious thought and practice, tends to elevate the status of women generally and of motherhood specifically. The individualistic culture and society of Western Protestants and their treatment of women had a profoundly disorganizing effect on the close-knit families and communities of the Mexicans.

Catholic and Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe

The American Industrial Revolution and the consequent urbanization of the East and Midwestern United States during the late 19th century is another major transformation of American society that was shaped by religion-based ethnic groups and relationships among them. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920), social theorist Max Weber argues that the Industrial Revolution was in large part the product of the individualism, work ethic, and emphasis on rewards in this world over rewards in heaven that characterized Protestant faiths such as Calvinism. As the movement from farms to urban manufacturing centers occurred first in Europe and then in the United States, two waves of European immigrants crossed the Atlantic to the United States. The first wave consisted of northern and western European Protestants from England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Germany who left due to economic pressures and settled in the United States. A second wave of immigrants, consisting mainly of Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe, faced far greater discrimination in education and work because of their greater differences in appearance and religion. These European Catholics and Jews, many of them from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Greece, shaped the development of urban America, providing its industrial labor force, the populations of its first urban ghettos, and the police forces and political machines of the great American cities.

African American Religions and Identity

The clergy of Black Christian churches in the South, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, formed the backbone of the mass movement to end legal segregation and discrimination against Black people, which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Black Americans view their struggle for freedom and equal rights as a moral struggle against injustice and bigotry. Black churches were often used as meeting and organization points in the movement. Using the tactics of nonviolent or passive resistance, King and other civil rights activists staged sit-ins at lunch counters that refused to serve Black people, boycotted buses that discriminated against Black passengers, and marched through neighborhoods to protest injustices. Participants endured physical violence, threats, and even jail. Sensing the role of the church in the movement, many opponents threatened the physical church buildings and the 1936 church bombing of a Black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, left four young girls dead.

At the same time nonviolent resisters were working towards civil rights, the Nation of Islam, led by Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, united African Americans in a struggle for economic and political survival and a reassertion of their Muslim origins. (Many of the West Africans brought to the United States as slaves were believed to be Muslims when they were captured.) In the 1960s, many African Americans began to reject the family names that originated during slavery and adopt African Muslim names. World heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, is a prominent example of this reassertion of Muslim African roots. In 1995, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan led a large group of African American men in the Million Man March on Washington, DC, to seek repentance and renew their commitment to their families and communities.

Another example of a religion-based Black identity or consciousness movement is the Rastafari movement, which began in Jamaica in the 1930s. In the 1960s, the Rastafarian concept of “dread” became the namesake for the popular hairstyle known as “dreadlocks.” The concept of dread in Rastafarianism refers to one's inner confrontation with the awe and power of Black racial identity.

The Impact of Asian Religions

Asians who migrated to the United States to build the transcontinental railroad, to provide health care in poor communities, to labor in factories and shops, and to provide leadership in technical fields brought with them the religions of Buddhism and Hinduism and the mind-body meditations and practices that have become part of American culture. From corporate executives who meditate daily to relieve stress to the university students who formed the core of the Transcendental Meditation movement of the 1960s and the Hollywood film stars who find creative energy through study with Tibetan religious leaders, many Americans have turned to Asian religions to heal their minds and bodies, to learn to relax, to deal with pain, to age more comfortably, or to increase their human potential.

Many Asian religions are syncretic—that is, they allow for the inclusion or incorporation of elements of other religions without creating conflict—and so these religions and their practices can and do peacefully coexist with other faiths. In addition, the social ethics and religious thought of many Asian cultures stress harmony, balance, and respect for all living beings. These cultural attributes decrease social conflict based on religion.

Religion and Prejudice

Religion plays a complex and important role in a group’s response to other social groups and to social change. Raymond Grew argues that Protestant fundamentalism in the United States arose largely as a means to deal with the stresses and temptations of modern life. In times of rapid change and in social environments in which there are many choices and no clear, universally accepted criteria for making these choices, the individual’s first protection against the dangers of modern life is to accept a fundamental core of belief, doctrines, and behaviors from which there can be no deviation or compromise. Among fundamentalist groups, adherence to this core set of beliefs and behaviors becomes both a measure of belonging to the community and a defense against social changes and behaviors that are perceived as threatening and dangerous. This unyielding adherence to core beliefs and doctrines has also been associated with an intolerant attitude toward people whose attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors differ from those of the fundamentalists. Prejudice and even hatred toward other groups can arise in an environment that combines intellectual strictness or closed-mindedness with emotional intensity, as fundamentalist faiths often do.

Although religious intolerance can contribute to racial and ethnic prejudice, religious ethics can also form the basis of an individual’s or group’s motivation and ability to overcome prejudice. Sallyann McKey notes that “prejudice in its various forms is a vital ethical concern. It affects moral decision making at the personal and social levels.” In a similar vein, philosopher Paul Ricoeur stresses the importance of Christian ethical reflection to “recognize, lament, and overcome prejudice.”

Religion and Racial and Ethnic Identity

The roots of identity in both ethnicity and religion are deep and profound. Sociologist Edward Shils refers to three bases of social belonging: primordial, sacred, and kinship ties. Both religion and ethnicity have elements of primordial bases of social group belonging, the deepest bases. Psychologist Erik Erikson, philosopher Paul Ricoeur, and Bernard Longeran each deal with the subconscious and preconscious elements of religion. Ritual, argues Erikson, is an individual’s and group’s way of dealing with the uncomfortable feelings of guilt and shame that form the very basis of moral behavior in a group. Pope John Paul II describes religion as a society’s attempt to deal with the question of what it means to be a human being and to try to find the purpose of life. In Martin Marty’s words, religion addresses the questions: Who am I? What do I or should I do? To whom do I belong? How shall I act? and Whom shall I trust? Race and ethnic identity also addresses these questions to some extent and in various ways.

Bibliography

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