Jon Miller, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Donald Miller and Grace Dyrness

Faith Fosters Community
Pew grant helps researchers explore religion’s role in demographic shifts

By Nicole St. Pierre

Social scientists at USC College who study the intersection of religion and society have identified religion as one of the most important axes around which immigrants arrange their lives.

To plant seeds for future research, USC College’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) recently received a $2.4 million grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The funding enables USC to lead interdisciplinary research surrounding timely issues such as how immigrants alter the religious tapestry of contemporary America and how faith-based community development alleviates social ills.

USC joins Princeton, Yale, Notre Dame, Emory, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia and Boston University as Pew-named Centers of Excellence. The centers create a forum for religion scholars to collaborate on projects of importance to mainstream scholarship, while reaching out to students, policy-makers, journalists and the public. USC is the first West Coast recipient of the Pew grant.

Examples of religious institutions’ changing role abound in Los Angeles, a city in the midst of an amazing demographic shift, and as a result ripe with religious research opportunities.

“The traditional view was that religion helps immigrants assimilate. The great melting pot subsumed cultures of origins and created an American identity that was tied to either Protestant, Catholic or Jewish,” says Donald Miller, a sociologist of religion at USC College who researches immigrant religion. “But there’s a new paradigm.”

According to Miller’s Los Angeles-focused research, more than 60 percent of the 4 million members of the Catholic archdiocese are Latinos, with an increasing number of Vietnamese and other Asian niche congregations. One of the largest congregations in downtown Los Angeles is the Universal Church, an import from Brazil. In a Presbyterian church near USC, Arabic, Filipino, Spanish, Korean and English congregations all meet on the same campus. As the population of Los Angeles grows, so does the number of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Mayans.

“These things simply did not happen 30 years ago,” says the professor, who recently co-authored the study, “Immigrant Religion in the City of Angels,” with Jon Miller, a USC College sociology professor, and Grace Dyrness, associate director of CRCC.

Miller says a more apt description of religion’s influence in the 21st century is segmented assimilation, where religious institutions serve the dual function of preserving national identity and aiding assimilation.

Certainly, this trend can be easily spotted in Los Angeles, were many religious services are no longer spoken in one language, but often three or four.

“To accommodate immigrants, religious institutions are altering their worship styles, creating multiple congregations inside the walls of a single church building and seeking new ways to build solidarity,” says Miller.

The new Pew grant will build on research like Miller’s. As part of the grant, the CRCC will establish three multidisciplinary working groups, each composed of 15-20 USC faculty and graduate students, and led by a senior College faculty member. The topics include: religion and immigration, led by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, associate sociology professor; faith-based community development and organizing, led by Donald Miller and Dyrness; and the interaction of religion and culture, convened by Jon Miller, a 34-year veteran of USC.

“At a time when the role of faith-based initiatives in addressing the deep-seated social problems has become a subject of intense national debate, university research is needed to shed light on these often heated discussions,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Religion Program at Pew.

Researchers in the religion and immigration group work to further understand the impact immigration has on the religious tapestry of contemporary America, the effect religious institutions have on community problems and how new congregations in urban American serve the personal needs of immigrants.

“Immigration is perhaps the most significant source of social change in contemporary America,” says Hondagneu-Sotelo, who studies undocumented Mexican immigration to the United States, Latino labor in Los Angeles, and women, gender and immigration.

“So much can be learned about our current culture by understanding how religion is woven into the experiences of immigrants. What we learn through our studies here in Los Angeles can be applied throughout the world.”

To better understand the role religion plays in urban society, the faith-based community development and organizing group collaborates with researchers from sociology, anthropology, religion, the School of Policy, Planning and Development, and the School of Social Work. Through projects and discussions, scholars study how faith-based involvement in communities can overcome the complex challenges that confront cities throughout the world. For instance, the group researches how religion can alleviate problems—health care and housing, for example—that arise from the constraints of poverty.

The Pew grant also provides funding for guest lectures, conferences and publications, as well as funding to support graduate- and undergraduate-level research projects. This is the first time grants have been made available for undergraduate students pursuing religious studies research in the College.

“The College is committed to providing students with a broadly based education that prepares them to be wise and effective citizens,” says College Dean of Academic Programs Sarah Pratt. “Our students are not only well prepared, but eager to reach beyond the classroom in their understanding of the world. Undergraduate research and a close connection with faculty play a key role in this kind of education.”

The students funded by the Pew grant for 2002-2003 include:

• Deepika Bains, who works with professor Jane Naomi Iwamura to assess the institutions and practices that shape the religious beliefs of South Asian American Hindus;
• Rigoberto Garcia, who collaborates with professor Donna Spruijt-Metz to research religion and health-seeking behaviors among adolescents in Los Angeles public schools;
• Stephen Hood, who—along with professors Bruce Zuckerman and Lynn Swartz Dodd—explores the cultural background of biblical text inscriptions;
• Yeghig Keshishian, who—with professor Martin Krieger—photographs Armenian churches in the Los Angeles region;
• Billie Christine Ortiz, Maeve St. Leger and Klealy Pineda, who work with professor Hondagneu-Sotelo to study the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights;
• Brian Stewart, who works with professor Lee Cerling to design a survey that examines attitudes toward religiosity in American universities;
• Maria Itzel Siegrist, who—with professor Maria Elena Martinez—researches the role of women in the Mexican Inquisition;
• Nilay Vora, who works with professor Iwamura to study South Asian American students and the ideas of Gandhi; and
• Rebecca Zak, who—along with professor Richard Wightman Fox—examines the cultural image of Jesus in American culture following the publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

For more information, visit the CRCC Web site at www.usc.edu/crcc.