Negotiating Continuity: Family and Religious Socialization for Asian Americans

Religious Diversity and Community VolunteerismAmong Asian Americans

ELAINE HOWARD ECKLUNDJERRY Z. PARK

We examine whether religious membership and participation foster community volunteerism among a religiouslydiverse group of Asian Americans. We use data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS), theonly data set that contains both a large, national sample of Asian Americans and detailed questions on religious andcivic participation. Asian-American Protestants, Catholics, and adherents of non-Christian religions are involvedin community volunteerism to varying degrees. Surprisingly, however, fewer Hindus and Buddhists volunteerwhen compared to the nonaffiliated. We use these results to propose theoretical concepts that take into accountthe impact of a religion’s structure as well as the double-minority status faced by nonwhite and non-ChristianAsian Americans on the likelihood of volunteering. Our findings indicate that accepted predictors of communityvolunteerism may operate differently among new nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the general U.S.population; this provides building blocks for future research on religion and civic participation among nonwhiteand non-Christian populations.

INTRODUCTION

With the current religious and racial transformation of the United States, the study of Americancivic life warrants the inclusion of new populations. Much of the change in U.S. demographics is asa result of the “new immigration” (ca. mid-1960s to mid-1990s), which has increased the numberand diversity of nonwhite racial minorities as well as the number of non-Christian religions inthe country. Where American religion was once almost exclusively Western Judeo Christianity,it now includes non-Christian religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam (Wuthnow andHackett 2003). American Muslims nearly outnumber Jews, congregating in an estimated 3,000mosques (Ostling 2001). And some researchers report the U.S. presence of at least 4 millionAmerican Buddhists (Numrich 2000).1

Both religion and race are often closely intertwined with community volunteerism, the domi-nant form of U.S. civic involvement (Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000). Little research, however,specifically examines the various ways in which the increasing presence of non-Christian reli-gions and nonwhite racial groups will shape the future of American civic life. With data resultingfrom the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS) we are able, for the first time,to explore the relationship between religious involvement and community volunteerism amongAsian Americans, an important yet understudied population. Here we ask what factors influenceAsian-American community involvement and focus specifically on religiosity, a dominant influ-ence on civic participation in the general population (Putnam 2000). We find that both Catholicand Protestant Asian Americans volunteer more than the nonreligious, but surprisingly, Asian-American Buddhists and Hindus actually volunteer less than those with no religious affiliation.In addition, contrary to studies of the white American population, gender, education, and income

Correspondence should be addressed to Elaine Howard Ecklund, Department of Sociology at the University at Buffalo,SUNY, 430 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY, 14260.Elaine Howard Ecklund is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, 430 Park Hall, Buffalo,NY. E-mail: [email protected] Z. Park is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Baylor University, One Bear Pl. 97326, Department of Sociology,Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798. E-mail: jerry [email protected]

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2007) 46(2):233–244

234 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

are not significant influences on volunteering for this population. In the conclusion we proposea theoretical model that takes into account current research on religion and civic participation aswell as that on human capital, arguing that some Asian Americans face a double-minority status asboth non-Protestants and nonwhites. This status may influence their ability to link with Americanvolunteer organizations.

RELIGION, RACE, AND CIVIC PARTICIPATION

Religion and community volunteerism have a connected, although complex, relationship(Becker and Dhingra 2001).2 Because of low sample sizes, studies of religion’s influence onvolunteerism for members of American non-Christian religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism,and Islam, as well as nonwhite Americans within Christianity are largely absent from mostanalyses of religion and civic participation.3 Since Asian Americans are a fast growing Censusand politically defined U.S. racial group, they are a centrally important population to study in orderto gain a better understanding of American civic life (Barnes and Bennett 2002; Espiritu 1992;Lien, Conway, and Wong 2003). In addition, they form the majority of the non-Christian worldreligions in America, and a significant number belong to the two dominant forms of AmericanChristianity, Catholicism and Protestantism (Min and Kim 2002).

Only a few ethnographic studies have investigated the relationship between religion andcommunity volunteering for Asian Americans. Carolyn Chen’s study of an immigrant TaiwaneseProtestant church and an immigrant Taiwanese Buddhist temple (Chen 2002) and Elaine HowardEcklund’s study of second-generation Korean Americans in monoethnic and multiethnic churches(Ecklund 2005a, 2006) both find that the distinct religious discourses of these different types ofreligious organizations change the meaning and form of community volunteering. While there maybe variation in the types and forms of voluntary activity, this initial evidence suggests a positiverelationship between religion and volunteering for Asian Americans irrespective of religion.

Research on volunteering reveals that individuals, particularly those who participate activelyin religious communities, generally have relationships with others who are demographicallysimilar (Wuthnow 2003; Wuthnow, Hackett, and Hsu 2004). Work on community participationhas shown that ethnic minority religious groups may not be asked to volunteer as frequently aslargely white groups (Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000; Wilson and Musick 1997). Consequently,Asian Americans who are members of minority religions may face a double-minority status asboth religious and racial outsiders. On one hand, because other groups of Americans do not thinkof them as typical volunteers, Asian Americans may not be asked to volunteer as often as whiteChristians. On the other hand, this status could act to foster civic integration as non-ChristianAsian Americans seek to prove their patriotism by being especially involved in American civiclife.

THE ASIAN-AMERICAN CASE

Asian Americans are an ideal case to study the impact of religious membership and participa-tion on community volunteerism for members of diverse religious groups. They are a fast growingCensus and politically defined U.S. racial group (Espiritu 1992; Okamoto 2003). Between 1990and 2000, the Asian-American population experienced between 48 and 72 percent growth andreached a total estimated population of between 10.2 and 11.9 million, making Asian Americansthe fastest growing group of new Americans (U.S. Census 2000). And Asian Americans form adiverse population, including both the native born and immigrants.

For Asian Americans, loosely defined as a racial group, the double-minority status is espe-cially significant. For example, the current interest in “new religions” in America has typicallyfocused on three major non-Christian world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam), all ofwhich are dominated by members of nations on the Asian continent.

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERISM 235

There have been few comparative studies, however, that examine the impact of differentreligious traditions on community volunteerism for this group (Chen 2002). What remains unan-swered is whether religion merely provides resources internal to specific ethnic Asian-American(and mostly immigrant) communities or whether religious participation facilitates active engage-ment with other sectors of American society (Ecklund 2005b). Addressing this question mayprovide some insight into the extent and significance of religion’s mediating influence on thebroader civic integration of nonwhite communities.

By studying Asian Americans, we focus on a nonwhite group whose influence on Americancivic life is rarely considered. Different from previous research, our concern here is with examiningAsian Americans as a whole, with an emphasis on Asian Americans as a case of religious diversity.We examine Protestantism and Catholicism to study the influence of religion on civic participationamong the two largest divisions within American Christianity. We consider also the experiences oftwo of the major minority U.S. religions, Buddhism and Hinduism.4 By studying Asian-Americanmembers of non-Christian religions, our analysis offers one of the first glimpses into the worldof groups that are both racial and religious minorities.

Previous research has shown that religious membership and activity for African Americanspromotes civic participation (Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000) and we might expect similarresults among Asian Americans. An important distinction, however, between Asian Americansas a whole and African Americans is the diversity of religious traditions within Asian America.While religion for most African Americans is typically Protestant, religion for Asian Americansencompasses a variety of traditions including Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism,and Islam. To what extent is the impact of religious activity on community volunteerism differentfor members of these religions when compared to Protestants and Catholics? For example, CarolynChen’s comparative case study suggested that Buddhist and Protestant Taiwanese Americansdiffer in the rationale and type of civic participation, but that both groups value volunteering(Chen 2002).

Hypotheses

Based on ethnographic data as well as studies of religion’s influence on volunteering amongthe general population (Wilson and Janoski 1995), we hypothesize, first, that religiously affiliatedAsian Americans will have higher rates of volunteering than nonaffiliated Asian Americans.Second, because of the positive incorporation of many, although certainly not all, Asian Americansinto the economic and educational institutions of American society (Kitano and Daniels 2000),we anticipate that other basic social characteristics such as gender, education, and income willhave the same positive effect on community volunteerism as seen in studies using white Americansamples. Third, given the Christian context of religious life and voluntary experience in the UnitedStates (Wuthnow, Hackett, and Hsu 2004), however, we hypothesize that Protestant and CatholicAsian Americans overall will be more likely to volunteer than Asian-American members ofnon-Christian religions.

DATA, MEASURES, AND METHODS

Analyses are based on the SCCBS, a publicly accessible data set consisting of a two-tiersample of adult Americans conducted late in the year 2000.5 Weighting to adjust for demographicdisparities and responses to income and education level questions produced an overall sample of711 Asian-American respondents for our analyses.6 The survey was a random-digit-dialing phonesurvey and achieved a 29 percent response rate for both community samples and the national sam-ple.7 While this response rate seems low, it is nearly identical to the results of the 2004 survey ex-periment conducted by the Pew Research Center (see http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/211.pdf),where they found very little difference in response to a range of variables between a survey thatresulted in a 27 percent response rate and one that achieved a 51 percent response rate.


We chose to focus specifically on Asian Americans as a group rather than examining specificgroups within Asian America for two central reasons. First, low sample sizes for several Asianethnic groups (e.g., Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, N < 36 each) made statistical tests unresponsiveto possible group differences. Second, we had little theoretical reason to expect ethnic groupdifferences in volunteer rates among Asian Americans.8

The most central weakness of the data set is the inability to compare immigrant and native-born Asian Americans because no question about immigrant status was asked in the SCCBS.Because over 70 percent of Asian Americans living in the United States are foreign born,9 in theconclusion of the article we extrapolate on how the findings presented here may have implicationsfor the influence of immigrants and their children on American religion and civic life.

Despite these drawbacks the SCCBS is the only data set that allows systematic comparisonbetween those with Christian and with non-Christian religious affiliations and is also the onlydata set that allows the possibility of examining religion’s influence on civic participation for alarge, national sample of Asian Americans. These benefits far outweigh its limitations.

Dependent Variable

Community Volunteerism

Community volunteerism is a central form of civic participation in American society andincludes involvement in local communities and neighborhoods (Wilson and Janoski 1995). Ourdependent measure of civic participation from the SCCBS was participation in formal volun-teering organizations. Survey respondents answered a series of questions about participation inneighborhood projects, arts, health, youth, and humanities organizations.10 Given the variety ofways in which volunteering was measured, none of which is more or less correlated with reli-gious practice, we took the sum of these responses and created a dichotomized variable where1 = “volunteered for any of the following organizations” and 0 = “not volunteering for any ofthese.”11

Independent Variables

Religious Participation and Affiliation

Religious measures included six separate indicators of both affiliation and practice: (1) reli-gious worship attendance; (2) religious participation aside from worship; (3) religious financialgiving; (4) religious group membership such as a church, temple, or mosque; (5) religious groupparticipation apart from a worshipping congregation; and (6) religious volunteering. We reducedreligious attendance from a five-point continuum ranging from “never” to “weekly or more” tothree dichotomous variables, where each measure captures a small range of attendance responses,but sustains substantive distinctions. These include: “less often than a few times per year” to “afew times per year”; “once or twice a month” to “almost every week”; and “every week or moreoften.” Religious participation aside from worship was a dichotomous indicator, where 1 = “yes”and 0 = “no.” Religious financial giving was represented by the reported amount the respondentcontributed to his or her local church or other religious causes, ranging from “none” to “morethan $5,000.” We collapsed these responses into a dichotomous measure reflecting “no giving”and “giving.” Religious membership, religious volunteerism, and religious group membership,aside from congregational attendance, were also coded 1 = “yes” and 0 = “no.”

Because the sample size was not large enough to make comparisons between different Protes-tant traditions, we merged all Protestant Christian traditions together (evangelical, mainline, andAfrican American), following a modified version of the scheme developed by Steensland et al.(2000).12 We sustained the Catholic and nonaffiliated categories from the original schema, and


divided the non-Christian religious groups into two major world religions, Buddhism and Hin-duism, with a residual category of all other religions.13

Class and Gender

We included class and gender as control variables within each analysis, two variables that aresignificant predictors of civic participation for other groups of Americans. For example, higherincome and education, taken together as a measure of class, are both strongly correlated withincreased civic participation (Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000; Putnam 2000; Smith 1994).Further, women are consistently more likely than men to volunteer (Wilson and Musick 1997).In this study, gender was defined dichotomously (1 = “female”). We determined class accordingto the respondent’s highest level of attained education and present family household income,measuring education using four dichotomous variables each representing the highest reportedlevel of education by the respondent: “high school or less”; “some college”; “college–university”;and “graduate/professional degree.” Income was measured using six self-reported measures ofincome to indicate household income: “less than $20K”; “20–30K”; “30–50K”; “50–75K”; “75–100K”; and “100K or more.”

To analyze the data, we first conducted a series of significance tests comparing the variouslevels of civic participation and distribution of religious resources for respondents of each religioustradition. Next we applied logistic regression techniques to determine the likelihood that eachindependent measure influenced civic participation in the overall sample. In the analyses we firstpresent the independent effect of each measure, followed by one model showing only the effectsof the control variables. Each of the remaining six models includes these control measures whileadding in each measure of religiosity.

FINDINGS

Religious Affiliations

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for overall participation and religious practiceaccording to religious affiliation. Catholic Asian Americans were the largest group of religiousaffiliates, comprising about 24 percent of the sample, followed by the other religious groups indescending order: Protestants (20 percent); Buddhists (11 percent); and Hindus (about 9 percent).The other religious Asian Americans together comprise another 7 percent, and the nonaffiliatedwere the largest share of the sample at nearly 29 percent. These figures are in relative agreementwith Jasso et al.’s (2003) pilot study of recent immigrant Americans, which included a subset ofAsian Americans (figures available upon request) (Jasso et al. 2003; Cadge and Ecklund 2006).

When analyzing predictors of the dependent variable, community volunteerism, Asian Amer-icans of various religious affiliations report different rates of participation. While 51 percent of thesample reported having participated in at least one nonreligious volunteer organization, Catholic,Protestant, and “other religion” Asian Americans reported higher participation levels than theaverage (54, 69, and 65 percent, respectively) while Hindu, Buddhist, and nonreligiously affili-ated Asian Americans fell below the average (40, 26, and 45 percent, respectively). Overall, ouranalyses reveal that the two Christian religions have greater civic participation levels comparedto the non-Christian religious traditions. Most notably, the members of the two non-Christianreligions, Hinduism and Buddhism, volunteered less than the nonaffiliated.14

On most measures of religious practice, Protestant Asian Americans reported the highestlevels among all religious groups in this sample. This may reflect a particular bias in the surveytoward asking questions about the types of practices, such as congregational attendance, that aremore prevalent among Protestants. This issue aside, it bears noting that the majority of Asian-American Protestants and Catholics reported religious service attendance at least once per month


TABLE 1ASIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS, COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERISM,

AND RELIGIOUS RESOURCES (PERCENT “YES”), SOCIAL CAPITALBENCHMARK SURVEY 2000

Other Non-Chi-Sq Protestant Catholic Hindu Buddhist Religion affiliated Total

Percent of sample 20.0 23.8 9.2 10.5 7.3 29.1 100.0Volunteered for at least 1 org. ∗∗∗ 69.0 54.4 40.0 25.7 65.4 44.9 51.1Age (Mean) ∗∗ 37.8 36.4 34.0 35.2 29.6 32.5 34.7Female ∗∗∗ 55.6 57.4 47.0 59.5 42.3 38.2 49.6Education ∗∗∗

High school or less 25.2 18.0 10.6 33.8 28.8 15.5 20.5Some college/associates 35.7 48.5 22.7 35.1 36.5 34.0 37.0BA 21.7 25.1 18.2 12.2 19.2 27.7 22.7Grad/prof. degree 17.5 8.4 48.5 18.9 15.4 22.8 19.8

Income ∗

Less than 20K 5.1 10.7 2.0 21.8 14.9 13.9 11.420–30K 14.3 9.4 12.2 12.7 12.8 13.3 12.330–50K 25.5 24.8 22.4 27.3 34.0 21.1 24.650–75K 16.3 22.8 22.4 10.9 23.4 13.9 17.875–100K 16.3 14.1 14.3 10.9 4.3 21.1 15.6100K+ 22.4 18.1 26.5 16.4 10.6 16.7 18.3

Religious attendance ∗∗∗

A few times a year or less 22.4 29.0 51.6 80.6 39.6 — 38.5Once per month to almost

weekly32.9 27.2 35.5 19.4 32.1 — 29.3

Weekly or more often 44.8 43.8 12.9 0.0 28.3 — 32.3Religious participation

(% yes)∗∗∗ 60.8 32.0 34.8 13.5 19.2 — 36.5

Religious giving (%yes) ∗∗ 71.0 82.2 57.1 71.4 70.2 — 72.8Religious organization

membership (% yes)∗∗∗ 69.6 56.5 33.8 18.9 41.5 — 50.0

Mem. relig-affil. org. (% yes) ∗∗∗ 33.1 16.6 0.0 1.4 25.0 — 17.8Religious volunteering

(% yes)∗∗∗ 32.2 22.5 12.3 4.1 23.1 — 21.3

∗p < 0.05, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗∗p < 0.001.

or more (about 78 and 71 percent, respectively). In contrast, most Asian-American Hindus andBuddhists reported religious attendance of a few times a year or less. These differences continuein religious participation outside of worship services: about 61 percent of the Protestants reportedparticipating, whereas all other groups reported no more than 35 percent participating. About 82percent of Catholics reported some amount of financial giving to religious causes or organizations,the highest of all groups. Hindu respondents had the lowest proportion reporting any giving at57 percent. About 71 percent of Protestants and Buddhists reported religiously-based financialgiving. Membership in a religious organization was the highest among Protestant Asian Americans(almost 70 percent), followed by Catholics (57 percent), Hindus (34 percent), and Buddhists (19percent). Few respondents of any religious group with the exception of Protestants (33 percent)reported membership in a religious organization outside of their congregation. About 17 percentof Catholics and less than 2 percent of Buddhists and Hindus reported the same. Volunteering


for a religious organization was also fairly low. Almost a third of Protestant Asian Americansindicated religiously-based volunteering, whereas less than 24 percent of any other group reportedsuch volunteering.

Human Capital Factors

A few differences among religious traditions appear when analyzing the independent variablesof age, gender, education, and income, variables that are shown by other research to have thegreatest influence on volunteering. Buddhist, Catholic, and Protestant Asian Americans had ahigher percentage of women (60, 57, and 56 percent, respectively) compared to the percent ofwomen in the overall sample (about 50 percent). Members of the “other religions” group and thenonaffiliated had a much lower percentage of women (42 and 38 percent, respectively).

In terms of education, the distribution across levels of degree attainment was roughly similar.With the exception of Hindu respondents, most groups had the largest proportion report some col-lege education. This was also true for the nonaffiliated. Nearly one-half of the Hindu respondentsreported attaining a graduate or professional degree, however.

Income distribution presented a similar picture with respect to the religious groups. Themajority of most religious subgroups reported an income in the middle range (from $30K to$75K). But while Protestant and Hindu Asian Americans reported a household income in themiddle range, between 22 and 27 percent report an income of “100K or more.” In other wordsa sizeable portion of Asian-American Protestants and Hindus have the kinds of human capitalresources that foster civic participation in the general population. Hindu Asian Americans notablyhave more human capital with their combined higher education and income levels when comparedto the general population.

In Table 2 we show the independent effects of a variety of measures that often influencecommunity volunteerism. Surprisingly, age, gender, and education, all factors that influence thelikelihood of volunteering for the general population, generally have no significant relationshipto community volunteerism among Asian Americans in this sample. These independent effectsare fairly stable across subsequent models when we include a variety of religious involvementmeasures. These findings are surprising given that comparative studies analyzing these measuresamong white Americans generally show a significant and positive relationship to civic partici-pation. Our second hypothesis is therefore refuted, since age, gender, and education do not havethe same relationship to community volunteerism for this population as they do for the generalpopulation. The only exception to this pattern was income and here we found only marginalsupport as the significance of increases in income changed when various religious controls wereadded. As expected, in bivariate modeling higher income levels were usually associated with ahigher likelihood of volunteering (except for those in the middle category earning between $30and $50K). While this effect was stable after introducing other controls and religious tradition, in-come was no longer significant when accounting for religious participation, religious giving, andmembership. In short, the most consistent group along income levels was that reporting earningsin the highest bracket ($100K or more); among these Asian Americans only at very high levelsof income attainment is income associated with an increased likelihood of volunteering.

Religious Affiliation

When examining religious affiliation, we found that Protestant Asian Americans were mostlikely to have participated in a voluntary organization relative to the nonaffiliated. Buddhist AsianAmericans, however, were significantly less likely to volunteer relative to the nonaffiliated. InTable 2, Model 1, when we control for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics such asage, gender, education, and class, we find that Protestant and “other” religious affiliation increasethe likelihood of nonreligious voluntary group participation among Asian Americans.


TABLE 2ODDS RATIOS OF ASIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERISM:

SOCIAL CAPITAL BENCHMARK SURVEY 2000 (FULL SAMPLE)

Independent Model Model Model Model Model Model ModelEffects 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Age 1.00 0.97 0.93 0.91∗ 0.98 0.93 0.93 0.93Agea 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00Gender: Female 1.10 1.06 1.44 1.44 1.23 1.41 1.40 1.41Class: Educationb

2 years of college 1.54 1.49 1.71 1.36 1.57 1.72 1.87 1.694 years of college 1.06 0.97 1.22 1.06 1.13 1.25 1.35 0.85Post-BA 1.54 1.66 1.84 1.50 1.91 2.07 2.18 1.71

Incomea

20–30K 2.27∗ 2.61∗ 1.35 1.03 1.33 1.08 1.12 1.2330–50K 1.67 1.71 1.27 1.36 0.90 1.20 1.15 1.5450–75K 1.92∗ 2.06∗ 2.51∗ 2.05 1.69 2.03 2.12 2.0975—100K 2.11∗ 2.18∗ 2.05 1.55 1.82 1.65 1.73 2.13100K+ 3.31∗∗∗ 3.65∗∗∗ 3.16∗ 2.40 2.18 2.49 2.59∗ 3.06∗

Religious traditionc

Protestant 2.73∗∗∗ 3.60∗∗∗ 1.68 1.12 2.14 1.61 1.80 1.22Catholic 1.48 1.48 0.66 0.62 0.66 0.67 0.67 0.65Hindu 0.83 0.63 0.30∗∗ 0.27∗∗ 0.27∗∗ 0.33∗ 0.28∗∗ 0.41Buddhist 0.43∗∗ 0.54 0.25∗∗ 0.27∗∗ 0.25∗∗ 0.28∗∗ 0.23∗∗∗ 0.32∗

Other religion 2.36∗∗ 2.15∗

Religious resourcesReligious attendanced

Once/mo. to almostweekly

1.96∗∗ 1.68

Once a week ormore

1.31 1.09

Religiousorganizationparticipation

2.85∗∗∗ 4.35∗∗∗

Religious giving 2.26∗∗∗ 2.10∗

Religiousorganizationmembership

1.72∗∗∗ 1.56

Religious association 2.09∗∗∗ 0.74Religious voluntarism 22.39∗∗∗ 25.57∗∗∗

Constant 0.87 3.23 6.21∗ 1.24 3.79 4.65 2.65Nagelkerke R2 0.16 0.22 0.29 0.24 0.22 0.21 0.41N 568 389 391 352 390 389 390∗p < 0.05, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗∗p < 0.001.a“Less than 20K” excluded.b“High school or less” excluded.c“Other religion” refers to other non-Christian religions not already specified. Comparison group is thenonaffiliated in Model 1 only. Subsequent models use “Other religion” as the comparison group.d“Attend a few times a year or less” excluded.


In Models 2 through 7, the comparison group is the residual category of Asian Americanswho subscribe to other religions. In these models only Buddhist and Hindu respondents weresignificantly different from Asian Americans in the “other religion” category. With the exceptionof controlling for religious voluntarism, both of these groups were significantly less likely tovolunteer.

Surprisingly, in Model 2, religious attendance had no significant effect in changing the likeli-hood of civic voluntarism relative to nominal attendance. In Model 3, among religiously affiliatedAsian Americans, religious participation apart from worship services increased the likelihood ofvolunteering. In Model 4, religious giving also significantly increased the likelihood of nonreli-gious volunteering for religiously affiliated Asian Americans. In Model 5 in Table 2, religiousmembership had no significant effect in predicting the likelihood of nonreligious volunteering.Similarly, participation in a religious group apart from a house of worship (Model 6) had no effecton nonreligious volunteering. In Model 7, religious volunteering greatly increased the likelihoodof nonreligious volunteering, and only Buddhist affiliation in this model significantly decreasedthe likelihood of volunteering.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

It is clear that religious and racial diversity in American society is increasing. Yet, we knowlittle about whether greater diversity encourages or discourages social integration, members ofdifferent groups working together to build the broader civic institutions of American society.These findings move toward answering this larger question by exploring the relationship betweenreligion and community volunteering for Asian Americans, a religiously diverse, nonwhite groupthat is typically ignored in studies of community participation.

Surprisingly, a higher percentage of nonaffiliated Asian Americans volunteer when comparedwith Hindu and Buddhist Asian Americans, thus refuting our first hypothesis that religious AsianAmericans would overall be more likely to volunteer. In addition, Asian Americans in the “otherreligions” category volunteer more than Hindus, Buddhists, and Catholics. Therefore, when weuse Asian-American religious “others” as the comparison group (e.g., Models 2–7) we shouldexpect that having a Hindu, Buddhist, or Catholic affiliation would decrease the likelihood ofvolunteering. Only Buddhist and Hindu Asian Americans, however, appeared significantly lesslikely to volunteer when compared with members of the “other religions.”

One possible explanation is the organizational nature of Hinduism and Buddhism. Membersof these two religions are not as likely to encounter one another in their houses of worshipgiven the more individual nature of their practices (Kurien 2001), meaning that group-basedpressures to volunteer may not occur as often for members of these two religions. Prema Kurienand other scholars who examine Hindu community life, in particular, suggest that such formsof religion are particularly vibrant among Asian immigrants in the United States (Kurien 1999;Kurien 2001). Our analyses reveal low levels of membership, participation, and attendance amongAsian-American Hindus, however. Future research might consider such findings as importantevidence that measures of religious participation used in current studies of religiosity are notaccurately capturing the diversity of religious forms among Hindus and other members of non-Christian religions. If some non-Christian religions are found to be less organizationally-basedthan are Christian religions in the United States this would perhaps discourage links with formalvolunteer organizations; volunteer organizations mayfind it difficult to link with the semistructuredreligious environments of some non-Christian religions.

It is also possible that Asian-American Hindus and Buddhists may actually face a “double-minority” status, as members of a minority racial group and a minority religion. For mem-bers of these traditions, in addition to having lower levels of religious involvement according tothe indicators of religiosity used in the SCCBS, their practices may not “translate” very easilyinto voluntary contributions to the larger community. They may face even more difficulty than


African-American Christians—who have a single-minority status—in being asked to volunteer(Musick et al. 2000). We should point out here that, in part based on increasing immigration,Protestantism is no longer a numerical majority, a demographic reality that may change the cul-tural reality of what it means to be a religious person in the United States (Smith and Kim 2005).These kinds of nuances cannot be uncovered with the existing data but certainly point the wayfor future research.

Neither of the previous explanations account for the lack of participation among CatholicAsian Americans, however. Perhaps Catholic Asian-American communities presently face in-ternal concerns that detract from additional service outside the boundaries of the parish. Smithand Denton (2005) have argued that religious socialization and education is lacking in Catholicparishes. If this finding is applicable to nonwhite Catholic populations, it may also suggest thatCatholic teachings of service to the wider community are not well conveyed to Asian-AmericanCatholics.

With minor exceptions, these results do not support our second hypothesis that human capitalfactors such as income and education would have the same influence on volunteering amongAsian Americans as among the general population (Wilson and Musick 1997). In particular,Hindu Asian Americans, who in this sample had a greater pool of human capital as a group whencompared with other religiously affiliated Asian Americans, were actually less likely to volunteer.Although these data do not allow us to compare immigrant and nonimmigrant Asian Americans,it is probable, given the high percentage of immigrants in Asian America (especially the highnumbers of immigrants among Asian-American Hindus and Buddhists; see Jasso et al. 2003),that Asian Americans in the SCCBS were largely immigrant. It may be that immigrant factors,such as an inability to speak English fluently, mitigate human capital factors like high income,leading to Asian-American immigrants being less likely to volunteer than those in the generalpopulation.15 Further research should more systematically test this hypothesis.

These results point the way for future studies to account for greater religious diversity withmore representative samples of small but growing minority religious groups. Including importantdemographic information such as immigrant generation and ethnic enclave proximity will benefitscholars and community leaders in understanding the contexts that religious and nonreligiousAsian Americans inhabit and how these contexts enable or discourage civic participation. Suchprojects should also examine what kinds of identities and forms of participation lead to civicintegration for Asian Americans, particularly for the growing numbers who are members of non-Christian religions. Scholars must think not only about the benefits these new religions providetheir members, but also about the willingness of other organizations within civil society to formbridges with members of new religions. As we have demonstrated here, researchers should notassume emerging diverse communities will simply fit the models of civic participation foundamong other groups. Rather, the diversity in forms of participation among non-Christian religionsmight generate different kinds of volunteer habits when compared with Christian religions. As theAmerican population continues to become more diverse, it is all the more pressing to understandthe complex influence of religion, race, and ethnicity on civic participation and the consequentdevelopment of the American community.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Early versions of this article were presented at the 2003 Annual Meetings of the Society for the Scientific Studyof Religion and the 2004 American Sociological Association Annual Meetings. We express our thanks to Monique R.Payne, Eugene Walls, and Robert Wuthnow, who read and commented on earlier drafts.

NOTES

1. Care should be exerted when estimating the number of individuals in minority religious groups. There are very fewsurveys that specifically examine the percentage of individuals in the general population that adhere to a minority


religion. Researchers who make such extrapolations often do so on the basis of very small numbers of surveyrespondents. See, for example, Jasso et al. (2003).

2. In general, participating in a religious community increases the likelihood of volunteering in one’s local community.Yet, with respect to religious identification, research suggests that Catholic identification discourages communityvolunteerism relative to other Christian traditions (Lam 2002), while conservative Protestant identity encouragesgiving to the poor relative to self-identified Protestants or Catholics (Regnerus, Smith, and Sikkink 1998). Whenaffiliation interacts with religious behavior such as church attendance, studies suggest that church attendance decreasesconservative Protestants’ likelihood of volunteering (Wilson and Janoski 1995; Wuthnow 1999), while it increasesthe likelihood of mainline and Catholic volunteering (Wuthnow 1999). Other work finds that religious affiliation hasno effect on the extent to which churchgoing Protestants volunteer (Park and Smith 2000).

3. Work by Chen (2002), Ecklund (2005a, 2005b), and Wuthnow and Hackett (2003) is notable exceptions to thisstatement.

4. While Judaism is also a significant minority religion in the United States, the SCCBS sampled only one Asian-American Jewish respondent, making it impossible to include Judaism as a distinct religious group in our analyses.Further, although Islam is a growing religion in the United States, there were not enough Muslims (N = 19) in theSCCBS to make individual analyses of this population possible.

5. The first tier included a random, representative sample of adult Americans and the second tier included a larger setof respondents from 30 communities in the United States, yielding a complete total of about 29,000 respondents.

6. An additional strength of the data set included interviews with some Chinese respondents in Cantonese.7. See Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey Executive Summary, available at http://www.cfsv.org/

communitysurvey/docs/exec summ.pdf, for a further discussion of survey method.8. In earlier analyses, we conducted bivariate logistic regression using ethnic categories alone and in combination with

religious affiliation and found that Vietnamese and Cambodian respondents were somewhat less likely to volunteer,but when considered together with religious affiliation, had no effect on the dependent variable (figures availableupon request).

9. According to our analyses of data from the 2000 Census, there are 31 million foreign born in the United States,of whom 26.4 percent are from Asia (8.2 million). The total Asian population in the United States is 11.9 million.Therefore, about 70 percent of the Asian population in the United States in 2000 was foreign born.

10. The specific question in the SCCBS read: “I’m going to list some of the types of organizations where people dovolunteer work. Just tell me whether you have done any volunteer work for each in the past twelve months:” (1) forhealth care or fighting particular diseases, (2) for school or youth programs, (3) for any organizations to help thepoor or elderly, (4) for any arts or cultural organizations, (5) for any neighborhood or civic group. We also includedresponses to the following question: “Which of the following things have you done in the past twelve months: workedon a community project?” All response categories consisted of either “yes” or “no” with additional codes for thosewho volunteered “don’t know” or refused to answer.

11. In an earlier analysis of the sum total of these measures we noted that responses were skewed to the left such thata large spike occurred for “volunteering for one organization” and dropped precipitously afterward. This created anonnormal curve, which violated OLS assumptions that the dependent variable be normally distributed. To addressthis we reduced these responses to a simple dichotomous measure.

12. This scheme collapses the numerous denominational responses into larger traditions for ease of comparability whilemaintaining substantive sociological and theological differences among faith traditions (Steensland et al. 2000). Thisblunt approach at merging Protestant Asian Americans together may suppress any potential differences betweenvolunteering for mainline Protestant and evangelical Protestant Asian Americans. To date, no survey has been ableto document the actual distribution of Asian Americans by Protestant tradition, but ethnographic studies suggest thatmost Protestant Asian Americans are evangelical (Min and Kim 2002).

13. We recognize the concern of some that ethnic differences are coupled with religious affiliations based on a confluence ofhistorical, cultural, and political factors. In analyses not presented here we explored the degree of association betweenreligion and ethnicity and found only a few instances of significant overlap. For example, Muslim respondents (N =19) identify as either Asian Indian (21 percent) or some “other Asian” nationality apart from the major ones availablein the SCCBS (79 percent). Hindu respondents (N = 65) surprisingly were not largely Asian Indian (34 percent) butrather of some “other Asian” ethnicity (64 percent). These analyses suggest that there is only a minor associationbetween religion and ethnicity and that the overlap is not an overwhelming one-to-one correlation between thesereligions and Asian-Indian ethnicity. The low count of Muslim respondents did not allow us to meaningfully exploreethnic differences between Muslims and Hindus.

14. Because of small sample sizes, these findings should be viewed with caution.15. This insight was suggested, in part, by an anonymous reviewer.

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Documents

Negotiating Continuity: Family and Religious Socialization for Asian Americans