Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation

11. “I Would Pay Homage, Not Go All ‘Bling’”: Vietnamese American Youth Reflect on Family and Religious Life

222 > 223 is intimately tied to a dynamic and adaptive family life and folk tradition. The following reflections also illuminate the range and diversity of religious participation among the Vietnamese American second generation, from informants who consider themselves “very religious” to those who identify as “not religious at all.” I contend that a focus on popular religious practice can reveal the dynamic and adaptive nature of the social and spiritual roles of families and the religious establishment. Furthermore, the following personal narratives reveal the development of an autonomous spiritual orientation among several second-generation practitioners. I focus on a discrete sample of Vietnamese youth who are enrolled in or just graduated from college and one couple beginning to raise young sons. For the participants on the verge of graduating college, this is a particularly interesting liminal time. Many of them are reflecting for the first time on the customs of their natal homes, formulating their own unique ideas about spirituality and the religious traditions they find relevant to their own lives. Their interpretations of family-based religious life offer valuable insights into what religious practices may look like for the next generation of Vietnamese Americans. I first outline a brief overview of the diversity of religious beliefs that have historically come to shape the religious orientations of Vietnamese Americans. I then outline some scholarly approaches to studying the second generation and then move on to the main focus of the chapter: reflections and narratives about religious life among these participants. Religious Orientations Although Vietnam is generally considered a Buddhist country, scholars agree that most practitioners, especially in the rural areas, adhere to a locally specific , kinship-based form of ancestor veneration.2 The formal religious practice of Buddhism is based primarily in the urban centers and was introduced to Vietnam during one thousand years of Chinese colonization beginning around 200 BC (Rutledge 1985; Rambo 2005, 92). Despite countless pagodas and temples, most Buddhist-related practices remain informal and integrated into various domestic ancestral veneration practices. Roman Catholicism, a much more organized religious institution, gained influence with the uppermiddle class during the French occupation in the 17th century, and Roman Catholics make up about 10 percent of Vietnam’s population (Rutledge 1985). Historically, the Catholic institution has been scrutinized and persecuted in Vietnam, possibly for “its strong and cohesive organization, its wealth, its self-conscious militancy and above all, its foreign origins and identification with Western colonialism” (Rambo 2005, 90). As a result, a large number of 224 > 225 religious institutions. All these religious influences have given Vietnamese communities in the United States enormous religious breadth and richness. Across the Pacific Ocean in the United States, Vietnamese American religious practitioners inherited this rich and diverse religious history that is associated with a wide range of folk religious practices and formal religious belief systems. Most Vietnamese identify as Buddhists or practice a folk-traditional form of ancestral veneration; Vietnamese Catholics constitute about 20 percent of the total Vietnamese American population (Rutledge 1992, 47; Lien and Carnes 2004, 41). In Houston, Texas, there is a more even distribution ; about 40 percent of the Vietnamese American population identify as Roman Catholic, and 44 percent identify as Buddhists (Klineberg 2004, 252). The religious lives of Vietnamese living abroad, or Viet Kieu, are deeply rooted in this rich religious history. Even so, religious practices are in no way static. Religious practices and beliefs are continually reshaped and tailored to new lifestyles and to a new generation of Vietnamese Americans. Most of the aforementioned cultural and religious traditions are primarily maintained by the first generation of immigrant parents or grandparents. However, what about their children and grandchildren? Will the second generation continue the cultural and religious values and practices of their parents? In the next section, I briefly outline some of the scholarly approaches to studying religion and ethnic identity among the second generation. The Second Generation In the early 20th century, sociologists were very interested in the religious identity of the children of European immigrants. They concluded that the second generation maintained an immigrant culture at home but then encountered a “more valued” English-speaking culture outside of the home. According to these decidedly dominant-culture assimilation theories, second -generation youth internalized an “Americanized” identity and ended up rejecting their immigrant roots, assimilated, and supposedly became more successful and upwardly mobile as a result (Park 1928; Herskovitz 1938; Gordon 1964). Furthermore, according to Herberg...