Overview:
The end of the nineteenth century brought the growing visibility of Eastern religions in the United States. As ethnic creations that came with Eastern peoples, these religions united the ordinary and the extraordinary in traditional religious practices. As export religions for mainstream American converts, they gave the extraordinary to Westerners who were seeking "otherness." Both in ethnic and export forms, Eastern religions strengthened the boundaries separating their adherents from mainstream Americans and at the same time contributed to a culture of religious expansionism.
When we make Europe and the Atlantic coast the vantage point, from Nearer East came the religion of Eastern Orthodoxy, a major branch of Christianity that claimed to stand with the major faiths in the United States. Traditionally organized in self-governing local churches, the Orthodox strived for "right" belief and worship, giving expression to their desire for both in their iconic theology and mystical spirituality. From the Middle East came Islam with Arab Muslims and other immigrants as well as converts from, especially, the African-American community. Following the strict monotheism of Muhammad, Muslims inherited a program of religious action in the Five Pillars of their faith. Meanwhile, the new religion of Baha'i, an outgrowth of Persian Islamic culture, made its presence felt in the United States.
From Farther East came Hinduism and Buddhism in both traditional and newer variants. Both religions offered followers spiritual paths through specialized forms of knowledge (yoga, meditation), through "churches" supporting action in the world, and through devotion. Movements linked to Hinduism included the Vedanta Society, the Self-Realization Fellowship, Transcendental Meditation, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and many more. Buddhist presence was felt in organizations like the Buddhist Churches of America, in various forms of Japanese Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in Nichiren Shoshu, and in other movements as well. Finally, new East-West combinative religions, such as, in one example, the Healthy-Happy-Holy Organization, joined charismatic leaders and mystical techniques with a sense of an impending new age, while religious combinationism also existed as a generalized habit of mind. Ministering to ethnic strangers in the United States, Eastern religions -- like the metaphysical movements -- provided American converts with mental homesteads to replace homes and communities often missing in their ordinary lives.
We can learn from the religions of the Nearer, Middle, and Farther East in the late twentieth century. They enable us to see more clearly how numerous the many really are and how expansive the religious culture is. When we view the religions of the United States in this light, the mainstream seems to dissolve into thousands of smaller currents. If Easterners, who were foreigners, were more at home in this land than they knew, it was because "otherness" was a common feature of life in the United States.
This statement is underlined by the fact that, in the United States,
geography itself marked off areas that were "other." A different
landscape meant, for many, a different regional culture and a different
regional religion. Indeed, Easterners had many friends in their "otherness,"
some of them in the mountain hollows of Southern Appalachia, where, as we
will see in the next chapter, there was a flourishing regional religion
-- but also one that illustrated religious contraction.