Getting Saved in America: Religious Conversion to Evangelical Protestantism among Taiwanese Immigrants

Team Members/Contributors

Carolyn E. Chen University of California, Berkeley Contact Me

About this dissertation fellowship

Ibis dissertation addresses bow immigrants use religious symbols and meanings to reconstruct and reorder their lives in the face of changes resulting from migration. Specifically, it examines the conversion of Taiwanese immigrants to Evangelical Protestantism through an ethnographic study of the Taiwanese immigrant community in Los Angeles. Three different groups of Taiwanese immigrants are systematically compared-- non-religious, Buddhist and Christian converts. This study looks at three aspects of religious life for immigrants: (I) the contexts in which religious choices are made (II) the processes of conversion and (III) the consequences of Evangelical Protestantism in their concrete daily lives. In investigating the conversion of Taiwanese immigrants to Evangelical Protestantism, the author demonstrates the inadequacies of existing approaches to religious change and offers an explanation that takes into account the role of religious meanings. It is argued that Taiwanese immigrants arc converting to Evangelical Protestantism because it successfully brings a meaning and order that is consonant with their lives as new Americans. In addition to contributing to the general knowledge of contemporary religious experiences of America’s immigrants, this study raises challenging questions to existing theories of immigrant religion and American Evangelicalism.

Image Title Year Type Contributor(s) Other Info
  "Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigrants Converting to Evangelical Christianity and Buddhism" 2002 Dissertation Carolyn E. Chen
  Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Conversion 2008 Dissertation Book Carolyn E. Chen