Typically, scholars approach migrants’ religions as a safeguard of cultural identity, something that connects migrants to their communities of origin. This ethnographic anthology challenges that position by reframing the religious experiences of migrants as a transformative force capable of refashioning narratives of displacement into journeys of spiritual awakening and missionary calling. These essays explore migrants’ motivations in support of an argument that to travel inspires a search for new meaning in religion.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Human Mobility as Engine of Religious Change
- Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S.A. Yeoh
- Section 1 Mobile Religious Practices
- 2 Saving Yogis
- Spiritual Nationalism and the Proselytizing Missions of Global Yoga
- Amanda Lucia
- 3 Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affect within Transnational Networks
- A Case Study of Three Ritual Events of the Xinghua (Henghua) Communities in Singapore
- Kenneth Dean
- 4 Liberalizing the Boundaries
- Reconfiguration of Religious Beliefs and Practice amongst Sri Lankan Immigrants in Australia
- Jagath Bandara Pathirage
- Section 2 Transnational Proselytizing
- 5 From Structural Separation to Religious Incorporation
- A Case Study of a Transnational Buddhist Group in Shanghai, China
- Weishan Huang
- 6 “10/40 Window”
- Naga Missionaries as Spiritual Migrants and the Asian Experience
- Arkotong Longkumer
- 7 Religion, Masculinity, and Transnational Mobility
- Migrant Catholic Men and the Politics of Evangelization
- Ester Gallo
- 8 Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience
- The Free Burma Rangers in Karen State, Myanmar
- Alexander Horstmann
- Section 3 Refashioning Religiosity in the Diaspora
- 9 A Multicultural Church
- Notes on Sri Lankan Transnational Workers and the Migrant Chaplaincy in Italy
- Bernardo E. Brown
- 10 “Bahala Na Ang Diyos”
- The Paradox of Empowerment among Filipino Catholic Migrants in South Korea
- Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor
- 11 Feeling Hindu
- The Devotional Sivaist Esthetic Matrix and the Creation of a Diasporic Hinduism in North Sumatra
- Silvia Vignato
- 12 Afterword
- What Makes Asian Migrants’ Religious Experience Asian?
- Janet Alison Hoskins
- References
- Index
- List of Illustrations
- Figure 2.1 “Shiva is my Om. Boy”: tank top from vendor at Bhakti Fest. Joshua Tree, California, 2013
- Figure 3.1 Demons leap off the stage during a performance of “Mulian Saves His Mother” at the Kiew Lee Tong temple in 2014
- Figure 3.3 The monk Mulian kneels before his mother (in a cangue) before the gates of the Underworld (from a performance of “Mulian Saves His Mother” at the Kiew Lee Tong temple in 2014
- Figure 3.4 Spirit medium and altar associates gather at the end of an initiation ceremony at Xianzu Gong in Singapore in 2016
- Figure 3.2 Buddhist monks from Putian performing rites at the Singapore Kiew Lee Tong temple in 1994
- Figure 4.1 Sri Lankan Buddhist monks receiving Katina Cheevara from fellow Buddhist monks. Darwin, October 2016
- Figure 4.2 Entering the Katina parade toward the temple. Darwin, October 2016
- Figure 4.3 Sri Lankan Buddhist monk attends Vietnamese ritual bathing of the Buddha which was held parallel to the Sri Lankan Vesak festival. Darwin, October 2016
- Figure 4.4 Girls from Kiribati Island perform at the International Food Fair at Darwin Buddhist Temple. Darwin, October 2016
- Figure 9.1 Celebration of Catholic mass in Sinhalese with the Sri Lankan community in central Milan at Santo Stefano Maggiore, August 2014
- Figure 9.2 Celebration of Catholic mass in Sinhalese with the Sri Lankan community in Milan at Santo Stefano Maggiore, August 2014
- Figure 10.1 Fr. Marco and members of Legion of Mary celebrated the Feast of Assumption of Mary with cake and fruits in one of the counseling/meeting rooms in Cheonan Moyse Catholic Migrants Service Center. Cheonan City, South Korea, August 2013
- Figure 11.1 A six-year-old boy, his head shaved in mourning, is made to perform the funerary ritual for his dead father. Medan, Indonesia, 1994
- Figure 11.2 A young mother performs the night prayer outside her mother’s house on the sixteenth day after her baby’s birth (Ritual of Padenaru). Medan, Indonesia, 1993
- Figure 11.3 A medium-priest performs a ritual of possession in his backyard while the neighbors watch. Medan, Indonesia, 1995
- Figure 11.4 The blood of the sacrificed goat is poured onto the offerings and the amulets at the foot of the ritual pole. Medan, Indonesia, 1993
- Figure 11.5 A medium-priest prophesizes while possessed. Two men hold the sacrificial knife he is standing upon. Medan, Indonesia, 1994
- Figure 11.6 The act of sacrifice. Medan, Indonesia, 1993
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