ABSTRACT
The term “community” can denote a variety of groupings, distinguished by one or more identifiers: location, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, occupation, or age to name a few. We accept the way our community does things as “the ways things are.” We also believe that this is the way that things have always been, that the traditions of our particular community have remained stable. It is true that that each community has a fairly stable set of symbols and ideas, practices, and ways of relating to others both within and outside of its specific group. But the place of particular ideas and symbols within this framework changes over time. As Theodore Ludwig notes, symbols, for example, come to the fore and recede in response to changes in place and time (Ludwig 2006: 8-9). Most people are generally unaware of this, particularly with regard to religion. It is a shock when we encounter religious beliefs that are different from our own, rituals and practices that are “strange” or unintelligible to us, and communities that function in a way that diverges from our own. Prior to the modern period such encounters certainly occurred. The nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, with their increased access to travel, dislocations due to wars, ecological disasters, and globalization and technological advances accelerated these encounters. Immigration from Asia to North America is common. Relocation also means dislocation: culture shock, confrontation with a largely secular culture focused on individual rather than community values, loss of majority status, loss of extended family ties, economic insecurity, and a fear that the young will abandon their cultures and religious traditions.
