ABSTRACT
Among the chief processes that transforms religious culture is migration from one society to another. An immigrant religion may adopt beliefs, practices, or its management style from the dominant churches of its new home, and a self-conscious missionary movement may intentionally create a simplified form of its faith the better to penetrate the alien religious market. When an imperial nation dominates another country, as was the case with the British Empire in India, it may invest significant resources in establishing branches of its most central denominations in the colonized land. This chapter considers four Asian movements that established beachheads in the American religious market: Transcendental Meditation, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Zen Buddhism, and the Unification Church. It begins by recalling seventeen crucial days in religious history, when Asian faiths had their first substantial opportunity to present themselves to the American public as equals of Christianity and deserving of respect.
