Submitted to Program Units |
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1: Asian North American Religion, Culture, and Society Unit and Secularism and Secularity Unit |
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Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
This session explores the ways APIA communities in the United States have navigated the various state institutions and theological discourses that enact, perpetuate, and enforce the organizing logics of American secularism. It will open with a historical analysis of the theological presuppositions built into the nation's secularist legal regimes as they applied to Chinese laborers, followed by a contemporary exploration of processes by which Hindu ritual practices at a New Jersey temple have been reshaped to address secular assumptions of American life. A final paper then returns to the late-nineteenth century to scrutinize how the translation practices of Japanese Pure Land Buddhists influenced the community's legibility as "religion" within the American context.