Religion
| Religions of Chinese Americans (2012) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Religion | Percent | |||
| Buddhism | 15% | |||
| Catholic | 8% | |||
| Protestant | 22% | |||
| No religion | 52% | |||
Religiously, the Chinese American community is different from the rest of the population in that the majority of Chinese Americans do not report a religious affiliation. 43% of Chinese Americans switched to a different religion and 54% stayed within their childhood religion within their lifetime. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2012 Asian-American Survey, 52% of Chinese Americans aged 15 and over said that they didn't have any religious affiliation, despite making up a quarter of the Asian American population. This is also compared with the religious affiliation of Asian American average of 26% and a national average of 19%. Of Chinese Americans who were religious, 15% were Buddhist, 8% were Catholic and 22% belonged to a Protestant denomination. Fully half of Chinese Americans (52%)—including 55% of those born in the U.S. and 51% of those born overseas—describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Because Chinese Americans are the largest subgroup of Asian Americans, nearly half of all religiously unaffiliated Asians in the U.S. are of Chinese descent (49%).
Read more about this topic: Chinese American
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)