Congregants and Citizens: Religion and Naturalization among US Immigrants

Abstract

Scholars and pundits have long debated whether religion helps new immigrants integrate politically in the United States. Those who see religion as an integrative institution cite the country’s history of vibrant religious congregationalism that supports connections between the native and foreign born, while critics point to anti-immigrant hostility, Christian nationalism, and patterns of religious membership that can reinforce social segregation. This article aims to adjudicate this debate, using a large sample of survey data, the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), fielded among new legal residents in 2003/2004. I find that religious membership is associated with increased probability of naturalizing in a short (3.5–7 years) timeframe and is stronger for those with greater human capital and income and longer tenure in the United States. Involvement in US-origin congregations also exhibits a stronger effect on naturalization than involvement in national-origin congregations. Additionally, I find that religious minorities, though less likely to be members of congregations, are independently more likely than Christian immigrants to naturalize in the same timeframe. These results are interpreted as support for a view of organized religion as a setting for American identity formation and a basis for mobilizing resources in response to anti-immigrant sentiment. For certain groups, organized religion seems to support a type of selective acculturation that combines American citizenship with the establishment and/or retention of a distinct ethno-religious identity. The article thus affirms, with caveats, the broader relevance of a long tradition of ethnographic scholarship on immigrant religion in the United States.

Introduction

Religion has often played a role in the formation of new citizens, though how and why vary around the world (Searle-Chatterjee 2000; Alba 2005; Foner and Alba 2008; Özev 2017). In the United States, both native- and foreign-born populations exhibit generally high levels of religious involvement and are majority Christian, despite fears of immigration changing the country’s religious character (Massey and Sánchez 2010; Braunstein 2017; Sherkat and Lehman 2018). Many scholars therefore consider religion a uniquely unifying force in US history (Gordon 1964; Herberg 1983; Warner 1997), one that integrates new immigrants by providing social capital and facilitating American identity formation. Yet others question this narrative, saying it ignores racial and ethnic segregation in the religious sphere, the rise in Christian nationalism, and the hostility experienced by immigrants and religious minorities, including Jews, Buddhists, and Catholics in earlier eras (Breton 1964; Albanese 2012, 302–16).

This debate reflects the wider contention over immigration and increasing formal and informal restrictions on naturalization in the United States (Hagan, Eschbach, and Rodriguez 2008; Massey and Sánchez 2010). The United States now lags behind Canada in rates of naturalization among foreign-born residents (Bloemraad 2002). The relative share of naturalized citizens among the foreign-born population in the United States has also decreased relative to those in more vulnerable legal categories (Massey and Bartley 2005). Furthermore, there is a widening gap between highly educated, upwardly mobile immigrant professionals and economically vulnerable immigrant laborers and their families (Portes and Rumbaut 2014, 266–69), a distinction reflected in increasingly unequal assimilation outcomes (Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Portes 2007; Warner 2007).

In this context, it is especially important to understand why certain immigrants are more likely to obtain citizenship and whether religion supports this process. Qualitative studies from the United States have shown how religious membership can assist new immigrants in political integration (Hirschman 2004; Cadge and Ecklund 2007; Foley and Hoge 2007; Foner and Alba 2008; Levitt 2008; Cadge et al. 2013). Yet we know less about whether religious membership shapes naturalization at the broader population level and how it plays out for an increasingly unequal immigrant population.

This article addresses these questions, using survey data from immigrants who obtained legal permanent residency in the early 2000s (The New Immigrant Survey [NIS]). Using this dataset, I evaluate the evidence for four explanatory frameworks of religion-based integration: social capital, identity formation, minority segregation, and minority mobilization theories. I also provide a statistical description of immigrant involvement in organized religion at the population level and among major ethno-religious subgroups, showing how involvement in organized religion works in tandem with human capital and income. In this way, this article contributes to the debate between those who view American religion as an integrative institution and those who see it as a basis of anti-immigrant hostility and social segregation.

Literature Review

Citizenship as Political Resource

US citizenship has traditionally been viewed as a benchmark of immigrant political integration (Gordon 1964; Logan, Oh, and Darrah 2012; Portes and Rumbaut 2014, 183–91). It is a formal change in legal status granting rights and responsibilities of national membership, including voting rights, legal protections, access to social welfare benefits, and special consideration for sponsoring the resettlement of family members to the United States. It is also a meaningful symbol of commitment to the host country, as an intensive process culminating in a pledge of allegiance to the new nation (Bueker 2005; Massey and Bartley 2005).

However, as transnationalism, the state of being simultaneously embedded in two different national societies (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004), is increasingly recognized as a modal condition of foreign-born residents (Guarnizo 2003; Soehl and Waldinger 2012; Gershon and Pantoja 2014), scholars have begun to conceive of US citizenship more as a political resource. They find that immigrants often pursue naturalization because of the privileges it affords, such as moving more easily between borders or sponsoring the resettlement of relatives, even while they maintain political, social, and cultural ties to one, or even multiple, other nations (Gilbertson and Singer 2003; Guarnizo 2003; Massey and Akresh 2011; Gershon and Pantoja 2014). Access to the resource of citizenship is in turn shaped by social and economic factors, including human capital (especially education and English-speaking ability), length of time in the United States, and modes of incorporation (i.e., legal status and government reception) (Buecker 2005; Massey and Bartley 2005; Logan, Oh, and Darrah 2012; Portes and Rumbaut 2014, 183–91). Ethnic community organization and mobilization of resources also play major roles in which groups more widely and successfully pursue citizenship (Bloemraad 2006).

Scholars also find that immigrants to the United States are increasingly bifurcated into two groups: upwardly mobile, highly educated professionals and economically vulnerable, less-educated workers (Portes and Rumbaut 2014, 266–69). Those in the latter group face greater material obstacles to naturalization: their skills are less valued in the labor market (Hagan, Hernández-León, and Demonsant 2015); they usually have less human capital (i.e., English-speaking ability, formal education) to aid in the naturalization process (Logan, Oh, and Darrah 2012; Gershon and Pantoja 2014); and they often start their migration trajectory from liminal or vulnerable legal positions (Menjívar 2006; Portes 2007). Yet while more privileged migrants may not face such obstacles, they are not necessarily more likely to become citizens because they may see their time in the United States as temporary and strategic (Massey and Akresh 2006). Those with economic and occupational privilege are also better situated to resist permanent resettlement for cultural reasons, such as fear of racialized assimilation for their children (Waters 1999; Bledsoe and Sow 2011).

What the above discussion suggests is that social institutions such as organized religion may be important for these two groups’ citizenship pathways for different reasons. Religious organizations may help less-privileged immigrants to the extent that such organizations provide access to new resources to overcome material obstacles, while they may be influential for immigrants with greater privilege to the extent that these institutions shape cultural identification with US society. To date, this possibility of divergent roles for religious organizations has not been systematically tested, although it is clear that ethnic community organizations generally function differently for groups with different levels of social and political privilege (Rudrappa 2004; Bloemraad 2006; Massey and Akresh 2006; Portes 1998, 2007; Warner 2007). It is therefore important for any study of religion’s role in immigrant political incorporation to account for these distinctions between socioeconomic groups and the different processes that shape their naturalization.

The Role of Religion: Social Capital and Identity Formation

Religion is important for political integration in many immigrant-receiving contexts. In places like Saudi Arabia, India, and the United Arab Emirates, religious identity is so closely linked to national identity that the naturalization of religious minorities is highly restricted through formal mechanisms (Searle-Chatterjee 2000; Özev 2017). In most European countries, state secularism means that religious identity presents no legal barriers to naturalization, yet informally, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims from Africa and Asia experience many obstacles to political integration, stemming in part from the framing and application of secularism across Europe and in part from protectionist reactions to waves of minority laborers and refugees (Bail 2008; Foner and Alba 2008; Mooney 2013).

In the United States, by contrast, religion is usually viewed as a politically integrative institution (Hirschman 2004; Cadge and Ecklund 2007). American organized religion is marked by congregationalism and voluntarism, which means that religious congregations are politically independent, functionally diffuse, widespread voluntary associations that engage in multiple types of social, civic, and philanthropic activities, and are well positioned to connect foreign- and native-born populations (Warner 1994, 1997; Ammerman 2005). Immigrants to the United States are also proportionately more Christian and thus often share a cultural framework for religious membership with the native-born population (Pew Research Center 2015).

Such religion-based integration is often theorized in terms of social capital and/or identity formation (Cadge and Ecklund 2007; Foley and Hoge 2007; Warner 2007; Chen 2008; Manglos-Weber 2018). The social capital argument is that religious involvement provides new relationships through which various civic and political resources flow (Portes 1998; Foley and Hoge 2007; Levitt 2008; Connor 2011). This perspective distinguishes between two types of social capital: bonding and bridging. Naturalization-relevant bonding capital is shared within close homogenous ties found in immigrant or ethnic congregations and includes material and emotional support, shared experiences of the immigration system, and in some cases more formal instruction in English and legal aid (Warner 1997; Portes 1998; Waters 1999; Hagan and Ebaugh 2003). Bridging capital is shared within ties that cross social divides, as in diverse or native-born congregations, and can look like personal references or general civic knowledge (Foley and Hoge 2007; Levitt 2008).

The identity formation argument is that religious involvement can reflect and reinforce a developing sense of belonging in the United States (Herberg 1983; Hirschman 2004; Chen 2008). Both immigrant- and US-origin congregations can shape identity by acclimating newcomers to American lifestyles, habits, and styles of discourse to various degrees (Cadge and Ecklund 2007; Foley and Hoge 2007). Multigenerational immigrant congregations can also help bridge the gap between first and second generations by providing a moral framework that integrates elements of home and host cultures and forms new American or hyphenated identities (Chen 2006; Portes and Rumbaut 2014, 323).

Of course, it is possible that religious membership or identity can isolate newcomers within their own ethnic groups on the basis of “bounded solidarity” (Portes 1998), where ethnic congregational bonding limits connections to and identification with the host society (Breton 1964). This argument has been heavily critiqued (Herberg 1983; Warner 1997; Levitt 2008), however, because it relies on an outdated zero-sum model of citizenship, belies the evidence of positive links between transnational connections and naturalization (Gershon and Pantoja 2014), and ignores the organizational mobilizing that happens in immigrant congregations in response to discrimination, as discussed below (Warner 2007). Nonetheless, the debate remains, in part because immigrant congregations do seem to solidify bonds between co-ethnics, exert social control over members, and reinforce a sense of difference (Portes 1998).

Religious Minorities: Segregation versus Mobilization

The threat of religion-based social segregation is likely to be particularly salient for those who are also religious minorities in the United States, especially Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims. Such groups may feel particularly alienated by the current context of rising Islamophobia and Christian nationalism and historic patterns of racial and ethnic segregation (Bakalian and Bozorgmeher 2009; Abrams 2014; Braunstein 2017; Sherkat and Lehman 2018). Their religious organizations may also be less embedded in broader inter-organizational networks than Christian congregations and thus less likely to connect their members to new sources of social capital (Wuthnow and Hackett 2003).

However, other evidence suggests that religious minority immigrants may be more likely to pursue citizenship through group mobilization processes (Rudrappa 2004; Kurien 2007; Bakalian and Bozorgmeher 2009). While such religious minorities may indeed experience cultural and political discrimination, they may in response be motivated to collectively pursue naturalization as a form of protective citizenship (Gilbertson and Singer 2003), laying claim to political membership while maintaining ethnic distinctiveness (Warner 2007). For example, Muslim immigrant communities seek citizenship as a reaction to Islamophobia (Bakalian and Bozorgmeher 2009; Williams 2011), and Hindus collectively pursue hyphenated Indian-American identities within the context of their ethno-religious organizations (Rudrappa 2004). This theory is actually more in line with the experience of religious “others” in earlier eras, such as Jews and Catholics, who assimilated not by discarding their religious identities but by crafting a dual identity and mobilizing group resources for incorporation (Herberg 1983).

Of course, it is difficult to parse out the effects of minority ethnic status from minority religious status. While religion and ethnicity often overlap in the United States, they are also increasingly “de-coupled” (Kurien 2012) through conversion processes, where large minority groups like Indians, Koreans, and Chinese encompass those of both majority Christian and minority faiths (Chen 2008; Yang and Ebaugh 2001b). Again, while we might expect being a minority on both dimensions to further limit integration, being part of an ethno-religious subculture may provide a more effective basis of mobilization, as already described (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009).

The above discussion therefore suggests that distinct immigrant groups — highly educated professionals versus vulnerable workers and Christians versus religious minorities — may experience different religious influences on citizenship, as theorized by the social capital, identity formation, minority segregation, and minority mobilization frameworks. The current study assesses the evidence for these different frameworks, accounting for differences in religious involvement, as well as interactions with human capital, income, and years in the United States, and finally differences between ethno-religious subgroups.

Data and Methods

Hypotheses and Aims

This article speaks to the debate over religion as an integrative institution by testing the evidence for the distinct frameworks discussed above (See Table 1).

Table 1.

Theoretical Frameworks and Resulting Study Hypotheses.

Religious Integration	Social Capital	Identity Formation	Minority Isolation	Minority Mobilization
Organized religion supports naturalization; relationship stronger with more exposure	Religion supports naturalization by providing access to relevant resources exchanged through relationships	Religion supports naturalization by enhancing identification with American society	Religious minority status discourages naturalization by socially isolating immigrants and limiting identification with American society	Religious minority status supports naturalization by providing a basis for collective identity formation and resource mobilization
Religious members more likely to naturalize (H1a); additive effects of membership and attendance (H1b); stronger association among those with more time in the US (H1c)	Those in national-origin congregations more likely to naturalize (H2a); stronger association for those with less human capital and wealth (H2b)	Those in US-origin congregations more likely to naturalize (H3a) stronger association for those with more human capital and wealth (H3b)	Religious minorities less likely to naturalize (H4a); religious minorities who are also religious members even less likely to naturalize (H4b)	Religious minorities more likely to naturalize (H5a); religious minorities who are also religious members even more likely to naturalize (H5b)

First is the main hypothesis (H1a) that religious membership is positively associated with naturalization. I also expect a stronger effect for regular attendees at their congregations (H1b), since those who invest more in congregations generally reap more civic and political benefits (Beyerlein and Hipp 2006; Levitt 2008). While regular congregational attendance is in some ways specific to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, it has become a more common practice among immigrant Buddhists and Hindus, in response to immigrant communities’ unique needs (Yang and Ebaugh 2001a). I also expect a stronger relationship for those who have been in the United States longer and have more exposure to its religious institutions (H1c).

Next, the social capital framework focuses on the importance of congregational resource exchange. This framework supports the hypothesis that those in national-origin congregations will be more likely to obtain citizenship than those in other types of congregations (H2a), since social capital seems to be more regularly and abundantly shared across in-group bonding ties (Warner 1997; Portes 1998; Manglos-Weber 2018). Since new social capital seems logically to be more pivotal for naturalization among immigrants with fewer existing resources, this framework also supports the hypothesis that any positive effect of religious membership on naturalization will be greater among immigrants with less human capital and income (H2b).

Conversely, the identity formation framework focuses on how religious membership supports citizenship as part of adopting an American identity (Cadge and Ecklund 2007; Levitt 2008). Although American identities are plural and can be supported by ethnic congregational membership, there is still likely to be a stronger pull toward an Americanized identity within mostly US-origin congregations (Kurien 2012; Manglos-Weber 2018). Thus, this framework supports the hypothesis that those in US-origin congregations will be more likely to naturalize than those in other kinds of congregations (H3a). It also suggests that the link between religious membership and naturalization will be stronger among those with more human capital and income (H3b), since these groups are more likely to attend US-origin congregations (Foley and Hoge 2007; Manglos-Weber 2018) and their naturalization pathways are likely more reliant on shifts in identity than access to new resources, as suggested above.

Next, the minority segregation and minority mobilization frameworks support opposite expectations for the association between religious minority status and naturalization (H4a and H4b). Such associations could also be moderated by membership in a congregation (H4b and H5b) and could depend on ethnicity or nationality: whether, for example, one is a Latin American Christian or East Asian Christian, Asian Buddhist or Asian Christian. In the following, therefore, I also perform subgroup analyses by place of origin and religion, to the extent allowed by the data.

Data Selection and Analytic Sample Construction

Testing the theories and hypotheses shown in Table 1 is challenging because most surveys do not have sufficient numbers of foreign-born participants for complex comparisons and because surveys of immigrants tend to underrepresent the most transient groups (Jasso et al. 2000; Massey and Bartley 2005). Surveys with large enough numbers to study immigrants also do not usually have detailed questions on religious membership, attendance, identity, or congregational demographics, making it challenging to treat religion in a multidimensional way (Cadge and Ecklund 2007; Akresh 2011).

Given these limitations, this article uses the New Immigrant Survey (NIS) as the best possible data for getting a preliminary look at the relationship between religion and naturalization. The NIS is a panel study of immigrants who obtained the status of legal permanent resident (LPR) between May and November 2003. Some of these immigrants were new arrivals, while others had lived in the United States for some time. The NIS sampling frame included 12,500 adults. Of these, 8,573 completed the baseline survey, for a response rate of 68.6 percent. My independent variables come from Wave 1, conducted in 2003 and 2004, and my measure of citizenship comes from Wave 2, conducted from June 2007 to December 2009, with 3,974 total cases in the analytic sample (48.2 percent retention from Wave 1).¹

Analyses of the New Immigrant Survey Pilot (NIS-P) suggest that at least in the survey’s first wave, patterns of nonresponse did not produce significant bias in the sample (Jasso et al. 2000). Yet it is possible that attrition by the second wave introduced bias toward the more stable members of the immigrant population, precisely those who are better positioned for citizenship. In addition, although the data are longitudinal, the time span between waves is fairly short, at 3.5 to 7 years (43 to 83 months). The mandatory waiting period between LPR status and citizenship is 3 years for spouses of US citizens, 4 years for certain political refugees, and 5 years for all others, which means a fair number of those in the sample were not eligible to apply for citizenship by Wave 2.²

For the above reasons, the following analyses cannot truly claim representativeness for all new immigrants, legal or not, and are much more generalizable to those who gain citizenship more easily and rapidly (i.e., highly educated English speakers, spouses of citizens, those who had already been living in the United States, and those of African or Asian origin) (Portes and Rumbaut 2014; Witsman 2017) Nonetheless, the NIS is still the best data available on the topic, given its large sample, multiple measures of religion, and longitudinal design. The findings are thus valuable and highly suggestive, notwithstanding their limitations, and are likely to underestimate religion’s true influence, which should accumulate over time rather than be limited to the short window of 3.5–7 years post LPR status (more on this below).

Measures: Description and Coding

Table 2 reports descriptive statistics of the original and analytic samples. Table 3 shows the same statistics for all religion variables, as well as percentages of religious membership, categories of religious attendance, membership/attendance in US-origin congregations, and membership/attendance in national-origin congregations across faith traditions.

Table 2.

Weighted Descriptive Statistics for Dependent Variable and Controls.

	Wave 1 Sample	Missing	Analytic Sample
Obtained citizenship	–	–	15.28%
LPR category
Family reunification	60.78%	0.00%	57.80%
Employment/Diversity	17.11%		18.31%
Refugee	6.71%		6.60%
Other	15.40%		17.28%
Region of origin
South/Central America & Caribbean	25.66%	0.31%	26.59%
Mexico	16.34%		16.42%
Europe, Central Asia, & Canada	14.25%		15.39%
Sub-Saharan Africa	6.42%		6.89%
North Africa & Middle East	5.73%		4.71%
India	7.65%		7.50%
China	6.04%		5.48%
East and Southeast Asia	17.58%		17.02%
Time since LPR status (in years, Wave 2)	–	–	4.20 (3–6)
Years in the US	4.94 (0–63)	3.21%	5.14 (0–63)
Speaks English well	51.70%	0.70%	51.51%
Female	54.58%	0.00%	56.42%
Has bachelor’s degree or higher	28.88%	0.61%	30.86%
Household income
Low (i.e., below US median)	56.17%	0.00%	53.02%
Median (i.e., around US median)	12.44%		13.65%
High (i.e., above US median)	31.40%		33.33%
Birth year
Before 1950	17.12%	0.00%	13.87%
1950–1970	38.52%		41.49%
After 1970	44.36%		44.63%
N	8,573		3,794

Note: Values are computed using the NIS-provided panel weights.

Table 3.

Descriptive and Bivariate Statistics for Key Religion Variables.

	Wave 1 Sample	Missing	Analytic Sample	Catholic	Protestant	Orthodox	Muslim	Buddhist	Hindu	Other	None
Religious member	19.51%	5.26%	20.83%	18.50%	50.24%	25.60%	3.14%	11.85%	7.42%	37.15%	2.29%
Religious tradition
Catholic	37.11%	5.28%	40.55%
Protestant	15.36%		16.55%
Orthodox Christian	8.29%		8.49%
Muslim	7.71%		7.61%
Buddhist	4.57%		4.20%
Hindu	5.61%		6.30%
Other	4.46%		4.22%
None	11.62%		12.51%
Religious attendance
None	56.22%	5.20%	57.80%	49.31%	42.47%	51.72%	81.27%	80.52%	56.01%	49.87%	90.89%
Irregular	20.47%		22.11%	29.11%	23.15%	21.45%	12.40%	9.29%	28.01%	24.30%	5.05%
Regular	18.11%		20.08%	21.58%	34.39%	26.83%	6.32%	10.19%	15.98%	25.83%	4.06%
Member/attendee at US-origin congregation	12.74%	5.08%	11.45%	12.44%	21.56%	9.70%	1.77%	6.66%	6.36%	21.68%	3.01%
Member/attendee at immigrant-origin congregation	22.27%	5.08%	20.20%	23.00%	27.85%	24.08%	4.59%	17.16%	30.49%	24.94%	2.41%

Note: Values are computed using NIS-provided panel weights.

Citizenship

In the Wave 2 survey, adults were asked whether they had obtained citizenship in a series of questions probing their marital and legal status. I used these data to construct a dichotomous variable of having obtained citizenship, which resulted in 457 cases of naturalization by the study’s second round, or about 12 percent of the analytic sample. This percentage reflects the short timeframe between waves discussed above.

Religious membership

All respondents were asked, “Do you presently consider yourself to be a member of a specific church, parish, temple, synagogue, or mosque in the United States?” This variable is dichotomous, where those who respond “yes” are coded as “1.” Respondents were also asked an identical question in Wave 2, which I use for sensitivity analyses to assess changes in religious membership between Waves 1 and 2.

Religious attendance

Respondents were asked how many times they had attended religious services since obtaining LPR status. From this variable, I created a categorical measure of attendance by dividing this count variable by the number of months since obtaining LPR status and coding as “0” those who reported no attendance (non-attendees), “1” those who attended an average of less than 4 times a month (irregular attendees), and “2” those who attended an average of 4 times a month or more (regular attendees).³

Congregation demographics

Respondents who reported either being a member of a congregation or attending services since becoming an LPR were then asked follow-up questions about the congregation where they attended most often. They were asked what percent of adults in that congregation came from the United States and what percent of adults were from their origin country. Assuming respondents did not have exact knowledge of the nationalities of all their fellow members and given that distributions of these variables cluster at round number values (i.e., 20, 50, 90, and 100), I interpret responses as general estimates of how respondents perceived their congregations and used them to create two separate categorical variables of simple majorities.

Each of these measures has three categories: (a) those who were religious members or attendees at the type of congregation (i.e., US-origin or national-origin), (b) those who were religious members or attendees at other types of congregations (coded “2”), and (c) those who reported no membership or attendance (coded “0” as the reference category). The “don’t know” responses made up 13.3 percent of cases on the immigrant-origin variable and 18.4 percent of cases on the US-origin variable. I coded these with the other congregation category (“2”) to avoid a significant loss of data and on the basis of what we know about them — namely, that they were religiously involved but not sure of their congregations’ demographics. The end result is identical to imputing their values as the mean or median of the original variable. These decisions are evaluated in sensitivity analyses.

Religious tradition

All adult respondents were asked, “What religious tradition, if any, describes your current religion?” I use the categories provided on the questionnaire but group “Jewish” with the “Other” category, given the small number of cases. This practice is consistent with other recent studies of American religious demography (Portes and Rumbaut 2014, 316; Pew Research Center 2015) although it collapses Evangelical, Mainline, and Black Protestants into a single category. Compared to those studies, the NIS also has higher percentages of Orthodox Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists. In later analyses, I use a dummy measure of “religious majority,” coded as “1” for Protestants and Catholics and “0” for all others, to control for tradition in models where multicollinearity of the categorical religious tradition variable with region of birth is an issue.⁴

As shown in Table 3, faith traditions vary in religious involvement patterns. Protestants have high levels of membership, regular attendance, and involvement in US congregations. Muslims have low levels of involvement by all measures, and a small percent are in national-origin congregations. This last finding is likely because the question is worded, “What percent of members are from your same country-of-origin?” and because Muslim congregations in the United States are often multinational and multiethnic (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009; Williams 2011). Similarly, Latinx congregations can be diverse in terms of origin country, even if predominantly immigrant (Marti 2012), which points to a limitation of this measure. Also notable are Hindus’ low percentages of membership and regular attendance and high percentage in national-origin congregations, reflecting the linkage of Hinduism and Indian nationality.

Other controls

Following earlier analyses of the NIS (Frank, Akresh, and Lu 2010; Connor 2011), I control for visa category (family reunification, employment diversity, refugee/asylee, and other)⁵ and control for place of origin divided into eight regions (see Table 1). The largest origin countries — Mexico, China, and India — are analyzed as independent categories. To measure human capital, I include a dichotomous measure for whether they spoke English well or very well and whether they had a bachelor’s (BA) degree or higher. I control for income quartile as a categorical variable of high, median, and low income, pegged to the median yearly wages of the total US population from the 2005 Community Survey ($27,299) and derived from the NIS-provided income variable. The median category included those with earnings between $20,000 and $35,000, or roughly $7,000 below or above the median. I also include a measure of years spent in the United States and years passed between obtaining LPR status and the Wave 2 survey, as well as a measure of sex and a three-category measure of birth year that divides respondents into those born before 1950, between 1950 and 1970, and since 1970.⁶

In ancillary models I tested controls of marital status, race, number of children, and employment status (full-time, part-time, unemployed, homemaker, and other), but these controls inflated the variances for key variables (English-speaking ability, income, age, and years in the United States) due to multicollinearity. The main associations were also not affected by their removal, and in nested regression analysis, none of these omitted controls significantly improved model fit (measured by the Wald chi-squared statistic).

Analytic Strategy

The following results are from weighted logistic regression analysis with robust standard errors. The NIS-provided probability weights adjust to some degree for patterns of attrition from the original sampling frame, and logistic regression is appropriate for dichotomous outcomes like achieving citizenship. Other studies using the NIS have treated it as a multilevel dataset, with cases nested within origin countries, and used fixed effects or conditional effects models (Connor 2011). I opted not to use multilevel models because my interest is primarily in main effects rather than origin-country variation and because, as I show in later sensitivity analyses, these main effects do not differ greatly from the multilevel mixed effects model to the basic logistic regression model.

From the results I compute marginal probabilities of naturalization within the designated 3.5–7-year timeframe across relevant subgroups as a more fruitful way of interpreting the findings, given that population-level effects can obscure internal variations and odds ratios can overstate the magnitude of effects when the outcome is less common. I then present path models from simultaneous equations to visualize direct and indirect effects, as a version of generalized structural equation models (Acock 2013). Finally, I test the mediation pathways from these models, using a bootstrapping method that decomposes the total effect into direct and indirect effects, allows for control variables, and does not assume a normal distribution (Buis 2010).

Results

Religious Membership and Integration

The results shown in Table 4 examine the effects for religious membership and attendance. Model 1 includes just religious membership, and Model 2 adds the categorical attendance variable, as well as the dichotomous measure of being Protestant/Catholic Christian. I include this dummy variable to control somewhat for religious tradition, in lieu of the religious tradition variable that is collinear with birth region. These models also show direct effects for all controls.

Table 4.

Beta Coefficients and Robust Standard Errors from Weighted Logistic Regressing Models Predicting Naturalization.

	Beta Coefficient	Robust Standard Error	Beta Coefficient	Robust Standard Error
Religious member	0.529	(0.159)**	0.528	(0.181)**
Attendance (ref: none)
Irregular			0.127	(0.172)
Regular			0.317	(0.192)
Religious minority (ref: Protestant/Catholic)			0.648	(0.196)**
None/other religion			0.559	(0.211)**
Visa (ref: family reunification)
Employment/Diversity	–1.132	(0.160)***	–1.138	(0.163)***
Refugee/Assylee	0.798	(0.214)***	0.720	(0.214)**
Other	–1.131	(0.228)***	–1.318	(0.233)***
Female	0.357	(0.139)*	0.370	(0.140)**
Has BA equiv. or higher degree	0.530	(0.169)**	0.541	(0.170)**
Speaks English well	0.403	(0.163)*	0.420	(0.165)*
Income (ref: low)
Median	–0.053	(0.221)	–0.022	(0.221)
High	0.288	(0.161)	0.294	(0.162)
Years in the United States	–0.021	(0.016)	–0.020	(0.016)
Birth year (ref: pre-1950)
1950–1970	0.621	(0.227)**	0.597	(0.229)**
After 1970	1.228	(0.222)***	1.202	(0.223)***
Years since LPR status (w2)	0.877	(0.077)***	0.886	(0.077)***
Region of birth (ref: Latin/Central America)
Mexico	–0.326	(0.264)	–0.314	(0.263)
Europe/Central Asia	0.437	(0.233)	0.197	(0.251)
Sub-Saharan Africa	–0.008	(0.316)	–0.204	(0.320)
North Africa and Mid. East	0.684	(0.332)*	0.271	(0.364)
India	0.298	(0.292)	–0.192	(0.313)
China	0.529	(0.312)	0.223	(0.331)
East and Southeast Asia	0.204)	(0.234)	–0.012	(0.248)
			–7.357	(0.454)***

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Not surprisingly, LPR category exhibits large and significant effects on (early) naturalization. Those gaining LPR status via employment sponsorship or the diversity lottery are much less likely to obtain citizenship within this short window than those gaining LPR status through family reunification, while those entering as refugees/asylees are more likely to do so. Otherwise, age is a major predictor of quickly obtaining citizenship, likely because those of working age are more motivated to pursue naturalization for its professional and personal benefits. English proficiency and having a BA are both associated with the likelihood of naturalization, as expected, although income does not demonstrate a separate direct effect.

Pertinent to Hypothesis 1a, religious membership also demonstrates a sizeable effect, on par with having a BA. It does not change with the inclusion of the attendance or religious majority variables, though the latter measure shows a significant negative association with naturalization (a result I return to below). As evidence for whether membership and attendance work in concert to support early naturalization, as hypothesized (H1b), Figure 1 shows the predicted probabilities and confidence intervals for groups split by membership and attendance, from a supplemental model that includes an interaction term. This figure’s legend also includes the number of cases in each category as a reference point for contextualizing the varying confidence intervals.

Figure 1.

Average predicted probabilities with 95 percent confidence intervals of obtaining citizenship by religious membership and religious attendance.

The steady increase in the point estimates of marginal probabilities of naturalization suggests that the effects of membership and attendance are indeed additive and roughly equally important contributors to the overall increase. However, given the size of the confidence intervals, the only statistically significant difference is that between nonmembers/nonattendees and members/regular attendees, where the latter see a relative increase of 0.092 in the probability of naturalization. For reference, the predicted probability of naturalization in the whole sample is 0.153.

The next hypothesis (H1c) suggests that due to cumulative exposure to religious institutions, the effect of religious membership on naturalization will be even greater among those who have lived in the United States longer. Figure 2 plots the probabilities of naturalization for religious members versus nonmembers across years of living in the United States. The gap does increase between 1 and 20 years, although it is really between 2 and 12 years that the difference is large and significant. Again, as a reference point, this finding means that religious membership is associated with an increase of 0.093 in the probability of naturalization for those who have been in the United States for 12 years, as compared to an increase of 0.062 for those who have been in the country for less than 1 year.

Figure 2.

Average predicted probabilities with 95 percent confidence intervals of obtaining citizenship by religious membership and years in the United States.

Sensitivity analyses

I next test whether religious membership’s direct effect is robust to certain coding and modeling choices. The beta coefficient, standard error, and corresponding increase in the probability of naturalization for the direct effects of religious membership are shown in Table 5, along with the Wald chi-square statistic for each model.

Table 5.

Results from Sensitivity Analyses Comparing Different Model Specifications for the Effects of Religious Membership on the Odds of Naturalization.

	Beta Coefficient	Robust Standard Error	Change in p(czn)	Wald chi-square
Weighted logistic, full sample, control for region-of-origin	0.529**	0.159	0.056	331.98
Weighted logistic, adjusted status only	0.536**	0.186	0.069	192.29
Weighted logistic, new arrivals only	0.535	0.308	0.019	186.23
Weighted logistic, waiting period met only	0.538**	0.178	0.086	122.41
Weighted generalized mixed effects with adaptive quadrature, nested by country-of-origin	0.530**	0.178	0.053
Weighted logistic, controlling for country-of-origin	0.538**	0.165	0.055	337.76
Weighted logistic, “don’t know” coded missing	0.521**	0.159	0.056	332.62
Weighted logistic, multiple imputation of missing values	0.515**	0.154	0.058
Weighted logistic, controlling for Wave 2 religious membership	0.356	0.184	0.056	335.75
(Wave 2 effect)	0.416*	0.172	0.042

Note: All models include the same controls shown in Table 4, except where noted.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

The first set of checks concerns differences in the LPR population. I first separate the sample into new arrivals and those adjusting their status to LPR. The latter group demonstrates a significant effect similar to the overall model, while the former group, new arrivals, have a similar effect size but also a large standard error which renders the effect not statistically significant. This finding is in line with the results above that suggest the biggest differences are between members and nonmembers who had lived in the United States for two or more years. I then check the effect on a limited sample for whom the mandatory waiting period had likely been met by Wave 2 (i.e., 3 years for spouses of US citizens, 4 years for refugees/asylees, and 5 years for everyone else), again with similar results.

The second set of checks regards the issue of origin-country-based heteroscedasticity. I check the effect from a multilevel model, specifically a generalized mixed effects model estimated using adaptive quadrature (Rabe-Hesketh, Skrondahl, and Pickles 2002), and a logistic regression model that controls for origin country rather than origin region. Both show similar results for the effects and standard errors. The third set of checks regards missing data. I check the effect from an identical model where I code the “don’t know” responses as missing rather than “0,” with little change. I also run an identical model where predictors’ missing data are imputed using multiple imputation with chained equations (exact syntax of imputation models available by request). Results are again similar.

Finally, I include a Wave 2 measure of religious membership to check for the influence of membership changes between Waves 1 and 2. In these data, joining between waves is more common: 16.7 percent of the overall sample transitioned from nonmembers to members between waves, while 7.6 percent transitioned from members to nonmembers. This finding suggests that both Wave 1 and Wave 2 membership matter and that much, though not all, of the influence of Wave 1 membership could be mediated through Wave 2 membership.

Social Capital versus Identity Formation

To test the social capital and identity formation frameworks, I first examine the interactions of religious membership with human capital (education and English-speaking ability) and income (H2b and H3b), as this step in the analysis builds directly on the proceeding models. Figure 3 includes three graphs of predicted probabilities from models with interaction terms: religious membership by income category, religious membership by having a higher degree, and religious membership by English-speaking ability. All three support the conclusion that religious membership has a significant association with early naturalization only among those with higher levels of human capital and income, supporting Hypothesis 3b rather than 2b.

Figure 3.

Average predicted probabilities with 90 percent confidence intervals of obtaining citizenship across religious membership, by income, education, and English-speaking ability.

The social capital and identity-formation frameworks also differ in which type of congregation they suggest will have a stronger association with naturalization: national-origin congregations (H2a) or US-origin congregations (H3a). Table 6 compares the direct effects of these two measures and the corresponding change in the probability of naturalization.

Table 6.

Results from Weighted Logistic Regressing Models Predicting Naturalization by Congregational Demographics.

	Beta	SE	Beta	SE	Change in Pr(czn)
Member/attends immigrant-origin congregation	0.384	(0.183)*			+0.041
Member/attends other congregation type	0.334	(0.160)*			+0.035
Member/attends US-origin congregation			0.890	(0.215)***	+0.102
Member/attends other congregation type			0.314	(0.156)	+0.032
Constant	–7.371	(0.456)***	–7.472	(0.455)***

Note: Reference category is those who are not religious members or attendees. Models also control for religious minority status, visa category, region of birth, time since obtaining LPR status (Wave 2), years living in the United States, English-speaking ability, BA degree, household income, sex, and year of birth. Values are computed using NIS-provided panel weights.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

In line with previous results, the largest and most significant effect is for membership/attendance at a US-origin congregation, although there are small, marginally significant effects for being in a national-origin congregation as well. Being in a majority US-origin congregation is associated with an increase of 0.102 in the probability of early naturalization over those who are not religiously involved, much greater than the increase of between 0.041 and 0.032 for other types of congregations.

Sensitivity analyses

To test the robustness of the US-origin congregation effect, I compare it to models (not shown) where (a) “don’t know” responses are coded as missing and (b) cutoffs for a congregational majority are set to 60, 70, and 80 percent. In the first test, the effect stays stable, with a coefficient of 0.886 and a corresponding 0.104 increase in the probability of naturalization. In the second test, the effects again change little, with coefficients between 0.791 and 0.903.

Minority Segregation versus Mobilization Hypotheses

The opposing frameworks of minority segregation and minority mobilization suggest that religious minority status will be negatively (H4a) or positively (H5a) associated with naturalization. Table 7 first shows effects for separate faith traditions and then for the collapsed religious minority variable.

Table 7.

Results from Weighted Logistic Regressing Models Predicting Naturalization by Religious Tradition/Religious Minority Status.

	(1)		(2)		(3)
Religious tradition (ref: Catholic)
Protestant	0.252	(0.216)
Orthodox	1.036	(0.230)***
Muslim	0.323	(0.294)
Buddhist	0.537	(0.387)
Hindu	0.637	(0.276)*
Other	1.036	(0.281)***
None	0.375	(0.362)*
Religious minority (ref: Protestant/Catholic)			0.617	(0.198)**
None/Other			0.509	(0.210)*
Religious member			0.640	(0.165)***
Religious member, minority (ref: nonmember, minority)					0.178	(0.335)
Nonmember, not minority					–0.751	(0.228)***
Religious member, not minority					0.004	(0.212)
Constant	–7.201	(0.414)***	–7.370	(0.458)***	–6.524	(0.481)***

Note: Models also control for visa category, region of birth (except model 1), time since obtaining LPR status (Wave 2), years living in the United States, English-speaking ability, BA degree, household income, sex, and year of birth. Values are computed using NIS-provided panel weights.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Although only two of these traditions show significant associations with early naturalization in Model 1, they all have positive coefficients, and the religious minority category has a substantively and statistically significant positive relationship with naturalization (Model 2). To test the second set of paired hypotheses about the interaction of membership with minority status (H4b and H5b), Model 3 includes those interaction terms shown as group-specific coefficients. Being a member of a religious congregation does not seem to make much of a difference for religious minorities: the only significant difference is among nonmembers, where those who were not minorities were much less likely to naturalize. Thus, although Hypothesis 5a receives strong support (i.e., minorities are more likely to naturalize), Hypothesis 5b about membership’s additive role does not.

Subgroup analyses

To understand what these numbers mean for those with different ethnic and religious identity configurations, I perform a bivariate analysis of religious membership and naturalization separately across meaningful subgroup categories. I show groups that have at least 50 cases in these data and that have internal validity as meaningful categories of belonging (based on the body of immigration research cited earlier) and conduct bivariate analyses when there are at least 5 cases in each cell. The limiting factor is the small numbers in each subgroup that are both religious members and naturalized citizens. Results are shown in Table 8.

Table 8.

Weighted Percentages of Naturalized Citizens and Religious Members across Subgroups of Region and Religious Tradition.

	% czns	% RMs	% of RMs are czns	% of Non-RMs are czns	N
Latin/Central American Protestant	10.62	46.11	14.90	6.97	228
Latin/Central American Catholic	10.82	16.55	18.42	9.31*	533
Mexican Catholic	7.06	17.05	9.30	6.60	422
European/Central Asian Orthodox	24.16	18.95			193
European/Central Asian Prot./Catholic	11.50	22.90			290
European/Central Asian None	20.66	0.25			121
Sub-Saharan African Prot./Catholic	14.53	45.62	25.96	4.95***	201
North African/Middle Eastern Muslim	19.28	0.00			75
Indian Hindu	21.24	8.84			223
Chinese None	18.20	1.04			149
East/Southeast Asian Prot./Catholic	16.84	35.99	21.42	14.26	323
East/Southeast Asian Buddhist	21.05	10.80			111
East/Southeast Asian None	8.05	0.64			76

Note: Empty spaces indicate number of cases in at least one cell is too small (<5) for correlational analysis.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001, from weighted tabulations.

A few patterns stand out. First, although this dataset is large and has reasonable representation of religious minorities, small cell numbers still make it difficult to test the statistical significance of correlations for each subsample. Among those with large enough numbers, two groups — Latin/Central American Catholics and Sub-Saharan African Christians — illustrate significant correlations between religious membership and early naturalization.

Second, almost all groups that are both ethnic and religious minorities have higher than average percentages of citizens. These groups are European/Central Asian Orthodox Christians, North African/Middle Eastern Muslims, Indian Hindus, Chinese with No Religion, and East/Southeast Asian Buddhists. Notably, however, they all have very low rates of religious membership and attendance (see Table 2). Thus, it seems likely these ethno-religious minority groups have attributes that support quickly obtaining citizenship but that do not work through organized religion—or at least, not the congregational type of organized religion.

Path Models

The above results suggest two distinct pathways linking religion to early naturalization: the first works through identity formation, primarily within US-origin congregations and among those with more human capital and wealth, and the second works through mobilization on the basis of religious minority status. To visualize these pathways and to evaluate how the religion variables mediate the effects of human capital, time in the United States, and religious minority status on naturalization, Figure 4 shows a path model including just these measures of interest, based on simultaneous weighted logistic regression equations that also include the other controls. To include both the religious membership and US-origin congregation variables in the same model, I recode the latter as a dichotomous variable, rather than a three-category variable that separates out nonmembers/attendees. Note that while income is included in these models, it does not have significant direct effects on citizenship or religious membership, so the results are not shown.

Figure 4.

Path model.

This model shows significant direct effects for speaking English well, having a BA degree, being a religious member, being in a US-origin congregation, and being a religious minority. It shows indirect effects for English-speaking ability via religious membership and US-origin congregation; having a BA degree via US-origin congregation; and years in the United States via religious membership and, to a lesser extent, being in a US-origin congregation. Religious minority status has a strong negative association with both measures of involvement in organized religion, along with a strong positive association with early naturalization, affirming the earlier results.

Because assumptions about normally distributed variances do not hold for logistic regression, testing mediation is more complex and requires an effects-decomposition method (Buis 2010). In Table 9, I report the indirect, direct, and total effects for each possible mediation pathway, as well as the indirect effect/total effect (IE/TE) statistic, which translates to the percent of the total effect attributed to the mediation pathway. A negative value for this statistic indicates a suppressor effect.

Table 9.

Odds Ratios Representing Total, Direct, and Indirect Effects for Mediation Pathways of Interest.

	Total Effect	Direct Effect	Indirect Effect	IE/TE
Mediator: Religious member
Speaks English well	1.470*	1.436*	1.024*	0.060
Has BA or higher degree	1.497*	1.502*	0.996	–0.009
Religious minority (ref: Protestant/Catholic)	1.574**	1.690***	0.932*	–0.156
Years in the United States (ref: < 1)
1–5	1.165	1.126	1.034*	0.220
5.01–10	0.798	0.769	1.038*	–0.165
>10	0.745	0.703	1.059*	–0.196
Mediator: Member/attendee US-origin congregation (ref: Not member/attendee)
Speaks English well	1.547**	1.434*	1.079**	0.173
Has BA or higher degree	1.585**	1.500*	1.057**	0.119
Religious minority (ref: Protestant/Catholic)	1.551*	1.689**	0.919*	–0.191
Years in the United States (ref: < 1)
1–5	1.162	1.126	1.033*	0.212
5.01–10	0.787	0.769	1.024	–0.099
>10	0.711	0.704	1.010*	–0.032

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

There is strong evidence of mediation in several instances: religious membership mediating the effects of English-speaking ability, as well as living in the United States between 1 and 5 years (relative to living in the United States for less than 1 year); and the US-origin congregation mediating the effects of English-speaking ability and education, as well as living in the United States between 1 and 5 years. These measures are also strong suppressors for the effects of religious minority status on early naturalization.

Discussion and Conclusion

The current study was motivated by debates over whether organized religion integrates or alienates immigrants from political membership in receiving nations. The narrative of religion as an integrative force has been influential in American scholarship (Gordon 1964; Herberg 1983; Warner 1997, 2007), as compared to other receiving regions like Europe and parts of Asia, where religion is more often viewed as an obstacle to political integration (Searle-Chatterjee 2000; Mooney 2013; Özev 2017). The United States is distinct from many other immigrant-receiving nations in its degree of religious membership, in that its religious organizations are voluntary and functionally diffuse associations with inter- and intra-organizational connections to the broader society and in that most immigrants are Christian and thus share a framework for religious membership with the native-born majority (Warner 1994, 2007; Ammerman 2005; Levitt 2008; Manglos-Weber 2018).

Yet there is also a counter-narrative of religion-based alienation in the United States, focusing on how religion reinforces anti-immigrant hostility and social segregation (Breton 1964; Portes 1998; Albanese 2012, 302–16). This narrative cites the hostility toward religious minorities in earlier areas (in particular Jews, Buddhists, and Catholics), the steady rise of new religious minorities (Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists), evidence of racial and ethnic segregation in American religion more generally, and the rise in Christian nationalism and Islamophobia in the past two decades (Wuthnow and Hackett 2003; Braunstein 2017; Sherkat and Lehman 2018). This narrative suggests that by reinforcing racial, ethnic, and religious group boundaries, religious membership is likely to reinforce immigrants’ sense of alienation from US society and the segmentation in their networks, thus inhibiting their political incorporation.

It has been difficult to adjudicate between these two narratives, in part because they both have case-study and historical evidence to support them and in part because there has been a lack of comparative population-level data to test their assumptions. The current study is thus an important intervention in this debate, as the first large-N comparative test of which narrative has more evidence to support it within and between diverse new immigrant populations in the United States.

My central finding is that among new LPRs, membership in a religious congregation is generally associated with a higher probability of naturalization within a short timeframe. However, the association does not hold for everyone. It is strong and statistically significant for those who had lived in the United States for longer than a year and strongest for those who lived in the United States for 2–11 years before adjusting their status to LPR. The association is also stronger for those who were also regular attendees at their congregations, suggesting that it is heightened by greater congregational involvement.

At the same time, the association is only strong and statistically significant for those with more human capital and income, suggesting it is primarily relevant to the more privileged (i.e., highly educated professionals). This finding is corroborated by others, specifically that while members/attendees at US-origin congregations were much more likely to naturalize (with an increased probability of 0.102), members/attendees at national-origin congregations were only marginally more likely to do so. Finally, there is a parallel finding that religious minorities — Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists — were as a group more likely to obtain citizenship within this short window of time. This, despite the fact they were also much less likely to report membership in a religious congregation and that their higher likelihood of naturalization does not seem to be moderated by religious membership.

The path analysis confirms these results: religious membership, being in a US-origin congregation, and being a religious minority each have separate positive effects on the probability of naturalization, and being a religious minority also has a separate negative effect on being a member of a congregation or in a US-origin congregation. This analysis also confirms the conjoined role of human capital, tenure in the United States, and religion, where the latter — in particular, being in a US-origin congregation — mediates the factors that already put certain immigrants in a privileged place vis-à-vis naturalization.

There is therefore a fair amount of support for the religion-as-integrative position. However, there is less support for understanding this relationship in terms of social capital, at least among the early naturalizers studied here. The results suggest that religion is more important in the naturalization pathways of more privileged immigrants and those who attend US-origin congregations. Although these data cannot measure American identification directly, when viewed in light of other literature (Hirshman 2004; Warner 2007; Levitt 2008), these results seem indicative of how religious membership assists in the formation of a US-based identity, for those who experience fewer material obstacles to political integration.

The findings also show that religious minority status supports naturalization, which also affirms the role of human capital. The largest religious minority groups in these data are European/Central Asian Orthodox, Indian Hindu, East/Southeast Asian Buddhist, and North African/Middle Eastern Muslim. These communities are from places such as Russia, Ukraine, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Pakistan, and Egypt and are generally characterized by higher-than-average education and earnings (Portes and Rumbaut 2014). Thus, the religious minority effect may also reflect these socioeconomic differences.

The importance of socioeconomic standing does not mean, however, that religious identity is unimportant; rather, the literature on such groups suggests that their ethno-religious identity provides a foundation for constructing distinctive categories of political belonging (Rudrappa 2004; Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009; Williams 2011). The findings of the current study are thus in line with the selective acculturation model, characterized by upward mobility and the development of a distinct hyphenated American identity (Warner 2007; Portes and Rumbaut 2014, 75), and with studies of protective citizenship (Gilberston and Singer 2003). By adding to this literature, I provide further evidence that minority religious identities can facilitate individual and joint mobilization of resources to obtain citizenship, especially in reaction to anti-immigrant sentiment, Christian nationalism, and interracial hostility.

If Indian Americans are the quintessential example of this minority mobilization process (Rudrappa 2004), then African Protestant/Catholic Christians seem to be the quintessential example of the identity formation process. They are the one subgroup in these data exhibiting a strong positive correlation between religious membership and citizenship; they tend to have more human capital as a result of selection processes; they tend to gravitate toward US-based multicultural congregations; and their religious practices are in many ways similar to mainstream religious practice in the United States, especially among Evangelical or Pentecostal Protestants (Foley and Hoge 2007; Glick Schiller and Çaglar 2008; Manglos-Weber 2018). At the same time, the results for this group provide further evidence of minority mobilization, in that they are visible ethnic minorities as Blacks. They may, therefore, also pursue naturalization as part of selective acculturation and protective citizenship, rooted in cultural frameworks of Africana or Black Christianity (Abrams 2014).

Notably, the major share of new immigrants — those with less human capital and income, who largely come from Christian areas of the Americas — are not well represented by these narratives. Data challenges limit my ability to evaluate those groups. They are more likely to be lost from the sample due to attrition, they take longer to obtain citizenship, and they tend to have less human capital and wealth than average (Logan, Oh, and Darrah 2012; Portes and Rumbaut 2014). For them, any positive effects of religious membership due to congregational social capital would likely show up later than 7 years after becoming LPRs. Hopefully, panel data over a longer period of time, with similar religion measures and good representation across the diversity of new immigrants, will soon be available.

Also, there are likely unmeasured differences in acculturation shaping whether and where new immigrants practice religion in the United States. Some newcomers may have spent time interacting with friends and family in the United States and consuming US culture before entry, making it easier for them to be involved with US-based religious organizations. One could therefore argue that attending a US-origin congregation may be endogenous to general acculturation processes. Yet given this article’s findings on mediation pathways, it seems better to frame US-origin congregational involvement as a mediator that further supports the identification process of those already more acculturated to the United States.

Another weakness of this study is the measures of congregational demographics available on the NIS, which, while unique and valuable, cannot clearly differentiate between multiethnic immigrant congregations and more generally diverse congregations or between immigrant congregations that have a mix of first-, second-, and third-generation members and congregations that have no immigrant or ethnic character. The questions focus on national origin, but some congregations have a shared ethnic character but are multinational, like many Latinx or West African congregations, while still others are “national” in their character but multigenerational, like many Chinese or Korean churches. As noted, too, many respondents did not know or report their congregational demographics, and these cases are conservatively placed in the “other” category. The upshot is that this study’s results are most likely conservative and suggestive of influences of organized religiosity on naturalization that go beyond what I can confidently establish.

Similarly, this study’s religious attendance variable is more meaningful to traditions following a congregational model. While as noted, some minority faiths have adopted this model as part of their interaction with American religious culture (Yang and Ebaugh 2001a), they are still — as Table 3 shows — less likely to report regular attendance. There might be other measures of attendance or involvement that are more appropriate to those groups, such as practices taking place in the home and centering around yearly festivals (Warner 1997; Kurien 2007; Chen 2008), which might also moderate the link between religious membership or tradition and naturalization. It remains to future studies to test this possibility.

Finally, although this study’s results are preliminary, the role of religious organizations in political integration is germane to public discussions of these matters. It is ironic that religious identity is both a motivator of anti-immigration sentiment and a facilitator of integration, but such seems to be the ongoing story of the United States (Warner 2007; Braunstein 2017; Sherkat and Lehman 2018). In addition to the many domestic religious organizations that directly aid in refugee resettlement and have openly resisted the reduction in quotas and rises in forceful deportations of recent decades, local immigrant-serving congregations are in many places the strongest civic “connectors” for new arrivals (Hagan and Ebaugh 2003; Warner 2007; Levitt 2008; Cadge et al. 2013). Such organizations are thus likely to have insight into the needs of new populations and should be included in the important project of immigration policy reform.

Conclusion

The findings of the current study suggest that organized religion in the United States aids new immigrants in the process of naturalizing within a quick (3.5–7 year) timeframe. In light of a robust extant literature, I interpret these findings to suggest that organized religion shapes citizenship primarily through its identity formation functions, as seen most notably in the association between US-origin congregational membership and early naturalization. Further, being a religious minority illustrates a similar but separate positive effect on naturalization, which I interpret as aligned with other evidence of ethno-religious community mobilization in response to anti-immigrant hostility and discrimination (Rudrappa 2004; Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009; Williams 2011).

Organized religion thus matters for how today’s new legal residents in the United States are naturalized, but not as a legal boundary that determines possibilities of citizenship or a cultural boundary that isolates new immigrants from political membership. Rather, religion matters in a more complex and nuanced way as a basis of membership and identification that helps accommodate the demands of life in the host society and, when necessary, protects against the threats of America’s stratified racial and ethnic order. This interpretation, rather than ignoring the experiences of minority groups or downplaying the effects of hostility and discrimination, accounts for how certain immigrants’ responses to those realities are also aided and informed by their personal religious commitments. What remains to be seen is whether organized religion also aids the less privileged in this process; whether it plays a similar role for those in vulnerable legal categories; and whether new legal residents who naturalize more slowly will exhibit the same patterns.

Footnotes

Author Note

The data used in this study are from the New Immigrant Survey and are available for download from the Princeton University Office of Population Research Data Archive. More information is available at . An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2016 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Margarita Mooney, Chardie Baird, Steve Warner, and the anonymous reviewers at IMR for their invaluable feedback.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Nicolette D. Manglos-Weber

Notes

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