Adapting Identities: Religious Conversion and Partisanship Among Asian American Immigrants

Abstract

Asian Americans constitute the largest group of new immigrants and the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. While Asian American immigrants have experienced greater economic success than other minority groups, this has not necessarily led to greater political incorporation such as identification with a political party. Political parties have made little substantive outreach to Asian Americans, leaving a void in political socialization that other institutions, such as churches, have sought to fill. Yet the U.S. religious landscape is often quite different from that of Asian immigrants’ sending countries, providing opportunities for changes in religious identity through conversion. Leveraging data from the 2012 Pew Asian American Survey, we show that conversion from Buddhism to Christianity among Asian American immigrants facilitates the development of partisan political identities. We demonstrate that conversion functions as an adaptation in identity that helps facilitate subsequent changes in identity, such as the acquisition of partisanship.

Keywords

religion Asian Americans immigration partisanship political incorporation

Asian Americans make up the largest group of new immigrants and the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States (Jensen, Knapp, Borsella, & Nestor, 2015). Despite their increasing demographic importance, however, Asian Americans are still relatively marginalized in the American political system and participate in politics at among the lowest rates of any racial or ethnic group (Wong, Ramakrishnan, Lee, & Junn, 2011). For example, while about 62% of African Americans and 61% of Whites report identification with one of the two major political parties, only 44% of Asian Americans identify with a party (Hajnal & Lee, 2011). Moreover, partisanship plays a more critical role in the political engagement of Asian Americans: While nearly three quarters of White nonpartisans vote in presidential elections, 59% of Asian American nonpartisans do not turn out to vote (Hajnal & Lee, 2011). As a whole, partisanship offers a host of political benefits; party organizations provide material and informational resources to members, and partisanship helps subsidize the information costs of political engagement by functioning as a heuristic in political decision making.

Exacerbating these partisan disparities is the fact that the majority of Asian Americans (around 65%) are foreign born (Jensen et al., 2015). These immigrants are discouraged from participating in partisan politics due in part to the failure of the two major American political parties to directly engage and mobilize immigrants (Hajnal & Lee, 2011; Ramakrishnan, 2005; Wong, 2006), which is particularly remarkable in light of parties’ historical role in politically mobilizing immigrant groups (Gerstle & Mollenkopf, 2001). Furthermore, native-born persons benefit from socialization that provides them with an understanding of the American political system and fosters the development of partisan attachments (Green, Palmquist, & Schickler, 2002). As they were largely raised outside of the United States, many Asian American immigrants have not experienced these socializing processes, which inflates the cognitive costs of forming partisan attachments (Tam Cho, 1999).

Despite these obstacles to partisanship, other social institutions have partially intervened to help subsidize the cognitive costs of political incorporation for immigrant groups. For example, religion and churches help defray the costs associated with immigrant partisan identification by providing information and cognitive mobilization (Dalton, 1984, 2007). Like partisanship, religious affiliation is a deeply held identity that is often formed as part of one’s early socialization. Indeed, Green et al. (2002) emphasize the strength of partisanship as an identity by drawing comparisons with religious affiliation, arguing that both are relatively immutable components of one’s social identity. However, religious institutions in the United States are more proximate to the daily lives of many immigrants than are political parties, and they make more overt efforts to recruit them (Foley & Hoge, 2007; Wong, 2006).

In the process of being recruited by these religious institutions, many immigrants are also converted. In fact, while religious identities are deeply held, they are not static; between one third and 40% of all Americans have converted to a different religion than the one in which they were raised (Putnam & Campbell, 2010). Moreover, such changes in immigrants’ religious identity in response to new opportunities in the United States may help subsidize the cognitive costs of forming a partisan identity. Indeed, prior research has shown that Latino immigrants who convert to a new religion after migrating to the United States are more likely to develop partisan identities: Weaver (2015) theorizes that Latino immigrant conversion functions as an adaptative change in identity in response to a new environment, and shows evidence that this facilitates the subsequent formation of partisanship as another identity adaptation in this new environment.

In line with Weaver’s (2015) prior work on Latino immigrants, we contend that religious conversion should facilitate the development of partisanship among Asian American immigrants. While the religious traditions of many Asian Americans differ more dramatically from the Christian traditions that dominate much of the U.S. and Latin American religious landscapes, we expect that religious conversion should function as an adaptation in identity among both Asian American and Latino immigrants. In fact, conversion to Christianity from a more disparate religion such as Buddhism may represent a more substantial shift in identity than interdenominational conversion from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism (the primary form of religious conversion among Latino immigrants).

Specifically, we argue that Asian American immigrant converts will be more likely to identify with a major political party in the United States, while conversion will have no relationship with partisanship among native-born Asian Americans. To test this theory, we leverage data from the 2012 Pew Asian American Survey to show that Asian American immigrants who convert from Buddhism to Christianity (the largest group of Asian American converts) are significantly more likely to identify as members of a major political party than as nonpartisan. This is significant, given that the wide range of religious options and the narrow range of partisan options in the United States make it substantially easier for immigrants to form new religious identities than to develop a partisan identity. Although it does not erase other barriers to political incorporation, conversion represents one means of facilitating Asian American immigrants’ political incorporation.

Asian Americans, Immigrants, and Partisan Identity

Partisanship and the dynamics that shape it are at the core of Americans’ relationship to politics and political institutions, including voting and other forms of participation (Achen, 2002; Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Fiorina, 1981; Franklin & Jackson, 1983; Gerber & Green, 1998; W. Miller, 1991). Historically, political scientists have framed party identification as either a psychological orientation and group identity (Barelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954; Campbell et al., 1960; Green et al., 2002; A. Miller, Wlezien, & Hildreth, 1991) or an issue evaluation process (Abramowitz, 1995; Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008; Downs, 1957; Fiorina, 1981; Jackson, 1975). For immigrants, a lack of political socialization and the limited salience of immigrant issues to the two major political parties severely inhibit their ability to form partisan attachments through issue proximity and evaluations (Hajnal & Lee, 2011; Wong, 2006). As such, the theories of partisanship that stress psychological and group-based explanations tend to be more applicable to explanations of immigrant partisanship.

Native-born citizens typically adopt partisan identities through psychological and group-based political socialization, and identities remain stable and persistent despite changes in political context (Green et al., 2002). Individuals are able to associate certain social groups with particular parties, and place themselves in one party or the other in relation to these judgments (Brady & Sniderman, 1985; Ingberman & Villani, 1993; Rabinowitz & Macdonald, 1989). These perceptions of party group characteristics shape partisan attachment and partisan voting. Perceptions of the two major parties may come from elite cues, media frames, interpersonal dialogue, or affective predispositions (Bartels, 2000; Lodge & Taber, 2000; Zaller, 1992). The process of socialization helps reduce the costs of future political involvement and overcome barriers to entry into the political process.

However, immigrants generally lack exposure to processes of political socialization which influence the development of partisanship for native-born populations. Many immigrants arrive in the United States relatively late in life or have been raised in the United States by parents who likewise lack political socialization, inhibiting the formation of a partisan identity (Cain, Kiewiet, & Uhlaner, 1991; Wong, 2000). Although immigrants may mobilize a political identity formed in their country of origin and use that identity to understand American politics (Leal & McCann, 2010; Wals, 2011), sending countries often have political institutions and party systems that differ significantly from the U.S. system (Bloemraad, 2006; Lipset & Rokkan, 1967; Ramakrishnan & Bloemraad, 2008). As a result, even immigrants who were politically active in their countries of origin have higher barriers to partisan identity formation than native-born populations.

These limitations are further compounded by the inaction of political parties, which once acted as mechanisms for immigrant incorporation into the U.S. political system but now fail to directly recruit new immigrant populations (Gerstle & Mollenkopf, 2001; Hajnal & Lee, 2011; Ramakrishnan, 2005; Wong, 2006). The parties’ failure to reach out to Asian Americans is in part a result of strategic factors; Wong et al. (2011) argue that Asian Americans are often overlooked by the parties due to the group’s relatively small size, higher rates of noncitizenship, and tendency toward nonpartisanship. As has already been noted, however, the latter may be just as much a product of the parties’ inattention as a cause. Party contact may also be mitigated by subgroup variation; as different Asian American nationality groups respond to and support different parties, lack of homogeneity may inhibit contact by both parties (Phan & Garcia, 2009; Sui & Paul, 2016). There are no inherent barriers to party contact, however, as immigrants are susceptible to party contact and campaign information (McCann & Chávez, 2016).

Other obstacles to Asian American immigrants’ party identification largely mimic the barriers present in the general immigrant population—foreign-born Asian Americans do not undergo the process of political socialization through early-age political activity, voting, and exposure to the political process (Lien, Collet, Wong, & Ramakrishnan, 2001; Lien, Conway, & Wong, 2004; Phan & Garcia, 2009; Tam, 1995; Wong, 2000). This lack of socialization leads to high levels of nonpartisanship among Asian American immigrants, even when compared with other immigrant groups and ethnic minorities (Hajnal & Lee, 2011). Further research by Nguyen and Garand (2009) finds that the strength of Asian American immigrants’ partisanship is not connected to characteristics of Asian group identity such as feelings of linked fate or shared discrimination experience. They do, however, find that these factors are important for native-born Asian Americans, suggesting that immigrants are unable to utilize shared Asian identity to develop partisan attachments.

Unlike other immigrant groups, however, Asian Americans have higher incomes and higher levels of secondary and postsecondary education, which tend to lead to greater political incorporation and partisan affiliation. Indeed, Phan and Garcia (2009) find that Asian American immigrants who are wealthier and better educated are more likely to develop partisan attachments than other Asian American immigrant groups. Despite evidence for the importance of variation in socioeconomic status among Asian Americans, their overall socioeconomic advantages have not led to gains in partisan identity relative to other immigrant and minority ethnic groups. The persistence of Asian American immigrants’ nonpartisanship in the face of significant economic and educational advantages demonstrates the importance of political socialization in motivating partisan identity formation (Tam Cho, 1999).

However, political parties and shared ethnic identities are not the only mechanisms for political socialization and identity formation. Previous work has largely ignored religion as one such important socialization mechanism in American politics. Furthermore, White, Nevitte, Blais, Gidengil, and Fournier (2008) find that Asian immigrants’ premigration identities are malleable, that immigrants are able to be “resocialized” into a new political context in the United States. Changes in immigrants’ religious identity may facilitate resocialization in the American political context by leveraging the transitive nature of immigrant identities.

Religion in Asian American Politics

Religion has long been linked to one’s level of political engagement and partisan identity (e.g., Djupe & Gilbert, 2009; Harris, 1999; Kelly & Kelly, 2005; Leege & Kellstedt, 1993; Putnam & Campbell, 2010). As prior research shows, churches are a primary location for the development of civic skills and for political recruitment by coreligionists, and religion transmits ideas which can be easily connected to partisan goals (Djupe & Gilbert, 2009; Harris, 1999; Putnam & Campbell, 2010; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). As churches are also geographically widespread, attended frequently, and connected to a web of social services and other networks, they are uniquely positioned to provide opportunities for political involvement to those who otherwise lack political access. Furthermore, though still unequal in many respects, churches are one of the few social institutions where persons of all different backgrounds have relatively equal opportunities to be involved. This is particularly important for immigrant and marginalized populations, who may have fewer opportunities for political participation outside of the religious sphere (Harris, 1999; Ramakrishnan & Bloemraad, 2008; Sterne, 2001).

Like partisan political machines in the late 19th century, religious congregations have been highlighted as an important socializing agent for immigrant populations (Bloemraad, 2006; Connor, 2014; Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2000; Ramakrishnan & Bloemraad, 2008; Sterne, 2001). Historically, the Catholic Church operated a network that brought Irish, Polish, and Italian immigrants into—particularly Democratic—politics (Sterne, 2004). Given their social standing, infrastructure, and connections to the political system, churches continue to provide immigrants with important opportunities for political engagement and partisan attachment. For example, the modern Catholic Church maintains a central cultural role in Latino immigrant communities.

While some evidence suggests that politics is a less prominent feature of Asian American–serving churches (Wong, Rim, & Perez, 2008), religion is still associated with greater political engagement among Asian Americans. Asian Americans who attend church more frequently are more likely to participate in politics (Lien, 2004; Wong et al., 2011). Religious institutions also help engage Asian Americans by advocating for change through community engagement and organizing around political issues (Jeung, 2005), and a variety of Christian churches help promote the involvement of Asian Americans in protest activities, including the immigrant rights protests in the mid-2000s (Gonzalez & del Rosario, 2009, Ramakrishnan & Bloemraad, 2008; Rim, 2009). Churches and pastors occasionally make their opinions known on relevant social issues, and political discussions among religious adherents occur within small groups (Jeung, 2005; Wong et al., 2008).

Compared with other immigrant groups, however, Asian Americans represent a broader spectrum of religious traditions and beliefs. Although a significant portion of Asian Americans are Christians, the majority identify as either nonreligious or as part of non-Christian faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism (Pew Research Center, 2012). Outside of Christianity, which is often regarded as a more group-centric religion, the private practices of Buddhists and others are an important means of promoting civic engagement (Schoettmer, 2013). Furthermore, some Eastern religions practiced in the United States, such as Buddhism, have begun adopting similar practices and structures as American Christianity, and promote more regular group interactions (Connor, 2014; Ebaugh & Chafetz, 2000; Mann, Numrich, & Williams, 2001). In sum, a diverse array of religious organizations plays an important role in mobilizing and orienting Asian Americans toward politics (Lien, 2004).

But many scholars have cautioned using Western conceptions of religious belief such as prayer and meditation to understand Asian and Asian American religiosity, citing the transformation of identity that occurs with immigration and its potential impact of religious practice (Carnes & Yang, 2004; Zhou, Bankston, & Kim, 2001). For example, the Pew Forum’s report Asian Americans: A mosaic of Faiths (Pew Research Center, 2012) notes that two thirds of Asian American Buddhists believe in ancestral spirits and reincarnation but only a small percentage attend weekly services (12%) or meditate daily (14%), which are lower rates than Asian American Christians. These patterns of religiosity among Asian Americans underscore the potential influence of religion and religious conversion, as religious conversion may also alter underlying beliefs and practices. Increases in religious participation from conversion from Buddhism to a more active religious tradition in the American context may act as a mechanism for increased participation and identification with political groups.

While different religious traditions mobilize their members to varying degrees, religious affiliation alone does not fully account for the immigrant experience. As Phillip Connor (2014) puts it, “An immigrant faith is a changing faith” (p. 10). There may be more extensive political implications for practicing one’s faith in a new setting or taking on an entirely new faith. Indeed, because of its religious diversity, the United States offers a range of religious options that may not be as widely available (either by law or by practice) in many immigrants’ sending countries. Thus, it is important to understand the dynamic effect of changes in immigrants’ religion on their political incorporation.

Religious Conversion and Political Identification

Identification with a group represents a sense of belonging or psychological attachment based on a perception of shared beliefs, feelings, interests, or values (Conover, 1988; McClain, Carew, Walton, & Watts, 2009; A. Miller et al., 1991). Partisanship and religious affiliation are two such identities. Indeed, Green et al. (2002) point to both partisanship and religion as relatively fixed components of one’s social identity:

Dramatic swings in the political fortunes of the parties tend to leave a shallow imprint on the partisan affiliations of adults, just as doctrinal and organizational disputes within Christian sects typically have little effect on the religious affiliation of churchgoers. (p. 2)

However, this somewhat overstates the immutability of religious identity. Between one third and 40% of all Americans are converts to a religion different than the one in which they were raised (Putnam & Campbell, 2010). Reasons for conversion vary, but the diverse and competitive nature of the American religious marketplace appears to encourage religious “shopping” (Audette & Weaver, 2016; Finke & Stark, 2005). A number of personal factors also appear to encourage conversion, including marriage, generational differences, nationality, age, gender, and race (Barro, Hwang, & McCleary, 2010; Putnam & Campbell, 2010; Sherkat, 2001, 2004; Sherkat & Wilson, 1995).

Because they represent such strong group attachments, changes in religion and political identity are often conceptualized in terms of loyalty. For example, scholars have argued that the wave of religious disaffiliation associated with secularism in the United States is the result of people abandoning a religious identity that they feel conflicts with their political identity (Hout & Fischer, 2002; Patrikios, 2008; Putnam & Campbell, 2010). That is, as Christianity has become associated with the Republican Party, (primarily) Democrats show greater loyalty to their party than their church. Rather than seeing these as conflicting loyalties, however, Djupe (2000) offers evidence that religious and partisan loyalties are linked, with religious brand loyalty promoting loyalty to political parties. This conception of religious loyalty entails both a psychological attachment to the religious brand and a set of dense social ties with other congregants.

In contrast to our theory, Djupe (2000) found that religious conversion was associated with greater nonpartisanship. That is, a tendency to be disloyal to a religion made one less willing to be loyal to a political party. Nevertheless, there is a good reason to believe that religious conversion represents a different process for immigrant populations. Rather than reflecting disloyalty, immigrants’ conversion to a new faith in the United States more represents their willingness to form loyalties to new “brands” available to them in American society. This pattern may be especially true for Asian American immigrants converting from Buddhism to Christianity. The perception of Christianity as an American religious tradition may signal willingness to adopt new American brands. They may be no less inclined toward brand loyalism, but rather trading in one set of brands for another.

Furthermore, Weaver (2015) demonstrates that postmigration conversion among Latino immigrants increases the probability that immigrants will develop partisanship. As converts sever a psychological attachment formed in their country of origin and form a new attachment to a religion encountered in the United States, they are adapting their identity in response to a new environment. This new attachment to an American religious institution makes it easier to form attachments to other institutions in the environment such as political parties. Indeed, though they compare the two forms of identities, Green et al. (2002) acknowledge that “identification with political parties is a minor part of the typical American’s self-conception. Race, sex, ethnicity, religion, region, and social class come immediately to mind as core social identities” (p. 2). The adaptation of a more deeply held identity such as religion provides converts with the psychological resources and connections that facilitate the formation of other—potentially less essential—identities such as partisanship.

However, Weaver’s study examined conversion and partisanship only among Latino immigrants. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to expect these psychological mechanisms to function similarly across immigrant groups. Far less work has been done on Asian American immigrant conversion, but prior work has found that Asian immigrants develop deeper religious ties in the United States than in their homelands (Yang, 1999). In Getting Saved in America, Chen (2008) offers an exhaustive qualitative account of the role of religious conversion in the United States for Taiwanese immigrants and the impact of conversion on immigrants’ assimilation into American culture and experience. Chen’s ethnography highlights the power of religious conversion to act as a socializing agent, comparing the role of religious conversion with social involvement, education, and the direct influence of the political system. As she emphasizes in her interviews with Taiwanese immigrants and religious converts, “Migration to the United States disrupts existing networks of community and challenges the moral traditions that once sustained them” and “created a particular kind of self” (p. 4). As part of the immigration process, “Immigrants must find the resources to build new narratives, identities, and practices of selfhood” (p. 4). She argues that “religion remakes Taiwanese immigrants into Americans. Religious conversion . . . offers new moral vocabularies, institutional structures, and ethical traditions that reconstruct community, identity, and self in the United States” (p. 5).

Part of this transformation has been political, as many Asian American political candidates have found success at the local level through appeals to Christian religious communities. Chen notes that while visiting Southern California to gain financial and electoral support, a candidate for the Taiwanese presidency used church choirs and Christian imagery in his speech to appeal to Taiwanese immigrants, despite the fact that only 3.9% of those living in Taiwan identify as Christians (in comparison, between 20% and 25% of Taiwanese immigrants in the United States are Christians, and most converted in the United States; Chen, 2008). Chen’s firsthand account of the power of conversion, however, does not examine the potential impact of that conversion on the subsequent development of a political self in the form of partisanship.

Further studies highlight the importance of sending and receiving contexts in shaping political affiliations and behavior among new immigrants (Cadge & Ecklund, 2007). The transnational character of Evangelical Christianity in particular has an impact on the political affiliations of Chinese Americans (Ong, 2016). The involvement of Chinese Americans in Evangelical denominations in the United States has led to growth in Evangelical Christianity in China and the United States (Tseng, 2006), which in turn facilitates changing political identities among Chinese Americans (Jeung, 2005). These examinations highlight the important connection between new religious contexts and new political contexts among Asian American immigrants and the potential for alterations in religious contexts to facilitate alterations in political affiliations and orientations in new contexts.

The role of changing contexts is especially pertinent, given the close link between religious denominations and politics in the United States. Evangelical Christian traditions, for example, are uniquely politicized, even when compared with similar traditions in other countries (Bean, 2014). Conversion from a non-Western religious tradition such as Buddhism to a politicized American tradition such as Evangelical Christianity may have profound effects on an immigrant’s conception of the connection between religion and politics. The previously demonstrated connection between religion and politics for nonimmigrant Americans (e.g., Putnam & Campbell, 2010) creates a uniquely politicized context that immigrant converts engage in.

Wong (2006) further argues that religious institutions actually serve immigrants, overlooked by political parties, as alternative venues for political mobilization. Christian churches commonly engage in proselytization in an effort to spread their faith to new groups and gain converts to their religion. In the process, they also offer resources and avenues for acclimation. This suggests that churches may be more accessible to immigrants than political parties, making it more likely that Asian American immigrants will encounter an opportunity to convert than to join a party in the course of their daily lives. To take advantage of these opportunities, however, immigrants must alter their religious identities, and adapt to new practices and traditions. As an adaptation to the unique features of the American religious marketplace, this identity realignment represents a shift from an identity associated with their country of origin to one shaped by their new environment. By adapting to new religious opportunities, converts are taking on one kind of American identity.

This makes partisanship more likely for two reasons: First, converts gain a deeply held religious identity that is largely unique to the United States, facilitating greater ties to other American “brands.” This may also make them more susceptible to general appeals by the two major parties, as they are now more likely to identify in a way that is compatible with the parties’ appeals to religious and cultural values. Second, someone who adapts in one way is more likely to adapt in other ways, because the first adaptation leaves the convert’s identity in greater flux and provides resources and connection that offset the cognitive costs of subsequent changes. By socializing immigrant populations disregarded by the political parties, religious conversion helps subsidize the cognitive costs of political identification for new immigrants. Nonconvert immigrants must incur all of the costs of political affiliation in a new cultural context directly (Tam Cho, 1999), whereas immigrant converts take an intervening step through the adaptation of their religious identity. In this way, religious conversion may shorten the cognitive leap to partisanship by providing something akin to a bridge in one’s identity.

Data and Method

To examine the relationship between religion, conversion, and partisanship for Asian American immigrants, we make use of the Pew Research Center’s 2012 Asian American Survey (Pew Research Center, 2012). The survey included a nationally representative sample of 3,511 Asian American adults and was conducted via multilingual telephone interviews from January 3 to March 27 in 2012.¹ In all analyses, the data are weighted to ensure representativeness. Only one other survey, the National Asian American Survey conducted in 2008, asks about Asian American religious conversion. However, the survey does not ask about religion of origin, which is a key component of our analysis. The Pew Asian American Survey uniquely provides both a large sample of Asian American immigrants and a sufficient range of religious variables to explore the causes and consequences of religious conversion. Within the sample, approximately 76% of respondents are foreign born. Of these, approximately 15% identify as Buddhists, 13% as Hindus, 13% as Evangelical Protestants, 7% as Mainline Protestants, 19% as Catholics, 8% as another religion, and 25% as nonreligious.

Following the methodology of Weaver (2015), we identify religious converts by comparing the religion in which respondents were raised to the religion with which they currently identify. Rather than looking at converts generally, Weaver (2015) looked specifically at converts from Catholicism (the predominant religion of origin among Latino immigrants) to Evangelical Protestantism (the largest receiving religion). A summary of sending and receiving religions is displayed in Table 1. Around 30% of immigrants no longer identify with the religion in which they were raised, and 60% of this group has converted to a new religion. Among Asian American immigrants, Buddhism is the largest sending religion: 35% of those who no longer identify with their childhood religion were raised as Buddhists. Excluding those who disaffiliate from religion, the largest receiving religions are Evangelical Protestantism, Mainline Protestantism, and Catholicism, which received approximately 36%, 21%, and 17% of converts, respectively. Conversion from Buddhism to one of these three major Christian traditions accounted for around 22% of all religious conversion. No other major religious groups exhibit sufficient rates of conversion to provide an adequate sample size for analysis.² Due to the limited number of converts to and from other religious traditions, therefore, we focus our analysis of religious conversion on those who convert to one of the three major Christian traditions from Buddhism. We compare these converts with unconverted Buddhists, Hindus, Evangelical Protestants, Mainline Protestants, Catholics, other religious adherents, and the nonreligious.

Table 1.

Sending and Receiving Religions.

Current religion	Religion of origin
Current religion	Buddhist	Hindu	Protestant	Catholic
Buddhist	55	1	0	1
Hindu	1	82	0	0
Evangelical	7	1	45	7
Mainline	4	0	28	4
Catholic	5	0	6	77
Other	10	4	1	3
None	26	12	20	8
Total	650	360	212	601

Source. 2012 Pew Asian American Survey.

Note. With the exception of the final row, entries are percentages.

In terms of nationality, these immigrant converts tend to be fairly diverse: Approximately 28% emigrated from South Korea, 21% from Vietnam, 17% from Japan, 13% from China, 7% from Taiwan, 5% from Cambodia, 5% from Laos, 3% from Thailand, and 2% from the Philippines. Although the precise proportions differ, a substantial portion of both lifelong Buddhists and Christians emigrated from each of these countries. Nevertheless, we control for whether respondents emigrated from China in our subsequent analyses, as it is the largest sending country overall, and Chinese immigrants exhibit significantly lower rates of partisanship than all other nationality groups, which have about the same probability of partisanship.³

To measure partisanship, we rely on respondents’ self-identification in a question asking whether they consider themselves Republican, Democratic, or independent. Those who identified as independents, stated no preference, or did not know were coded as nonpartisans. Table 2 displays an initial bivariate comparison between our measure of religious conversion and party identification among Asian American immigrants. As shown, converts exhibit the lowest rates of nonpartisanship. They are also one of the most Republican and least Democratic groups, but as we show below, these differences ultimately do not persist in multivariate analyses. Moreover, we are primarily concerned with partisanship extending in either direction, as both sides carry benefits in facilitating the political incorporation of Asian American immigrants. Thus, Figure 1 displays the overall rates of partisanship and nonpartisanship for each of the religious groups when Republicans and Democrats are folded in the same category.

Table 2.

Religion, Conversion, and Partisanship.

	Democrat	Nonpartisan	Republican	Total
Buddhist → Christian	22	38	40	105
Buddhist	27	53	20	343
Hindu	46	49	5	326
Evangelical	19	47	34	163
Mainline	30	41	29	98
Catholic	28	44	28	437
Other	47	44	9	163
Nonreligious	33	60	7	664

Source. 2012 Pew Asian-American Survey.

Note. With the exception of the final column, entries are percentages.

Figure 1.

Religion, conversion, and partisanship.

The relationship posited between conversion and partisanship, however, may just as easily run in the opposite direction. That is, the development of partisanship may facilitate subsequent religious conversion. While Weaver (2015) found that the majority of Latino immigrant converts converted within their first 10 years in the United States and most immigrant converts within that time period still exhibited no partisan identity, the Pew Asian American Survey data do not allow us to identify the point in time converts converted.⁴ Furthermore, respondents were not asked when in their lifetime they developed a partisan attachment. This prohibits us from establishing temporal precedence in the relationship between the two variables. Nevertheless, respondents were asked how long they had been in the United States. Given the size of the immigrant subsample, this allows us to examine rates of conversion and partisanship by length of time in the country. Specifically, Figure 2 displays the probability of partisanship among converts over time and, conversely, the probability of conversion among partisans over time (95% confidence intervals are shown around each predicted probability). As shown in the graph, converts are much more likely to develop partisanship as they spend more years in the United States than partisans are to convert, which suggests that conversion drives subsequent partisanship more than partisanship drives subsequent conversion.⁵

Figure 2.

Conversion and partisanship by years in the United States.

Another potential explanation for the observed relationship might be that converts are simply more religious than nonconverts, which may also be related to partisanship. To explore this possibility, we examined the percentage of converts, lifelong Buddhists, and lifelong Christians who believe that religion is very important in their lives, attend religious services at least once a week, pray at least once a day, and who have a spouse or partner of a different religion.⁶ While those who have converted from Buddhism to Christianity are indeed more religiously active and committed than lifelong Buddhists, they are less religious than lifelong Christians. Given the rates of partisanship observed in Table 2 and Figure 1 for these groups, religiosity would not seem to fully account for the effect of conversion on partisanship. In addition, converts are about as likely as Buddhists to have a partner or spouse of a different religion, which suggests that they are not especially more rigid in their religious beliefs. Nevertheless, we include frequency of religious attendance as a control for religiosity in all subsequent multivariate models.

Furthermore, the differences between converts and nonconverts are not easily explained by assimilation. While we might conceivably expect converts to be more assimilated in their social networks, Christian converts are no more likely than Buddhists and are possibly less likely than other groups to say hardly any of their friends are either from their country of origin or identify as Asian Americans.⁷ What is more, converts do not differ substantially from lifelong Buddhists or Christians in the mean number of years they have spent in the United States or in the percentage who own their own home, are married, or have children. In addition, as noted above, Asian Americans are generally considered successful by these economic and familial indicators. Unlike other groups, economic factors seem to play a less prominent role in their political incorporation; when included in the multivariate models below, these variables do not affect the results. Measures of establishment do not seem to explain partisan ties. Nevertheless, because spouses are likely to have such a large role in any change in their partner’s religious and political affiliations, we control for respondents’ marital status in all subsequent models.

In addition to the variables discussed above, our multivariate analyses also include controls for a variety of other political and demographic characteristics that may drive partisan identification. Politically, we control for respondents’ ideological identification as either liberal or conservative. While immigrants may have little or no socialized attachments to the American political parties, many still bring political preferences. We would expect these ideologues to also be more likely to identify with a political party. Standard demographic controls include income, education, gender, age, and whether or not the respondent lives in the Western United States (the region with the densest population of Asian Americans). Among immigrants, we also include controls for whether or not the respondent has attained citizenship and their self-rated ability to speak English. In the next section, we examine the impact of each of these factors on partisanship using logistic regression analyses.

Results

To begin, Table 3 reports the results of separate logistic regression models for foreign-born and native-born Asian Americans. Statistically significant relationships are emboldened. As shown, Asian American immigrants who convert from Buddhism to Christianity are significantly more likely to develop a partisan identification than lifelong Buddhists. Moreover, this is not simply the effect of Christian identification in itself, as lifelong Christians are no more likely to develop a partisan identity than Buddhists. Nor is the effect driven strictly by religiosity, as church attendance is actually negatively correlated with partisanship. However, the nonreligious do exhibit significantly lower rates of partisanship than religious groups, which indicates that disaffiliation with religion altogether may further discourage political affiliation. In this way, disaffiliation may actually have the reverse function of conversion.⁸

Table 3.

Religion, Conversion, and Probability of Partisanship.

	Partisanship
	Foreign born	Native born
Religion
Buddhist → Christian	0.73*	1.04
Hindu	−0.10	0.87
Evangelical	0.20	−0.53
Mainline	0.36	−0.16
Catholic	0.11	0.53
Other religion	0.15	0.94
Nonreligious	−0.47*	0.20
Attendance	−0.17*	0.05
Ideology
Liberal	0.66*	0.67*
Conservative	0.66*	0.10
Demographics
Income	0.00	−0.03
Education	0.07	0.13
Married	−0.01	0.04
Female	0.21	0.05
Age	0.01*	0.02*
West	0.12	−0.10
Immigration
Citizen	0.40*	—
English	0.26*	—
Chinese	−1.02*	—
n	2,276	686
Pseudo-R²	.09	.07

Source. 2012 Pew Asian American Survey.

Note. Entries are logit coefficients.

p < .05.

Furthermore, the effect of conversion is unique to foreign-born Asian Americans. Conversion has no impact on partisanship for the native born, which suggests that conversion in response to new opportunities in one’s receiving country represents a distinct kind of change in one’s identity. As we have argued, this adaptive change in one’s identity in response to unique opportunities in the American environment is precisely the kind of adaptation the development of a partisanship necessitates.

Among immigrants, several other factors help facilitate the development of partisanship. Ideological liberals and conservatives are unsurprisingly more likely to be partisan than moderates. Similarly, citizens are eligible to vote and thus have more to gain by developing a party preference; as a result, citizens are more likely to be partisans. However, the effect of conversion from a Buddhist religion to a Christian religion has a 16-percentage-point increase compared with a 9-percentage-point increase for gaining citizenship. This comparison is strong evidence for the importance and power of religious conversion in motivating political partisanship.

English ability is also positively associated with partisanship. Given that most of the party’s public messages are conveyed in English, greater ability to speak English facilitates the receipt of such communications and makes partisanship more probable. Older respondents are also more likely to be partisans, potentially because they have had more time to become familiar with the two parties.⁹ Finally, Chinese immigrants are significantly less likely to be partisans than any other group. This may be the result of wider differences between the American and Chinese political systems, as no other nationality group demonstrates drastic differences in partisan identification. Lower rates of Chinese immigrant political identity may also result from a history of discrimination, targeted specifically at Chinese immigrants and resulting “perpetual foreigner” status (Tumaneng, 2012), or the preexisting strength of Chinese immigrant organizations (Zhou & Lee, 2013). Chinese immigrant organizations may facilitate closer connections to Chinese immigrants’ home country, which may inhibit the adoption of an American partisan identity. Other Asian American immigrant groups may lack access to these well-developed organizations and thus feel less connected to their respective sending countries, which in turn allows attachment to a new political identity. In addition, of all immigrant groups, Chinese immigrants convert to another religion at lower rates than other Asian American immigrants. This low rate of conversion may disproportionately influence the relationship between conversion and party identification if not controlled for in the model. (A full breakdown of the probability of partisanship by country of origin for Asian American immigrants is included in the appendix.)

As a logistic regression model produces nonlinear estimates, however, the interpretation of the coefficients in Table 3 is not necessarily intuitive. To help facilitate interpretation, Figure 3 displays the predicted probability of partisanship for each immigrant religious group with 95% confidence intervals, holding all other variables constant at their means.¹⁰ As shown, converts are the most likely of any religious group to identify with one of the two major parties. Compared with lifelong Buddhists, conversion increases the probability of partisanship by approximately 17 percentage points. The gap between converts and the nonreligious, who exhibit the lowest rates of partisanship, is around 29 percentage points. The gap between converts and lifelong Christians is less substantial, but these groups are statistically no more likely than lifelong Buddhists or Hindus to be partisans.¹¹ Thus, Christian conversion, rather than Christian affiliation alone, appears to facilitate the development of partisanship.

Figure 3.

Probability of partisanship by religion and conversion.

Given the distribution of partisan ties reported in Table 2, however, it is possible that these differences might be driven by affiliation with a single political party. Converts appear to be much more Republican than Democratic. To explore the directionality of partisanship among converts, we use a multinomial logistic regression model to estimate the effect of each variable listed in Table 3 on the relative probability that a voter identifies as nonpartisan, Republican, or Democratic. The multinomial logistic regression estimates allow for tests of the effects of each specific outcome relative to other outcomes within the same model. As it also produces nonlinear estimates, Figure 4 presents the predicted probability of identifying as nonpartisan, Republican, or Democratic for each religious group, holding all other variables at their mean.¹² As the results suggest, converts are statistically no more likely to be Republican than they are to be Democratic. While converts are more likely to be Republican than other groups, they are also statistically no less likely to be Democrats than any other group. Furthermore, converts are the only group that is not substantially more likely to be nonpartisan than a member of either major political party. While there is some slight directionality in partisan affiliation, the primary gap between converts and other groups is in partisanship and nonpartisanship.¹³

Figure 4.

Probability of Republican, Democratic, or nonpartisan identification.

Conclusion

Our findings shown here have substantive implications for electoral politics, as well as for the political incorporation of underrepresented and historically marginalized groups in the United States. As the fastest growing immigrant population, Asian Americans represent an important and undermobilized voting bloc in American politics. In the 2012 election, Asian Americans overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama, but preelection polling showed that nearly a third of Asian Americans remained undecided close to the election, many of whom lived in battleground states (Ramakrishnan & Lee, 2012). The number of undecided voters is likely even greater among Asian American immigrants, as is the number of nonvoters. This suggests that, with heightened mobilization efforts, political parties could make major inroads with Asian American voters and build up their electoral coalition.

To understand the potential political impact of Asian Americans and other immigrant populations, political scientists and practitioners should take into greater consideration the process through which partisan identifications form, especially absent the political socialization acquired by native-born populations. The results displayed here highlight one important, and as of yet undescribed, process of Asian American immigrant political socialization and identity formation. Partisan ties form when immigrants adopt a new religious affiliation and leverage that identity adaptation to facilitate the formation of a partisan political identity. Immigrants who convert from the Buddhist tradition to a Christian faith are more likely to identify as partisans than Buddhist immigrants who do not convert, as well as in comparison with lifelong Christians. Various religious traditions thus act as a gateway for new immigrant populations in the immigration process, filling the void left by political parties in terms of political socialization. As conversion rates among Asian Americans suggest, this unique process of political socialization plays a key role in the incorporation of immigrants and will continue to exert its influence on American party politics.

In tandem with prior findings on Latino immigrant conversion and partisanship (Weaver, 2015), these results offer mounting evidence in support of the theory of religious and partisan adaptation. Many immigrants arrive in the United States without any strong attachments to American groups or institutions. While this may have little effect on their ability to succeed in material terms, their lack of connection to American “brands” can deprive them of key connections that facilitate political incorporation. Although Hajnal and Lee (2011) note that the two major American political parties have largely failed to address the issues and concerns of Latinos and Asian Americans, partisanship is a useful psychological tool even in the absence of such direct aid from the party. It can help individuals—particularly foreign-born individuals—make sense of the American political landscape and subsidize the information costs of political involvement. In addition, Wong et al. (2011) argue that Asian Americans are undervalued by political parties at least partially as a result of their nonpartisan tendencies. Although the burden of engagement might be more justly placed on the parties, it may be necessary for Asian Americans to first develop partisanship on their own terms to garner the party’s attention.

As we have shown, religious conversion is one such alternative route to the development of immigrant partisanship. The process of religious conversion occurs far outside the political arena, but religious conversion transforms immigrants’ orientation to the political world. Because immigrants’ political identities seem to be particularly adaptable through extrapolitical influences, our findings suggest that scholars of immigrant political incorporation and identity should expand their investigations to include religious influences outside the political sphere. The first step is to incorporate measures of conversion and religiosity, not just religious affiliation, in models of immigrant political identity formation. Further qualitative investigations of immigrant political identity and incorporation may also illuminate the exact process by which immigrants connect religious and political activities, and offer insight as to how these connections may be leveraged to facilitate immigrant representation in politics.

However, there are several limitations to this study, each of which presents opportunities for further research. First, additional studies might attempt to capture the temporal effect within the process of socialization. The length of time between conversion, immigration, and partisan identity formation warrants additional research, and would further illuminate the psychological processes at play. Unfortunately, limitations with the current data and a lack of panel data prevent such inquiry at the present time. In addition, once immigrants take on a partisan identity, we have little research on how the parties respond. As the Asian American population continues to grow, how might the Democratic and Republican Parties shape the future incorporation of immigrant groups? Finally, elucidating the rationale for conversion might offer added insight into the initial stages of political socialization and the process of beginning an adaptive identity change.

In spite of these limitations, however, we offer increasing evidence that the role of adaptive identity formation is crucial to the political and partisan incorporation of immigrant groups. These examinations point to the unique character of immigrant religious and political identity, and suggest a need for increased attention to religion in affecting immigrants’ political opinions and behaviors. This religion is not static, and requires new and creative ways of examining the interaction between religious, political, and other social identities.

Footnotes

Appendix

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Allyson Shortle, Benjamin Knoll, the editors, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on this research.

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.

Notes

Author Biographies

Andre P. Audette is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on identity politics and political inequality, especially among religious groups and racial and ethnic minorities.

Mark Brockway is a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame. His research examines American political parties, mass behavior, and religion and politics.

Christopher L. Weaver is an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern State University. His research interests include political behavior, public opinion, and identity politics.

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