Filipino American Faith In Action

Filipinos are now the second largest Asian American population, and the second largest immigrant group in the United States - in fact, there are more Filipino Americans than Japanese Americans and Korean Americans combined. Surprisingly, there is little published on Filipino Americans and their religion, or the ways in which their religious traditions may influence the broader culture in which they are becoming established.

Filipino American Faith in Action draws on interviews, survey data, and participant observation to shed light on this large immigrant community. It explores Filipino American religious institutions as essential locations for empowerment and civic engagement, illuminating how Filipino spiritual experiences can offer a lens for viewing this migrant community's social, political, economic, and cultural integration into American life.

Gonzalez examines Filipino American church involvement and religious practices in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Phillipines, showing how Filipino Americans maintain community and ethnic and religious networks, contra assimilation theory, and how they go about sharing their traditions with the larger society.

Review: The 'missionized' and 'diasporized' Christians of the global South are here in our midst. Gonzalez's work speaks of this reality not in abstraction, but through the stories of Filipino diaspora Christian communities in San Francisco, California. Finally, a book that I have been waiting for has arrived.

Eleazar S. Fernandez, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, Minnesota