God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Landscape

Description

A provocative examination of how new realities of religion and migration are subtly challenging the very definition of what it means to be an American. Sociology professor Levitt argues that immigrants no longer trade one membership card for another but stay close to their home countries, indelibly altering American religion and values with experiences and beliefs imported from Asia, Latin America and Africa. The book is a pointed response to Samuel Huntington's famous clash of civilisations thesis and looks at global religions' organisation for the first time.

Peggy Levitt is a professor of sociology at Wellesley College. She is also a research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She is the author of God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (The New Press); The Transnational Villagers; and a co-editor, with Mary Waters, of The Changing Face of Home. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

"A crucial look at the extraordinarily complex issue of migration in the world today." Jorge G. Castaneda, author of Ex Mex and Utopia Unarmed "Levitt takes the trouble to listen to immigrants themselves. . . . The book is timely in countering one-dimensional views of both religion and immigration." George Rupp, President, International Rescue Committee "Levitt puts a human face on the globalization of religion. A wise and indispensable guide to understanding twenty-first-century American society." Mary C. Water, Harvard University