The Religions of Ethnic Minorities in the West

Abstract

No discussion of religion in Western societies would be complete without a survey of the faiths of ethnic minority groups. In the 1980s such an overview would not have warranted a separate chapter of a book on contemporary religion. Today, the extraordinary ethnic diversity which has developed in the West now makes this imperative. The significance of these faiths is that their proliferation influences a number of the principal debates already addressed in earlier chapters, most notably those related to secularization, religious pluralism and the nature of religious belief and belonging. At the same time the religion of ethnic groups provides new issues and challenges to the major world religions as well as the largely secular principles of the societies of Europe and North America.