Religion
| Religions of Chinese Americans (2012) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Religion | Percent | |||
| Buddhism | 15% | |||
| Catholic | 8% | |||
| Protestant | 22% | |||
| No religion | 52% | |||
Religiously, the Chinese American community is different from the rest of the population in that the majority of Chinese Americans do not report a religious affiliation. 43% of Chinese Americans switched to a different religion and 54% stayed within their childhood religion within their lifetime. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2012 Asian-American Survey, 52% of Chinese Americans aged 15 and over said that they didn't have any religious affiliation, despite making up a quarter of the Asian American population. This is also compared with the religious affiliation of Asian American average of 26% and a national average of 19%. Of Chinese Americans who were religious, 15% were Buddhist, 8% were Catholic and 22% belonged to a Protestant denomination. Fully half of Chinese Americans (52%)—including 55% of those born in the U.S. and 51% of those born overseas—describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Because Chinese Americans are the largest subgroup of Asian Americans, nearly half of all religiously unaffiliated Asians in the U.S. are of Chinese descent (49%).
Read more about this topic: Chinese American
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“It must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of human race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to polytheism and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principle or opinion.
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—David Hume (1711–1776)
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