In the United States almost all
religions have been imported from other countries. They are
introduced into the country through immigrants and having this
religious diversity and freedom allows others to adopt the practices
and beliefs that corresponds to them. However, it becomes problematic
because there is an assumption that when adopting a religion that is
not ethnically related to you there not only exists an appropriation
of the religion but also the authenticity of the religion is
questioned. The coexistence of religion in the United States has led
there to be religious traditions outside of the older established
religions to be created and the determination of their validity
should be determined within each individual.
Religion has become a way of
self-representation. Since the United States is an individualistic
country, people focus on how they should express themselves. In an
article written by Philip Deloria, “Counterculture Indians and the
New Age,” he expresses his distaste toward white Americans and how
they have come about with their “identity crises” by turning to
the Native American culture and believes the white Americans are
mocking and ridiculing the Native American culture because they have
participated in “faux-Indian” practices.[1] Deloria goes on to
further say, “It should come as no surprise that the young men and
women of the 1960s and the 1970s – bent of destroying an orthodoxy
tightly intertwined with the notion of truth and yet desperate for
truth itself – followed their cultural ancestors in playing Indian
to find reassuring identities in a world seemingly out of
control.”[2] Deloria overstrains the idea that white Americans are
so desperate and in search for a world unrelated to the one they have
existed in before that he forgets that those “faux-Indian”
beliefs and practices are another way of expression and although the
white Americans are misinformed about what Native American culture
truly is, they are choosing what works for them. In the case of
Judaism they have a choice; the choice to be unsynagogued and they
have the freedom in how they participate in their religion because
that is how they choose to represent themselves.[3] Traditions
practiced by outsiders does not make it any less valid than those who
had originally practiced them because it has become a way of
self-representation and expression towards your beliefs of the world.
Minority traditions have been shaped internally because of the
external forces in the United States.
The combination of religions and
conversion are the consequence of having so many religions in the
United States but people seem to believe that the religion that you
hold is tied to your culture, ethnicity or race. In recent days,
there has been an adaptation of yoga in public schools that brought
controversy and should not be practiced by elementary schools
students “because they believed the ancient Indian practice had
religious overtones.”[4] There is a supposition that what the
elementary schools students are participating in relates back to
Hinduism, rather than it being a method of relaxation and exercise.
It ties in back to the idea that an aspect of a culture or religion
cannot be modernized or adapted by another culture to have it be
interpreted differently. While in the yoga case one aspect of a
religion was overgeneralized to belong to the religion, Yoshi writes
about how a religion has permanently become in a much larger sense
your race. “It is at these blurred boundaries between race and
religion that we find the racialization of religion – a phenomenon
wherein the fact of an individual's race creates a presumption as to
her religious identity.”[5] Again, there cannot be an adaptation of
a religion because there is an assumption that what belongs to one
religion or culture cannot be practiced without it being appropriated.
The First Amendment states that there
is a separation of church and state, and does not state that
religions should be prevented from intertwining with one another. The
diversity of religions and the freedom to express them is what sets
the United States apart from the rest of the world.
1Philip Deloria, "Counterculture Indians and the New Age," in Playing Indian, ed. Philip Deloria et al. (New York: Yale University Press, 1999), 155.
2Deloria, "Counterculture Indians and the New Age," 156.
3 Lynn Davidman, "The New Voluntarism and the Case of Unsynagogued Jews," in Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, ed Nancy T. Ammerman et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 55.
4Khyati Y. Joshi (2006) The Racialization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in the United States, Equity &
Excellence in Education, 39:3, 211-226, DOI: 10.1080/10665680600790327, 212.
5Krishnadev Calamur, "Calif. Judge Rules Yoga In Public Schools Not Religious," NPR Blog, July 1, 2013,
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