Rebuilding Religious Experience: Vietnamese Refugees in America

Vietnamese Catholic refugees enter into a process in the United States of culture negotiation that brings together their history as a colonized people in Vietnam, the experience of refugee resettlement, and a unique appropriation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. This latter theological perspective helps the Vietnamese American Catholic community mediate their Confucianbased relationships and the new relationships into which they must enter in the United States. This appropriation also balances apparent internal inconsistencies in the doctrine that become evident in new cultural settings--in this instance, the encounter between Eastern and Western cultures. As Vietnamese Catholics remain and grow in America, they continue this cultural negotiation between their previous home and their new one. In doing so, they make a unique contribution both to a multicultural American Catholic Church and to our wider understanding of how refugees rebuild their worlds.