God and politics in Filipino America: a mixed-methods case study

Abstract

Religion as an influence has been identified as diminishing, if its role has been considered at all. The secularization thesis claimed that religion's influence would continue to decline as societies became more developed and industrialized. That claim has yet to be proven. This study examines the importance of religion in a particular community to see if that secularization thesis reflects reality on a localized level. Specifically, this study investigates the role religiosity plays in electoral and non-electoral political engagement within the Filipino American community in Vallejo, California, through two religious institutions, one being Protestant Methodist Christian, and the other, Roman Catholic Christian. The motivation to select these groups as objects for study emerged because of the theoretical, empirical, and methodological gaps in the research relating to Filipino Americans and their religious and political experiences. My mixed-methods design includes three ways of knowing: 1) knowing through survey research, 2) knowing through interview research, and 3) knowing through my own personal experience. The results of this study reveal that the secularization thesis does not appear to apply to the two religious institutions within the Filipino American community in Vallejo. More specifically, this mixed-methods case study essentially argues that Filipino Americans' religiosity plays an important role in their political engagement. Additionally, the data reveals that there are both similarities and differences that the two church communities share with regards to their religious and political experiences. All of these findings indicate that religion remains an important part of Filipino Americans' lives in Vallejo, California, in one of the most developed and industrialized nations in the entire world thereby contradicting the secularization thesis.