<p>It's often said that Asians tend to have conservative beliefs as they tend to be rather family-oriented. One thing I've also noticed is that there are a lot of Chinese and Korean Christian churches here - and they seem to capture a substantial amount of the Asians here.</p>
<p>Nationally, Asians are the least religious ethnic group (I have statistics that testify to this, but have too little time to look up again) - but this may be due to the fact that Asians tend to congregate in more liberal and less religious areas (cities, the West, areas of high percentages of college-educated). A lot of the Asian Christians I know have parents who got science PhDs in America (and generally speaking, science PhDs tend to be irreligious).</p>
<p>But when you look at, say - Asians at gifted programs or at colleges - it seems that they tend to be more conservative and Christian than the rest - even though they tend to shy away from active involvement in American politics. And a lot of the Christian Asians don't believe in evolution. The ones I know seem to be almost unilaterally anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage even though a substantial number of Christians don't have such views.</p>
<p>I live in a fairly liberal area of Washington (which is also the least religious state in the nation).</p>
<p>This is all an impression - I'm wondering if anyone has similar thoughts?</p>
<p>[sarcasm]On average people with the highest IQs tend to be Agnostic or Atheist. They in turn aren't branded liberal or conservative because they pick and choose their beliefs based on a nonparty platform.[/sarcasm]</p>
<ul>
<li>A lot of Asians tend to be Christian (compared with their peers of similar educational levels who live in the same areas)</li>
<li>The Asians who tend to be Christian seem to be more likely to hold conservative beliefs than other Christians of similar education levels who live in the same areas. (it may be within the churches - maybe Asian churches tend to be more conservative churches than the churches that other people go to - surveys show that the scientifically oriented tend to subscribe to the more liberal denominations of Christianity such as Unitarianism or Quakerism - whereas Asian churches probably subscribe to more conservative denominations - and most Asians I know go to such Asian churches).</li>
</ul>
<p>It's not a scientific observation, of course, but I'm wondering if anyone else gets this impression</p>
<p>==
And those of higher IQs are more likely to trend Agnostic/Atheist (once you go above 1 SD in intelligence), but I doubt it's outright majority.</p>
<p>
[quote]
[sarcasm]On average people with the highest IQs tend to be Agnostic or Atheist. They in turn aren't branded liberal or conservative because they pick and choose their beliefs based on a nonparty platform.[/sarcasm]
[/quote]
That's actually untrue. Agnostics do have a high intelligence level, but Atheists do not. Atheism follows a bi-modal distribution.</p>
<p>what jews do you know that are Liberal. jews have money and the only option for them is the republican view. jews would just loose money otherwise.</p>
<p>This topic seems to have gone slightly off topic because we're talking about IQ here, which becomes a very complicated matter if we're going to compare it to race and religiousness (is that a word? lol).</p>
<p>But anyway, (from my own observation) it seems that most Asians are either very religious and conservative OR agnostic/atheist and liberal. Our entire Christian club at school is Asian (mostly Korean actually), yet most of the Asians I know personally are atheist. With people of other races though, they are usually somewhat religious, but very few asians at my school seem to be that way. They're on either one end of the spectrum or the other.</p>
<p>Asians are historically quite secular. While other peoples from the Middle East, Africa, and Europe all came up with their own mythologies to justify why they were the greatest people on Earth, Asians generally opted out of that game. But that's not to say that a lot of modern Asians are frighteningly evangelical.</p>
<p>While Asians are historically secular in their home countries, it certainly seems that the Asians who live in the U.S. (many of whom are PhDs - though this is a distinct minority) are more religious than those who stay back home.</p>
<p>Approx. 3-5% of Chinese in China are Christians. This certainly is a far lower percentage than what I've seen of the children of Chinese who came to the U.S. to get their PhDs here. It seems that a lot of the Chinese who get Science PhDs here are religious - though I don't know if they were naturally that way in China or if they became religious once they moved to the U.S...</p>
<p>
[quote]
The changing composition of the Asian population has been one of the signal features of U.S. immigration. It has drawn newcomers from a wide variety of countries and cultures. As a result, between 1990-2001 the proportion of the newly enlarged Asian American population who are Christian has fallen from 63% to 43%, while those professing Asian religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc) has risen from 15% to 28%. Thus, for example, there are more than three times as many Hindus in the U.S. today as there were in 1990. Undoubtedly, due to the limitations of this study, we have not picked up the full impact of those changes yet.
<p>
[quote]
One out of four Evangelical college students at New York City colleges and universities are Asian American (Carnes and Yang 2004; Sax et al. 1997). At Harvard, Asian Americans constitute 70 percent of the Harvard Radcliffe Christian Fellowship, and given the popularity of Evangelical Christian fellowships, one can easily spot students who proudly don t-shirts with phrases like “the Asian Awakening” (Chang 2000: 1). At Yale, Campus Crusade for Christ is 90 percent Asian, whereas twenty years ago it was 100 percent white. On the West Coast, the Asian American membership at Stanford’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) from 1989 to 1999, increased by 84 percent, compared to a 31 percent increase in its overall membership (Busto 1996). Meanwhile, UC Berkeley and UCLA have more than fifty Asian Christian fellowships and most of their members are Asian American (Busto 1996; Chang 2000; Hong 2000). UCLA alone has more than ten Korean Christian related fellowships. On most college campuses, you have a far better chance of finding a Chinese Christian fellowship than a Chinese Buddhist club.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>==</p>
<p>
[quote]
For example, in his book Invitation to Lead: Guidance for Emerging Asian American Leaders (2003), Paul Takunaga, the national coordinator for IVCF’s Asian American Ministries, argues that Asian Americans share what he calls an “Asian DNA.” Characteristically, Asian Americans, particularly those of East Asian descent, are described as more self-controlled, disciplined, fatalistic, obedient to authority, humble, and collective relative to the European American population. They are viewed as more shame- and guilt-ridden and bound by “liminality”—being in-between two worlds. These perceived differences motivate campus pastors to create campus ministries especially catered to Asian Americans.
<p>
[quote]
While other peoples from the Middle East, Africa, and Europe all came up with their own mythologies to justify why they were the greatest people on Earth, Asians generally opted out of that game.
[/quote]
Really?! Well Indians and Chinese have always considered their countries at center of the world. Both considered themselves to be superior of all human races.</p>
<p>
[quote]
While Asians are historically secular in their home countries, it certainly seems that the Asians who live in the U.S. (many of whom are PhDs - though this is a distinct minority) are more religious than those who stay back home.
<p>
[quote]
Really?! Well Indians and Chinese have always considered their countries at center of the world. Both considered themselves to be superior of all human races.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think we're counting Indians as Asians in this discussions. And while the Chinese certainly did see themselves as the center of the world, they did so without a sense of divine entitlement.</p>
<p>At the University of Toronto -- a fairly secularized, liberal school -- there are a TON of Evangelical (Protestant) Christian student organizations. 90% of them have one thing in common: they're run by and primarly composed of Asians. </p>
<p>As a member of the (relatively few) conservative Catholic student organizations at said school, I wish more of them were on our side. ;)</p>