Rebuilding Religious Experience

Revision with unchanged content. 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 Confucian-based 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.