Rebuilding Religious Experience- Vietnamese Refugees in America

Vietnamese Catholic refugees enter into a process in the United States ofculture negotiation that brings together their history as a colonized people inVietnam the experience of refugee resettlement and a unique appropriationof the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. This latter theological perspectivehelps the Vietnamese American Catholic community mediate their Confucianbasedrelationships and the new relationships into which they must enter inthe United States. This appropriation also balances apparent internal inconsistenciesin the doctrine that become evident in new cultural settings--in thisinstance the encounter between Eastern and Western cultures. As VietnameseCatholics remain and grow in America they continue this culturalnegotiation between their previous home and their new one. In doing sothey make a unique contribution both to a multicultural American CatholicChurch and to our wider understanding of how refugees rebuild their worlds.