what is the thesis/main argument of Janet Hoskins chapter “Folklore as a Sacred Heritage: Vietnamese Indigenous Religions in California?” This is a write-up that is a page in length, and it must clearly articulate the thesis of the chapter in question, as well as discussion of how the author supports they/his/her argument. Please write half a page, single space, that summarizes the chapter in question. Do make sure you state the thesis/argument and then show how the author proved they/his/her argument. Make sure citations and quotations are purposeful and meaningful. You need to be able to articulate what the author argued. This requires more than just descriptive facts and data. Look for the main argument. After you read anything, you should be able to deduce the thesis/argument of the material you just read. This is not an “opinion” assignment. You are required to articulate what the author’s thesis/argument is, and how they/she/he argued and substantiated it. Do not just summarize the chapter.
TWELVE
Folklore as a Sacred Heritage
Vietnamese Indigenous Religions in California
Janet Hoskins
[12.0] INTRODUCTION
[12.1] On July 20, 2007, California Caodaists consecrated a new cathedral in
Garden Grove, California, a 4,000 foot replica of the “Vatican” of Caoda-
ism in Tay Ninh province, Vietnam, but one-third its size. More than
2,000 people attended the ceremony to “lift up the image of the Left Eye
of God” and install it on top of a three-tiered pantheon depicting Buddha,
Confucius, and Lao Tzu presiding over five levels of spiritual attainment,
including the female Boddhisatva Guanyin at the second level, and Jesus
Christ on the third level.
[12.2] This cathedral, planned for over ten years, now serves as a landmark
for the colorful, eclectic, and ornate architecture of Vietnam’s largest in-
digenous religion: its gothic towers evoke the austerity of medieval Ca-
tholicism, but the bright yellows, reds, and turquoise reflect the shiny
palette of Asian religious icons. Pastel dragons coil around pillars cov-
ered with lotus flowers, demonic figures associated with good and evil
guard the entranceway, and a huge mural depicting the Chinese nation-
alist Sun Yat-Sen, the Vietnamese poet and prophet Trang Trinh, and the
French writer Victor Hugo greet visitors as they enter a space that reso-
nates with the sounds of drums, gongs, and finger cymbals, and that is
perfumed by flowers and incense.
[12.3] When the building permit was finally issued, Nguoi Viet (The Vietna-
mese language newspaper with the largest circulation in the United
Janet Hoskins
States) reported that “when this construction is finished, it will bring to
California for the first time a distinctive architecture and pattern of
thought found all over southern Vietnam.”1 The successful construction
of this cathedral, which adhered to a “divine blueprint” communicated to
religious leaders from 1926-1934 in the French colonial city of Saigon,
marks a new stage in the public recognition of the indigenous religions of
Vietnam. This chapter explores how indigenous religions have brought
aspects of Vietnamese culture and folklore to the United States; how they
are part of an historical pattern; which practices are shared across relig-
ious lines for all Vietnamese; and what the future prospects are for these
communities.
[12.4]WHAT ARE VIETNAM’S INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS?
[12.5]Most Americans perceive Vietnam as a primarily Buddhist country (cur-
rent government statistics estimate that there are ten million Buddhists
out of seventy-eight million people) with a sizeable Catholic minority (six
million). But indigenous religions, a term used to refer to three specific
groups, have long been significant, especially in the south. Caodaism,
founded in Saigon in 1926, officially has 3.2 million followers and 1,300
temples, Hoa Hao Buddhism, founded in southwestern Vietnam in 1939,
has 1.5 million followers,2 but leaders of these faiths estimate their real
numbers at closer to six million and three million people, respectively.
Dao Mau (Mother Goddess religion) is considered a “distinct subculture
with cultural nuances varying locally,” so there is no official documenta-
tion of its followers,3 but recent ethnographic reports indicate it is ex-
panding in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and it builds on traditional
veneration of female divinities and heroes going back many centuries.4
[12.6]Statistics about the religious adherence of Vietnamese Americans indi-
cate that about 40 percent identify themselves as Buddhist or Confucian,
and 30 percent as Christian or Catholic.5 Little is said about the others,
who are perhaps presumed to be secular. Although a number of scholars
mention Caodaism and Hoa Hao in passing,6 the only academically de-
tailed and published accounts of American Caodaists are my own.7 Hoa
Hao Buddhists have been studied in Vietnam by Philip Taylor and Pascal
Bourdeaux, who also make reference to American congregations and
their Internet connections to the homeland.8 Karin Fjelstad completed a
doctoral dissertation on spirit mediums affiliated with the Mother God-
dess Religion (Dao Mau) in the Bay area, and has also co-edited a volume
comparing Vietnamese congregations in California with those in Viet-
nam, analyzing their transnational connections.9 There is obviously
much room for more research, a need for an accurate counting of tem-
ples, adherents and congregations, and for an ethnographic exploration
Folklore as a Sacred Heritage
of the transnational dynamics of indigenous Vietnamese religions migrat-
ing to the United States.
[12.7] Caodaism is a syncretistic religion that seeks to bring the gods of
Europe and the gods of Asia together in a conversation that can serve to
heal the wounds of colonialism and establish a basis for mutual respect
and dialogue. Officially called Dai Dao Tam Ky Pho Do, “The Great Way of
the Third Age of Redemption,” Caodaism combines millenarian teach-
ings with an Asian fusion of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, and
Roman Catholicism, an Asia-centric New Age movement that developed
in the context of anti-colonial resistance. Established in 1926, its earliest
members belonged to the urban educated elite of Saigon. In just a few
years, Caodaism grew dramatically to become the largest mass move-
ment in the French colony of Cochinchina, with 20-25 percent of the
people of South Vietnam converting to this new faith in the period from
1930-1975.10 Best known in the United States through Graham Greene’s
description in his popular 1954 novel The Quiet American,11 Caodaism in
Vietnam was the topic of two dissertations in the 1970s,12 but has not
been studied for over thirty years, and there have been no studies of its
American congregations.
[12.8] Hoa Hao is a reformist, millenarian form of Buddhism that was estab-
lished in 1937; it is now the fourth largest religion in Vietnam after Bud-
dhism, Catholicism, and Caodaism. It has established several temples in
California and, like Caodaism, has also developed a series of websites
and publishes histories and commentaries in Vietnamese within the Unit-
ed States.
[12.9] Founded by a young prophet who preached simplicity and egalitar-
ianism, this new religion is, like Islam, opposed to the use of religious
icons, and renounces the use of ancestral tablets and images of the Bud-
dha on its altars.13 It developed in western Vietnam, perhaps influenced
by minority communities of Cham Muslims and Khmer Theravada Bud-
dhists. The Mother Goddess Religion of Dao Mau has recently had a
resurgence in Vietnam, especially in Hanoi, where a number of recent
anthropological studies have been done,14 but it is generally described as
a traditional custom or indigenous practice and so it is difficult to esti-
mate the exact number of followers at the present.
[12.10] The indigenous religions of Vietnam incorporate many occult aspects
unfamiliar to mainstream Americans (spirit mediums, spirit possession,
divination, talismanic blessings, etc.). Some ceremonies involve elaborate
costumes, pageantry, and music for the Caodai liturgical mass or Mother
Goddess performances, while others, such as Hoa Hao chanting of
prayers, are conducted without instrumental accompaniments or devo-
tional decorations, aside from the ubiquitous fruit, flowers, and incense.
Scriptures are received by spirit messages spoken, sung, or written and
put into a phoenix-headed basket.
Janet Hoskins
[12.11]THE ERASURE OF INDIGENOUS RELIGION IN
U.S. IMMIGRATION STATISTICS
[12.12]Indigenous religions have been left out of almost all previous studies of
Vietnamese immigrants, in part, because the researchers who first sur-
veyed religious preferences of refugees at entry points like Camp Pendle-
ton only provided immigrants with six options for religious affiliation:
Christian Protestant, Christian Catholic, Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, or
Muslim, which did not acknowledge the existence of indigenous relig-
ious practices, although they were observed by 15-25 percent of the pop-
ulation of South Vietnam in 1975. It seems likely that followers of these
indigenous religions were counted as either Buddhists or Confucians
when they were processed for U.S. entry. It is also possible that some of
their members were miscounted as Catholics, said to have made up
“about half” of the first wave of refugees in several studies, although
Catholics represent about 30 percent of the present Vietnamese American
community.15 A substantial dimension of Vietnam’s religious diversity
has not entered into the statistical data or efforts to quantify them.
[12.13]Largely missing from accounts of early refugee processing were the
pressures placed on non-Christian refugee families to convert to and fol-
low the faith of those Christian churches who sponsored them in the first
few years that they lived in the United States. Most of the first wave of
refugees were sponsored by faith-based organizations, either the Catholic
Relief Fund (which resettled nearly 50 percent of all refugees, and expli-
citly favored those who identified themselves as Catholic), or a variety of
Protestant organizations (notably the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
Service, and the Church World Service).
[12.14]Family histories revealed numerous cases in which refugees tempo-
rarily housed in camps chose to convert, or at least self-identify as Chris-
tian in order to secure faster sponsorship and immigration to the United
States.These conversions usually lasted as long as the family was being
sponsored. After they had immigrated, they reverted back to their indige-
nous religions or to Buddhism. The novel-memoir Catfish and Mandala by
Andrew Pham16 contains an account of his own family’s conversion in
Louisiana, followed by reversion when the family united with family in
San Jose, California.
[12.15]Committed Caodaists who did not convert to Christianity were told in
several instances that “all the other refugee families are now Seventh Day
Adventists,” or Baptists, etc. There was a clear perception that baptism of
the whole family was expected as a gesture of gratitude, and some Cao-
daists in fact rationalized these baptism ceremonies with the argument
that since Jesus was a part of the Caodai pantheon, “giving themselves to
Jesus” did not contradict a commitment to Caodai doctrine.
[12.16]The faith-based organizations that sponsored many Vietnamese refu-
gees have not publicly acknowledged that they pressured refugees to
Folklore as a Sacred Heritage
convert, or that they favored Christian refugee families for resettlement
and sponsorship, but this was often perceived to be the case by refugee
families. The resurgence of indigenous religious in new ethnic enclaves is
therefore an especially significant development, as it contradicts early
predictions in the immigration literature that conversion to Christianity
was simply an aspect of assimilation, and that it was, therefore, also
irreversible. This resurgence could also be related to the phenomenon of
Vietnamese ethnic resilience as refugees assumed many of the character-
istics of a diaspora.
[12.17] DIASPORA VS. ETHNIC GROUP
[12.18] Immigration scholars have recognized for some time that for post–1965
Asian immigrants and refugees, religious congregations are the most im-
portant community building institutions: they offer resettlement assis-
tance, counseling services, a sense of community, and language courses
in English for new immigrants and in Asian languages for the second
generation, as well as a cultural context that is familiar, reassuring, and
sustaining in the light of the major disruptions created by forced disloca-
tions and differences in language and customs. But recent ethnographic
studies have argued that traditional Southeast Asian religions may have
failed to translate well in California, as is suggested in the title Buddha is
Hiding of Ong’s 2003 work17 about Cambodian refugees. Seemingly,
more international and inter-ethnic versions of immigrant Asian religions
have had somewhat more success, especially those that have developed
dynamic, sophisticated websites, used both for online proselytizing and
for archiving sacred texts, commentaries, and religious history.
[12.19] Some immigration theorists have argued that moving to a new coun-
try is itself a “theologizing” experience: it forces a radical shift in world
view that causes a questioning of earlier religious beliefs while intensify-
ing the need to find solace and continuity in a new and very different
context.18 The theological crisis might be particularly acute for refugees
who fled persecution in their home countries versus moving in the hopes
of finding better economic opportunities. Forced to leave a land that they
remain deeply attached to, many refugees experienced not only the trau-
ma of dislocation, but also separation from family members (often im-
prisoned in re-education camps) and life-threatening journeys by boat in
order to escape. Some refugee populations, especially those with the low-
est levels of literacy (Hmong, Cambodians, and Laotians) are identified
as “vulnerable” by evangelists, and particularly targeted for conversion
by Mormons and Christian fundamentalists. The Vietnamese have been
perceived by most scholars as being more resistant, since Vietnamese of
all faiths have used churches and temples as sites for maintaining their
cultural heritage, language skills, and ties to their homeland. The level of
Janet Hoskins
education at the time of emigration is important, since immigrant groups
who are able to educate the new generation through books, websites, and
multimedia are better able to establish transnational linkages than those
who arrive without those skills.
[12.20]The concept of ethnic resilience when used in sociological studies of
Vietnamese Americans usually refers to parameters of socio-economic
“success.” For example, within ten years of their arrival, most first wave
Vietnamese refugees were earning above the national median income.19
Clustering in ethnic enclaves also made it possible to maintain relatively
high levels of bilingualism and even literacy in Vietnamese,20 which has
enabled long distance nationalism21 and identify to persist—leading to
one of the most developed diasporic communities in the United States.
[12.21]A diaspora, in scholarly terms, is distinct from an ethnic group, be-
cause it is grounded in a particular understanding of its social mission as
tied to a place of origin. The narrow definition provided by Amesfoot in a
discussion of Moluccan refugees in the Netherlands is useful to recall: “A
diaspora is a settled community that considers itself to be ‘from else-
where’ and whose concern and most important goal is the realization of a
political ideal in what is seen as the homeland.”22 The term originated in
discussions of Zionism and, as Aihwa Ong has observed, it applies to
some other cases in the United States, perhaps especially Cuban refu-
gees,23 but should not be applied indiscriminately to all overseas commu-
nities: “The popular view of diaspora as ethnicity has elided the fact that
diaspora is really a political formation seeking its own nation.”24
[12.22]The resurgence of Vietnamese indigenous religions has taken place in
the context of ethnic enclaves and diasporic politics, but the leaders of
these religions stress that their teachings emphasize peace, nonviolence
(both Caodaists and Hoa Hao practice graduated forms of vegetarian-
ism), and reconciliation. Perhaps the greatest challenge to these congre-
gations today is how they will reconcile a global faith with the continuing
political divisions between their followers in Vietnam and those in over-
seas communities. I have argued that some Caodai leaders favor a “glo-
bal religion of unity,” modeled on Tibetan Buddhism, which welcomes
non-Vietnamese converts and seeks to translate religious scriptures into
English, while others emphasize the diasporic ideal of “long distance
nationalism,” in which followers see themselves as primarily Vietna-
mese, and elevate their cultural tradition to the level of a religious ideal.25
Followers of Dao Mau are less explicitly politicized, and do not seek to
proselytize to non-Vietnamese, since they see their faith as based primari-
ly on a ritual duty to consult the ancestors of their community. The Hoa
Hao Buddhist share aspects of “long distance nationalism,” focused espe-
cially on their homeland in the western Mekong Delta, but they remain
the indigenous religion that is most stringently suppressed and con-
strained by the communist government.
Folklore as a Sacred Heritage
[12.23] Caodaists expressed a desire to follow the pathway of Tibetan Bud-
dhists, whose global proselytizing has been linked to a political struggle
for greater freedom within their homeland, now in China. This activism
highlights another dimension of ethnic resilience in a pluralistic society:
connections forged among immigrant communities in California build a
grassroots cosmopolitanism that is premised on everyday crossings of
minority-minority cultural borders, and specific sets of local-global rela-
tionships. (A similar idea has been developed in the notion of the “trans-
colony” in post–colonial studies, and arguably all the Southeast Asian
homelands whose people immigrated to the United States did so as a
result of US military intervention and a somewhat neo-colonial relation-
ship.) Buddhist and Caodaist groups from Vietnam, for instance, are ex-
posed to Theravada Buddhism from Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, as
well as Taiwan-style Mahayana Buddhism at places like Hsi Lai Temple
in Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles County (the largest Buddhist temple
outside Asia).
[12.24] An ethnography of religious innovations in California needs to con-
sider individuals who see themselves as exiles, temporary residents of a
diasporic community, and others who accept being labeled an American
ethnic group. Many religious leaders consider their teachings universal,
and that the true community of belief is a nonterritorial one, but they
have widely varying positions on whether it makes sense to proselytize
to non-Vietnamese. The ethnic and cultural diversity of the increasingly
brown population of southern California, with its historically high rates
of what has been called miscegenation (i.e., interracial marriage and
childbearing) and religiously mixed marriages, has the potential to create
a new cross-ethnic and cross-racial flexibility of religious identifications.
[12.25] The ordination in May 2005 of Linda Blackeny-Hofstetter, an African
American woman, as the first non-Vietnamese priest of Caodaism, high-
lights this potential. After three decades of practicing Taoist meditation
and vegetarianism, Blackeny-Hofstetter discovered Caodaism while
working in Vietnam as a nurse in an AIDs treatment program, and de-
cided that it was the faith she was seeking since it merged Christian and
Asian philosophies in an appealing third world synthesis. She now heads
a small chapel in Harlem, New York, which offers solace to all those who
have suffered deeply, fusing a new congregation across historically sig-
nificant racial and ethnic boundaries.
[12.26] HISTORICAL PATTERNS AND INNOVATION: NEW
DEVELOPMENTS IN CALIFORNIA
[12.27] The idea that the temple defines a community is a familiar one, like a
Vietnamese or Taiwanese village, a familiar place where older people can
find solace and speak in their own language. In adapting to the American
Janet Hoskins
lifestyle, most Caodaists, who were used to a Vietnamese calendar of
attending services on the first and 15th of each moon, found themselves
attending services weekly on Sundays to conform to the American work
week. Since the temple became a networking center, its range of social
activities expanded to fit a niche defined by other faith-based organiza-
tions in California. Church-going has come to be seen as a component of
responsible citizenship in many areas, and Caodaists have come to iden-
tify their scriptures as Bibles rather than sutras (a term often used to refer
to religious teachings in French translations from the colonial period).
[12.28]Caodaism in Vietnam has a hierarchical organization similar to that of
Catholicism. It has a Pope, Cardinals, Archbishops, and a dozen different
denominations, but in the United States, early Caodaist congregations
were more eclectic and egalitarian than their Vietnamese counterparts. In
the 1920s, Caodaists consecrated women as Cardinals, proclaiming
equality of the sexes before God, but the most prominent leaders were
male. Two women founded the first California temple in San Jose, Cali-
fornia, wearing brightly colored ceremonial robes that are usually re-
served for men in their homeland. Bold religious innovations continued
for several decades, when several volumes of spirit messages directed
them to develop a new set of doctrines for the New World. After 1995,
when it became possible to travel to Vietnam again, many people re-
turned to go on religious pilgrimages to sacred sites. After a quarter
century of separation, there were a number of tensions between
American-educated religious followers and those in the homeland. Some
American congregations returned to the Vietnamese model, while others
moved closer to the individualistic mysticism of Western practitioners of
Zen or Tibetan Buddhism. The extent of liturgical innovation in the Unit-
ed States is hard to measure exactly, but it has included the development
of a somewhat independent group of spirit mediums and a more egalitar-
ian organizational structure. A similar process can be observed for Dao
Mau goddess veneration, since women have emerged as stronger leaders
in the diaspora than they have in contemporary Vietnam.
[12.29]Because Vietnam was closed off by the U.S. trade embargo and by
political tensions for almost two decades, the flow of money, material
goods, and publications from the homeland to the United States was a
period of isolation and because of that, a time of religious innovation
when compared to other Asian immigrant religions. When the embargo
was dropped, and reforms opened up new pathways for travel, invest-
ment, and religious expression, two former enemies became linked in a
transnational network that connected religious units at many levels, and
was characterized by important flows of diasporic money to rebuild tem-
ples in the homeland.
Folklore as a Sacred Heritage
[12.30] POPULAR RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND THEIR EFFICACY
[12.31] Caodaism is a highly institutionalized, hierarchical organization that em-
phasizes discipline, and respect for senior dignitaries as well as following
the many written scriptures that have been compiled, edited, and pub-
lished for the benefit of its followers.
[12.32] Hoa Hao Buddhism is more egalitarian and is a lay Buddhist move-
ment without its own clergy, no large impressive pagodas, but a strong
emphasis on social service, charity work, and meeting for chanting and
praying. It has its own scriptures from the Prophet Huynh Phu So, and
these are distributed at each one of its temples, but there have not been
recent teachings since his disappearance in 1946.
[12.33] In the Dao Mau tradition, participants explained their commitment to
the practice on the grounds that it worked, that it was efficacious, and
that it brought blessings that would help families in times of hardship.
The ideals of inner virtue and loyalty were often stressed, although there
is also the notion that being part of this practice can result in personal
benefits, such as improved health, wealth, and social prestige. Mainly,
however, women followers have stressed that Dao Mau spirits came from
Vietnamese history, and thus represent the indigenous foundations of
Vietnamese culture as a mixture of warlike mandarins, spoiled princes
and elegant princesses, ethnic minorities, and finally, impetuous and
comical caricatures of the youthful princes.
[12.34] The focus on ceremonies seems to draw on the diverse cultural
sources of Vietnamese identity, and uses these as resources for success in
the New World. As an embodied practice, it is idiosyncratic and individ-
ualized, wherein each dance is a way of interpreting key aspects of a
spirit and communicating those to the audience.
[12.35] At its foundation, Caodaism is a religion of words, even if the words
are accompanied by large-scale rituals in elaborate temples with colorful
costumes and music. Spirit mediums in Caodaism primarily dictate
verses, either by speaking them in the presence of a scribe, or by tracing
them out in cursive letters with the phoenix basket. The importance of
written doctrine is much more salient in Caodai publications. Words to
the chau van songs, which are fairly standardized in Vietnam, function as
a kind of scripture since they define the sacred attributes of each spirit
and are a required part of each performance.
[12.36] Spirit seances in Caodaism define a place for Vietnamese people to
stand in relation to a cosmopolitan conversation about the relations be-
tween the world religions and the specific historical destiny of the Vietna-
mese today. In contrast, the spirit mediums in Dao Mau seem to be ad-
dressing issues in their private lives more often, although they do so by
incarnating spirits from the Vietnamese past. Caodai doctrine provides a
grand narrative about the process of decolonization and the reasons why
Saigon had to fall in 1975 (to permit the globalization of the religion),
Janet Hoskins
while the message of these spirit mediums seemed to lie not at a discur-
sive level, but as a form of embodiment, enacting certain body postures
and gestures that emphasize ties to a cultural repertoire of concepts and
possibilities that can be realized in a new setting.
[12.37]Caodaists explicitly state that their religion is yang (dương), although
it draws its strength from the world of the spirits who are yin (âm). The
left eye of God is the sign of a positive, modernist, progressive, and
dynamic religion that, in their view, will not be caught in the passive,
reclusive, ascetic mode of earlier esoteric traditions. Of course, many peo-
ple have claimed during the period from 1975 to 1995, it was necessary to
“turn back to esoterism” in Vietnam because it was not possible to have
the same visible role on the world’s stage while the government main-
tained an anti-religious stance. Although there is a productive and essen-
tial tension between the two poles in all teachings, Caodaism is often
presented as energizing a dynamic synthesis of what had been an overly
quiet, contemplative religious tradition.
[12.38]Some researchers have argued that Dao Mau identifies itself as a pri-
marily yin practice—in healing yin ailments (ben hâm), in honoring fe-
male deities, and in engaging with a practice that celebrates female qual-
ities before the power of male spirits are highlighted.26 The emphasis on
compassion and what are often called Buddhist values stresses this as a
path of “female spirituality” that seems, however, to also be open to
those men who want to call up the female aspects within their own per-
sonalities. The Dao Mau ceremonies also emphasize the fact that many
healing arts and knowledge about plants and medicines come from eth-
nic minorities, the “people who live in the mountains and forests.”
[12.39]Caodaists do not really pay much attention to ethnic minorities. Al-
though they are in no way excluded from its theology, the only place they
are given is at the lowest level of spiritual attainment, the worship of
localized spirits and ancestors (thần), and there is little that explicitly
addresses ethnic diversity. But there is an ethnic dimension to the argu-
ments that Caodaists present that they encompass all world religions,
since Nam Bo/Cochinchina is an area where Muslim/Hindu Cham and
Theravada Buddhist Khmer were once strong. Lots of religious imagery
is explicitly either Hindu (Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu sit on top of the
roof of the Caodai temple) or Theravada Buddhist (the head spirit me-
dium sits on a throne in front of a seven headed Naga serpent, copied
from Khmer images of the giant cobra that sheltered Buddha when he
meditated during a storm). The snake is both a symbol of natural powers
and the fertility of the land, and also a symbol of earlier peoples who
lived in Southern Vietnam and who, in the past two centuries, been large-
ly displaced by the Vietnamese.
[12.40]Caodaists argue that their faith is the culmination of all the religious
diversity that exists in Vietnam, and they see it as synthesizing the es-
sence of each tradition. While they include the worship of ancestors, local
Folklore as a Sacred Heritage
spirits, and national heroes like Tran Hung Dao, they do not prescribe the
same importance to literary figures such as the Chinese poet Ly Thai
Bach, or the red-faced general Quan Cong from the Romance of the Three
Kingdoms. There is a liveliness in Dao Mau performances and an emotion-
al intensity that appears to be personally meaningful to their participants.
Caodai mystics say that the energy they receive from spirit communica-
tions is very intense, and it is sought after as much as the message or
teaching itself, but it is a private experience.
[12.41] The political problems that these three indigenous religions face in the
present period of normalization in Vietnam are quite distinct and have an
impact on the relationships between diasporic congregations and their
homeland. Spirit possession rituals came be seen as efforts to embody
and magically access the powers of ethnic predecessors in rites that “both
transgress and reconstitute ethnic, gender and ritual boundaries.”27 As
contemporary ancestors, they are seen as a hybrid mix of Confucian-
Marxist-Daoist approaches that attempt to ritually embody their ima-
gined authentic otherness in festivals that enlist ethnic minorities in the
ritual regeneration of the national community, both in Vietnam and over-
seas. Thus, state policy has changed in a dialogue with popular religious
conceptions of minorities, wherein they are now part of a recent shift to
find new, spiritualized foundations for national legitimacy.
[12.42] Because the majority of Vietnamese Americans came to the United
States as refugees, attitudes toward their homeland have long been char-
acterized by a certain ambivalence: intense feelings of cultural national-
ism and pride in their heritage, combined with distrust of the present
Communist government, which, since 1995, has been increasingly open
to foreign investment, but not to foreign ideas. One result of this is the
use of religious icons and religious congregations to develop an alterna-
tive nationalism, etched out in a diasporic space, in which the sacredness
of faiths born in Vietnam is presented as transcending the geography of
the current state. This phenomenon is realized differently within the dif-
ferent groups that we have studied: for Caodaists, diaspora has been a
part of religious doctrine since the birth of their faith during the colonial
period in the 1920s, when nationalist leaders were already talking about
the loss of the country and the need to reclaim its essence from French
overseers; for Dao Mau followers, an entire century of divisive Cold War
politics and decolonization was erased in order to evoke the spiritual
return to the heroes and heroines of the imperial period; and for Hoa Hao
Buddhists, the lineage of teachers from Prophet Huynh Phu So are in-
creasingly placed in the context of global Buddhism, trying to reclaim
their place within that wider tradition as a specifically Vietnamese form
of Buddhist worship.
Janet Hoskins
[12.43]PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE: HERITAGE POLITICS AND
HOMELAND TIES
[12.44]The relationship between diasporic congregations and those in the home-
land has changed in a significant way over the past decades. During 1975
to 1995, Vietnam was identified as the past, the ancestral source, but a
place that had no future, so it was the aim of refugees and immigrants to
forge a new life in the host country. This did not mean, however, that
these communities were committed to assimilation. On the contrary, their
primary commitment seemed to be to recreate the vanished world of the
Republic of South Vietnam in California. This was the ideological im-
pulse behind the creation of one Little Saigon community in Orange
County, and efforts to create a second one in San Jose. The high rate of
nationalization for Vietnamese refugees was tied not to a wish to become
American, but to an intense desire to sponsor other immigrants and fami-
ly members to come over from Vietnam so that there would be a signifi-
cant community in California, where religious, cultural, and social insti-
tutions could be rebuilt. Since 1995, when it became possible for Vietna-
mese Americans to return to their homeland to visit, purchase land, re-
tire, or form businesses, this orientation has changed and a more transna-
tional community has been forged, enabled by modern forms of media,
transportation, and entrepreneurial activities. Religious organizations, far
from being bastions of traditionalism, have been at the forefront of these
new developments, with elaborate websites, desktop publications of re-
ligious texts, and new opportunities for missionary outreach.
[12.45]All of the indigenous Vietnamese religions build on a foundation of
ancestor worship that is shared across religious lines, and is even prac-
ticed in the homes of devout Catholics. Each family has an ancestral altar,
usually decorated with photographs of dead relatives, and/or ancestral
tablets inscribed with Chinese characters. Offerings of fruit and flowers
are placed on the altar daily in some households, while in others the
ancestral altar is only set up during Tet, the New Year celebration that is
the most important traditional Vietnamese festival. This custom is also
performed in folkloric festivals featuring regional dances and music.
What in Dao Mau is a form of worship is presented as entertainment in
other contexts.
[12.46]James Clifford has argued that diasporic consciousness oscillates be-
tween suffering and survival, so that loss and hope are lived as a defining
tension.28 Vietnamese Americans commemorate their history as refugees
by placing the yellow flag with red stripes of the Saigon republic on
altars, and flying it in Catholic churches, the Hoa Hao pagodas, and the
eclectic Caodai temples. It is now usually referred to as a “heritage flag”
and represents the community, although it no longer represents a
government. Ritualistic gestures like this one serve to make the diaspora
sacred, infusing folklore with political, spiritual, and, moral significance.
Folklore as a Sacred Heritage
[12.47] NOTES
[12n1] 1. Research for this article was supported by grants from: The Pew Charitable
Trusts to the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern
California (2003-2004); the California Council for the Humanities (2007-2008), which
funded the production of the documentary The Left Eye of God: Caodaism Travels from
Vietnam to California (available at http://www.der.org/films/left-eye-of-god.html); and
the National Science Foundation grant ##0752511, Ethnic Resilience” and Indigenous
Religion: A Transnational Perspective on Vietnamese Immigrant Congregations in
California, (2008-2011). Nguoi Viet (The Vietnamese People) (City, CA) 15 Nov. 2005.
[12n2] 2. Statistics retrieved from vietnameseembassy.com www.vietnamembassy.com
(16 Aug. 2012).
[12n3] 3. Ngo Duc Tinh, “The Mother Goddess Religion: Its History, Pantheon, and Prac-
tices.” Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in Contemporary Vietnamese Communities. Eds.
Fjelstad and Nguyen Thi Hien (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2006).
[12n4] 4. Karen Fjelstad and and Nguyen Thi Hien, Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in
Contemporary Vietnamese Communities (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); and
Fjelstadand, Karen and Nguyen Thi Hien, Spirits without Borders: Vietnamese Spirit
Mediums in a Transnational Age (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2010).
[12n5] 5. Andrew Lam, “For the Catholic Church, Vietnamese Are the New Irish” New
American Media, www.newmamericanmedia.org (6 Dec. 2006).
[12n6] 6. For example: Hien Duc Do. The Vietnamese Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1999): 8-9.
[12n7] 7. For example: Janet Hoskins, “Preface” Le Caodaisme: Theories des Trois Trésors et
des Cinq Fluides by Lap Chúc Nguyen Huy and Bui Dac Hum (Redlands: Chan Tam,
2006).
[12n8] 8. Taylor, Philip, “Hoa Hao ‘Apocalpse now’? Hoa Hao Buddhism emerging from
the shadows of war” The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2001.
[12n9] 9. Karen Fjelstad and Nguyen Thi Hien, Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in
Contemporary Vietnamese Communities (Ithaca: Cornell Univerity Press, 2006).
[12n10] 10. Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in
Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
[12n11] 11. Graham Greene, The Quiet American, (New York: Penguin, 1954).
[12n12] 12. Jayne Werner, “The Cao Dai: The Politics of a Vietnamese Syncretic Religious
Movement (PhD thesis, Cornell University, 1976); Victor Oliver Caodai Spiritism: A
Study of Religion in Vietnamese Society (Leiden: Brill 1976).
[12n13] 13. Taylor, Philip, “Hoa Hao ‘Apocalpse now’? Hoa Hao Buddhism emerging from
the shadows of war” The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2001.
[12n14] 14. Kristen W. Endres, Performing the Divine: Mediums, Markets and Modernity in
Urban Vietnam (Copenhagen: NIAS Monographs, 2011).
[12n15] 15. Darrel Montero, Vietnamese Americans: Patterns of Resettlement and Socioeconomic
Adaptation in the United States (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979).
[12n16] 16. Andrew Pham, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape
and Memory of Vietnam (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1999).
[12n17] 17. Ong, Aihwa, Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003).
[12n18] 18. Timothy Smith, “Religion and Ethnicity in America” The American Historical
Review, Vol. 83, No. 5, (1978): 1155-1185.
[12n19] 19. Freeman, James, Changing Identities: Vietnamese Americans, 1975-1995 (Boston,
MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1995).
[12n20] 20. Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese
Children Adapt to Life in the United States (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation:
1998).
[12n21] 21. Benedict Anderson, “Long Distance Nationalism” The Specter of Comparisons:
Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World (New York: Verso, 1998): 58-76.
Janet Hoskins
[12n22]22. Hans von Amesfoot, “The Politics of Diaspora: Moluccan Migrants in the Neth-
erlands” Journal of Ethic and Migration Studies Vol. 30 (1) 2004 151-174):
151.
[12n23]23. Thomas Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine
in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
[12n24]24. Aihwa Ong, Neo-Liberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty.
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006): 235.
[12n25]25. Janet Hoskins, “Caodai Exile and Redemption: A New Vietnamese Religion’s
Struggle for Identity” in Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants, Pierrette Hondagneu-
Sotelo, ed. (Rutgers University Press, 2006).
[12n26]26. Karen Fjelstad and Nguyen Thi Hien, Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in
Contemporary Vietnamese Communities (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
[12n27]27. Oscar Salemink, “Embodying the Nation: Mediumship, Ritual, and the National
Imagination” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3:3: 261-290 (2008): 32.
[12n28]28. James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9:3 (August 1994): 328.
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