About 11 percent of Asian Americans now identify Hinduism as their religion, a new study from the Pew Research Center has revealed. While the number of Asian Americans who identify Hinduism as their religion has not changed much since 2012 (10%), “an additional 6% of all Asian Americans say they feel close to Hinduism aside from religion, for reasons such as ancestry or culture,” said the report — ‘Religion Among Asian Americans’ — released on Oct. 11, and authored by Besheer Mohamed and Michale Rotolo.
However, when it comes to the larger Asian American community, the study found that “a rising share [of Asian Americans] say they have no religion, but many consider themselves close to one or more religious traditions for reasons such as family or culture.” Thirty-two percent of Asian Americans are not affiliated with any religion, up from 26% in 2012.
Among Asian American adults who identify as Indian, “about half say their present religion is Hinduism (48%),” the report said, adding that “in total, two-thirds of Indian Americans say either that they are Hindu or that they consider themselves close to Hinduism.” While Indian Americans are far more likely than the other large Asian origin groups to be Hindus, the report showed, “A fair number of Indian Americans are Christian (15%), Muslim (8%) or Sikh (8%).”
The study also detailed some of the characteristics of the Asian American Hindus. Religion is important for one-third of that demographic, while it is somewhat important for 38%. Most of the Asian American Hindus (79%) are by far…
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