Dear Martin,
I have now added your project to the project listing on the
www.diaspora.fi. I am looking forward to hear result in due
time from your fantastic project.
Best wishes,
Tuomas
Meulen M. van der kirjoitti:
> Dear Tuomas,
>
> We are busy with a project called "Participation of Immigrant Churches
> in Dutch Civil Society" (http://www.immigrantchurches.nl), a research on
> Christian immigrant congregations in the Netherlands. We estimated that
> in the Netherlands slightly over 50% of the immigrants has a Christian
> background. There are some 1 million Muslim immigrants, and 1.2 million
> Christian immigrants. Half of the Christian immigrants come from "non
> western" countries (e.g. Ghana, Brazil, China).
>
> The fact that many immigrants have a Christian background has gone
> almost unnoticed in society and university, up until very recently.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Marten van der Meulen
>
>
> --
> Dr. M. van der Meulen
> Postdoc Sociology of Religion
> Faculty of Theology
> VU University Amsterdam
> De Boelelaan 1105
> 1081 HV Amsterdam
>
> E [log in to unmask]
> T +31 20 5986630
> I http://www.immigrantchurches.nl
> I http://religionresearch.org/marten
>
>
>
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Sociology of Religion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Namens Tuomas
> Martikainen
> Verzonden: dinsdag 20 februari 2007 12:37
> Aan: [log in to unmask]
> Onderwerp: Re: Catholic growth - a comment
>
> Dear all,
>
>> Catholic growth through European immigration.
>
> This fact seems to be one of the major blind spots of European research
> on religion and migration. I made once an estimate of the religious
> backgrounds of first generation (=born abroad) migrants in the EU. It
> appears that *at
> least* half of all migrants are presumable of Christian background. Such
> estimates are obviously dubious to some extent, but they give the
> approximate scale.
>
> For instance, in Finland - that is a latecomer to European immigration
> countries (just like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, etc. for
> the matter) - the vast majority of migrants are of Protestant, Catholic
> and Orthodox Christian background - that has also become manifest in
> their growing membership. Nevertheless, most people are studying Islam
> in the field.
>
> Even though Christian migrants of African etc. origin have become the
> target of growing interest, what seems to be lacking almost completely
> (exceptions exists, but if we look at the mass or research) in Europe,
> are studies of the immigrant impulse in mainstream churches. In my
> studies - but also mentioned elsewhere - in turns out that Christians
> are actually more prone to organisation in comparison to, e.g., Muslims
> and Hindus. However, they have the opportunity to join existing
> congrations and, thus, often remain invisible. In all Scandinavian
> countries, the Catholic Church continues to experince steady growth.
>
> I am somehow amazed at these facts, because generally speaking
> sociologists of religion do pretty well with all kinds of demographical
> data, but these issues has received relavitely little attention, at
> least as far as I know.
>
> Just a few thoughts,
>
> Tuomas Martikainen
>
>
--
Dr. Tuomas Martikainen
Åbo Akademi University,
Dept. of Comparative Religion
Fabriksgatan 2, 20500 Åbo, Finland
Tph +358-(0)2-215 3270 / +358-(0)40-592 4202
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