Third-generation immigrants revive religion as the only heritage they can reclaim

Evidence

Religious minorities have also been able to gain national recognition and acceptance by interpreting their religion in line with national interest. This occurred during the Eisenhower era. As Will Herberg observed in his seminal 1955 study, Protestant-Catholic-Jew , religion was a central means of assimilation in the aftermath of the Second World War. Herberg, relying on the work of Marcus Hansen, a historian of immigration, argued that while children of immigrants generally eschew their distinct cultural and linguistic heritage to assimilate, their grandchildren, who feel more comfortable with their identity as Americans, are keen to “remember” what their parents “forgot,” and, having never learned the language of their grandparents, turn to their religion as that aspect of their heritage that they are able to revive most readily. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 280

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Hansen’s ‘third-generation return’ principle, key to understanding how religion becomes the vehicle of assimilation rather than ethnicity or language.
• XREF: Links to the chapter’s core claim that non-Protestant/Catholic/Jewish religions, including Islam, were structurally excluded from the post-war ‘triple melting pot.’