Rev. Danny Fisher

A few days ago, I posted about the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Because I have neither the time nor the inclination nor the ability to sift through all of the data provided by the survey and reflect critically on it, I have relied mostly on journalists and commentators to tell me about its findings. (However problematic that may be.)

Fortunately for folks like me, though, the brilliant minds over at The Buddhist Scholars Information Network (H-Buddhism) have been sussing out problems with the survey’s findings about Buddhism in America.

One problem identified has to do with language. Michael K. Jerryson, author of Mongolian Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of the Sangha and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes:

…I wanted to forward on a critique by [U.C.S.B. graduate student] Todd Perreira that merits reflection before using the statistics, particularly for American Buddhism.
“For those concerned with the study of Buddhism in America it should be noted that the 35,000 calls for the Pew study were conducted in Spanish or English. As we know, there are million of Asians living in America today who are Buddhists but do not speak Spanish or English. On this basis I would argue the methodology in this study is flawed. A more accurate demographic picture of Buddhism in American would necessarily have to draw on data gathered in the primary languages of Asian immigrants–especially Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Korean, Japanese, & Chinese. This would not only alter the racial/ethnic composition graph but virtually all the other graphs as well. I would exercise great caution and restraint in the use of these numbers.”

The U.S Census shows that there are close to ten million Asians in the United States, forty percent of which do not speak English or Spanish. The 2000 U.S Census states, “Of the 9.5 million Asians aged 5 and over, 79 percent spoke a language other than English at home and about 40 percent spoke English less than ‘very well.’”

Another obvious problem has to do with the exclusion of Hawai’i from the survey. Alfred Bloom, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Religion at the University of Hawai’i, writes:

It should be noted also that the survey did not include Hawaii, they say because of time differentials. There are sizable number of Buddhists, taking the Chinese, Korean Japanese, Laotian and Vietnamese and others that are here.

These seem to me to be two very significant problems with the Pew Forum’s survey. While these sorts of surveys helpfully provide a very general picture of the religious make-up of the country, it seems clear that this particular survey is not very useful for those of us studying Buddhism in America. Personally speaking, I will not be using the Pew Forum’s data about Buddhism in America in the writing I do.