| Abstract: | The first section of this article describes a hiatus dominating present-day research on immigrants’ religious associations: On the one hand, the theoretical debates among sociologists of religion are more or less based on the analysis of Western Christianity. On the other hand, empirical researchers focus predominantly on the associations of Muslim and Asian immigrants. On this basis, the author presents a heuristic model that adds the distinction between immigration society and immigrants’ community to the classical sect-church typology. Following this line of thought, the article highlights the concept of community-churches, referring to Max Weber’s ideal type of the ?church“ as well as Friedrich Heckmann’s idea of the ?community“. Starting with the 1950s, the development of Christian immigrants’ associations appears to be dominated by groups close to the community-church type. Since the mid-1990s, these associations are developing in different directions: First, new types of religious institutions are developing among the immigrants. Second, the religious groups are linking themselves more and more to the immigration society. |
