The Divine Eye and the Diaspora Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism

The book looks at the connections between "the age of revelations" (1925-1934) in French Indochina and the "age of diaspora" (1975-present) when many Caodai leaders and followers went into exile. Structured in paired biographies to trace relations between masters and disciples, now separated by oceans, it focuses on five members of the founding generation and their followers or descendants in California, showing the continuing obligation to honor those who forged the initial vision to "bring the gods of the East and West together." Diasporic congregations in California have interacted with New Age ideas and stereotypes of a "Walt Disney fantasia of the East," at the same time that temples in Vietnam have re-opened their doors after decades of severe restrictions.
Caodaism forces us to reconsider how anthropologists study religious mixtures in postcolonial settings. Its dynamics challenge the unconscious Eurocentrism of our notions of how religions are bounded and conceptualized.
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