Temples of the gods: Houston's religious diversity reflects community

Houston may be best known for its massive Christian megachurches, but the city's first non-Christian settlers arrived soon after the Allen brothers landed on Buffalo Bayou's swampy banks back in 1836.

In 1844, a small band of Jewish settlers bought land for a cemetery, and 10 years later they opened Congregation Beth Israel - the first synagogue in Texas - in a converted house.

For more than a century afterward, Houston remained primarily Christian, with most immigrants coming from Europe. The signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, however, which abolished the existing quota system that had previously defined America, changed all that and helped create the Houston of today.

"What we've been watching … is a transformation in the representation of the world's religions in Houston," said Rice University sociology professor Stephen L. Klineberg. "America is now increasingly made up of all the world's ethnicities and all the world's religions. Nowhere is that clearer than in Houston."

Believers of religions from every corner of the globe now call Houston home.

"You can find any flavor of any major religion here," said Matt Kahn, associate director of interfaith relations at Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston.

Indeed, Bahai'i, Buddhists, Christians, Christian Scientists, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Pagans, Sikhs and Zoroastrians call Houston home. Most recently, a small group of Yazidi immigrants from Iraq has brought their faith here as well.

The city contains at least 37 megachurches, with a combined attendance of more than 600,000, according to a report from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research. But during the last 35 years, the area's population of believers in non-Christian religions has tripled, Klineberg said.

Many immigrants settled here to work in the tech or medicine industries, said Elaine Howard Ecklund, a Rice University sociology professor and director of the school's Religion and Public Life Program.

"When people come to work, they bring their religions with them," she said.

Jews

Congregation Beth Israel left its original home on Franklin Street in 1908 for a Romanesque temple at the corner of Lamar and Crawford, and stayed there until a new temple was built in 1925 at Austin and Holman.

In 1967, it moved to the current temple on North Braeswood.

Local Jews now worship at more than 40 synagogues, from Humble to Galveston and Victoria.

By 2001, an estimated 47,000 Jews were living in the Houston area, and those numbers are expected to have grown when an up-to-date count is published in November, said Lee Wunsch, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.

The Church of Jesus Christof Latter-day Saints

Houston's Mormons were among the city's oldest religious devotees, arriving in the city by 1918.

The first branch here was organized in 1921, and the area's first meetinghouse was dedicated in 1933. Today, more than 50,000 Mormons call Houston home, according to the church's official estimates.

The LDS church constructed a temple – the most sacred of Mormon structures – in 2000.

Buddhists

The city boasts a thriving Buddhist community, which had established itself here by the late 1970s. Among the first local temples was the Buddha Light Temple, in 1984. The area is also home to the Texas Bodhi Center in Waller County; the 512-acre site is one of the largest Buddhist developments in the nation.

Muslims

The city's Muslim community began to flourish nearly a century after Houston was established, when local Muslims began gathering at a local barbershop in the 1950s. They eventually formed Houston Masjid Al-Islam, later renamed Masjid Warithuddeen Mohammed.

The demographics of the Muslim community changed with the influx of immigrants from Indonesia, Turkey, the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and India. Today, the region is home to about 250,000 Muslims, according to Rodwaan Saleh, executive director of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.

The society - the largest Islamic society in North America - operates 22 centers in the Houston area.

Hindus

A Hare Krishna temple - ISKCON Houston – was built in 1969, and by the 1970s, the city's Hindu community had begun expanding dramatically.

At first, devotees met in each other's homes; now, mandirs are sprinkled throughout suburban Houston, most notably in Pearland, Stafford and Sugar Land.

The community has now swelled to more than 120,000 people, according to Vijay Pallod, a spokesman for Hindus of Greater Houston, who immigrated here in 1980.

Sikhs

When Kanwalkjeet Singh arrived in Houston in 1972, there were just a handful of Sikhs in Houston. They met every 10 days in each others apartments to worship. Singh and his friends built their first gurudwara, (the Punjabi word for temple or church) in 1972 - The Sikh Center of the Gulf Coast Area. Now, seven gurudwaras dot the region for the estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people.

Zoroastrians

Adherents of Zoroastrianism first arrived in the Houston area in the 1970s, as Indian and Parsi immigrants practiced their monotheistic religion in local homes. The number of Zoroastrians in Houston has grown from just over a dozen in 1975 to about 650 now, most of whom have come from India or Pakistan, according to Nazneen Khumbatta, who came to the Houston area 30 years ago.

In the 1990s, the group constructed its community center, the Zarathushti Heritage and Cultural Center, in southwest Houston. Construction of a fire temple - Zoroastrians' traditional place of worship - should be completed within two years.

Jains

The Jains - one of the oldest religions in India - became active in Houston in the 1970s.

Today, about 1,000 Jain families call the city home, according to Swatantra Jain, chairman of one of the area's two Jain temples. The Jain Society of Houston's temple is on Arc Street in west Houston; the Jain Vishwa Bharati is in far west Houston.