- Across time, across civilization, from Asia to the Americas, the best architecture, over and over and over again is architecture devoted to something spiritual; call it religion, call it whatever you want to call it, but it's something bigger than the self, bigger than a person, bigger than even a particular culture.

- Architecture really arose out of creating places for the spirit.

You think of the oldest structures on earth, and they are sacred places, this sort of spiritual dimension.

And it's something that everybody longs for in one way or the other.

And I think people find solace, they find connection and they find direction by being in sacred space.

(dramatic music) - Ours is a nation of immigrants.

We're a tapestry of endless hues of diverse peoples from all over the planet who have come here often fleeing the floods of prejudice and persecution.

Every seventh person in America was born in another country, and just about every country in the world is represented in our population.

Immigrants coming to the United States, bring with them their religion, their languages, their traditions, their cultures, and their sacred architecture.

We're a Noah's Ark of religious freedom and vernaculars.

(gentle music) Welcome back to "A Sacred Piece of Home."

I'm your host, Ori Z. Soltes.

During the 1960s and the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, immigration to the U.S. from Asian countries expanded exponentially.

For instance, over 100,000 refugees were brought into the U.S. from war-torn Vietnam, and the number roughly doubled every decade until the end of the millennium.

Today, there are almost a million and a half Vietnam-born immigrants in the United States.

The first wave consisted mainly of educated government and military officials, and many settled in the D.C. area in 1979.

In 1987, a three-story building was constructed on Upper 16th Street to house what was called the Buddhist Congregational Church of America.

Chùa Giác Hoàng of the Enlightenment is in red and yellow, possibly referring to the colors of the Vietnamese flag.

Nearly a third of the immigrants were Catholic, although only 10% of Vietnamese in Vietnam were Christians at all.

In 1993, they had also built a church on New Hampshire Avenue.

(pensive music) New Hampshire Avenue, as it comes out of Washington into Silver Spring, Maryland, is unique.

Within a 10-mile stretch, there are 34 places of worship, and the traditions in these edifices take us beyond the Abrahamic world.

We see not only Christian and Muslim edifices, but Dharmic traditions are represented, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, all of them represented in the religion-based structures found along this stretch of New Hampshire Avenue.

Our Lady of Vietnam is the first Roman Catholic church in America built in a Vietnamese style.

The Congregation of Our Lady of Vietnam raised more money to build upper structures in the Vietnamese architectural idiom by the year 2000, and thus it sought to instill a part of Vietnamese home culture within the structure in a more clear-cut visual manner.

The yellow building has red roofs and is entered through a triple gateway, a tam quam, symbolizing heaven, humanity, and Earth.

This three-fold doorway also stands for the values of Vietnamese philosophy, happiness, benevolence, and longevity.

The curved roof shape is intended to suggest the phượng hoàng, the phoenix.

Mass is performed in Vietnamese, with English as a second language.

At around the same time when Our Lady of Vietnam Church was built, another ecclesiastical structure from Southeast Asia was also being constructed not far from it: a Buddhist temple, Wat Bodhikarama, with its own distinctive embellishments, was built by refugees from Cambodia in 1993, reflecting the fact that over 150,000 Cambodians had been admitted to the U.S. after the Khmer Rouge were defeated at the end of the 1970s.

The architect who designed the building was given a photograph of a typical wat in Phnom Penh to guide him.

Interestingly, the wats in Cambodia in recent times resemble the relatively modern Throne Hall of the Royal Palace rather than the ancient angkor wat carved from stone.

These structures have multi-tiered gabled roofs embellished by the graceful forms of abstracted birds called chofas.

The main worship hall is surrounded by a wide pillared gallery, the eaves upheld by flying celestial beings called kinnaras.

Above the window is a semi-divine figure on a lotus base, paying respects to the Buddha with folded hands.

The staircase is considered a bridge between the mundane and the sacred worlds, and it is protected by balustrades depicting mythical multi-headed nagas, or snakes.

- The Buddha was born a Hindu.

He was born in Nepal, but the place of his ministry were basically in Northern India.

There are three major branches of Buddhism.

Theravada is practiced in Sri Lanka and continental Southeast Asia.

The practice of the Noble Eightfold Path ultimately terminates in the attainment of salvation, or nirvana in Sanskrit, or nibbana in Pali.

In the Theravada tradition, even though they come from different nationalities, from the standpoint of what I would call liturgical language, Pali is common.

So you could be a monastic from Sri Lanka, or from Thailand, or Myanmar, or Cambodia, it does not matter.

When the monks chant, they will chant in the Pali language.

People at the level of the layperson, the layman or the laywoman, they look upon the Buddha as a venerable teacher.

They are venerating the Buddha, not worshipping the Buddha.

- [Ori] The paintings in the Cambodian temple present the main events in the life of the Buddha.

They begin with his birth.

- [Dr. Hebbar] He has come down as the little baby, pointing his index finger and left hand down.

That he has come to this earth, and of course his feet is never touching the earth, on the lotus, seven lotus flowers as he steps forward.

That he has come to teach a transcendental teaching.

That is the great departure.

And that's when he's not yet the Buddha, but he's no longer Prince Siddhartha either.

Eventually, he resolves to sit at the base of the Bodhi tree, and it is said that one full moon day in the month of May, the person who sat down as the man Gautama arises as the Buddha, the enlightened one.

And then he goes to Benares where he delivers his first sermon at Sarnath.

Only five people are there, the first five disciples.

Even towards the end of his life, at the time of the Maha parinirvana, which takes place in the year 483 BC, he passes away.

- Next door is a second structure used to contain the remains of the deceased, placed in little cubicles on the interior, and it's called a stupa.

Golden images are tutelary goddesses who sanctify the stupa, and protect its relics from evil spirits, whereas the oversized lions are meant to ward off human harm.

And during this period, still other structures have blossomed on Upper New Hampshire Avenue.

- [M. Samir] The MCC was actually originally incorporated in 1976.

It was the pet project of some of the parents in our community.

They had been getting together for a while, and they were thinking, "How are we going to raise our kids and give them good Muslim education?"

- [Ori] This is a common denominator, uniting so many immigrant communities.

They want a place of worship to cement the religious heritage of their children, embedding it within American culture in its unique way.

- The congregation is very diverse.

We have somewhere between 40 and 50 different countries represented here from all parts of the world, and a lot of people like me from the United States.

We have regularly, for example, for our weekly Friday prayers, we have about 1,500 to 2,000 people come for prayers, and we fill this hall next door.

Charity is really a central part of our faith, too.

So two kinds of charity in Islam: One is called zakat.

Zakat is a mandatory charity that everybody who earns money must give every year, and it's prescribed.

There's another charity called sadhaka.

That is a voluntary charity.

Our social services committee has various programs, and a lot of it is a refugee support program.

It used to be in English classes we had here, but we found that the refugees, a lot of them didn't have transportation.

So we go down to where they live and we provide them English tutoring 101 with the families that need it, because they need that English skill to get jobs and to be able to support themselves.

This food pantry started, I think, in 2013.

- [Ori] Today the MCC feeds over 600 people a month.

It also operates a medical clinic, which was founded in 2003 by Dr. Asif Qadri and has grown greatly since that time.

It's open to everyone.

Forty percent of the patients are Muslim.

Sixty percent are non-Muslim from all over the world.

This section of New Hampshire Avenue has been called "the highway to heaven" by "The Washington Post."

In about a two-mile stretch, there are 23 different congregations on this street.

I worked with some of the other faith leaders on the street.

Many of us actually know each other, and there's a lot of cooperation in spirits.

If you sit down and pack meals together, the more we do together, the more we interact, and the more people learn about each other, you end up starting to talk to each other.

You just figure out that no matter where they're from or what faith they are, you have the same concerns.

We have the same wants and desires, and our goals for society and our goals for each other are pretty much the same.

- Next door to the Muslim Community Center is the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral with five distinctive golden cupolas made in the Cossack Baroque style, like St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev.

Further down the same street is another Ukrainian church, this one Catholic, built in the distinctive Hutsul style of the Carpathian regions.

The hipped roof emulates the wooden churches and synagogues found across the Ukrainian rural landscape and throughout the Carpathian mountains and beyond.

The Mangal Mandir is a Hindu structure built around the same time as the South Indian temple in Lanham, but in a very different architectural style from Northern India.

A Hindu temple is believed to be the earthly seat of divinity and the place where devotees can set eyes on a manifestation of the deity.

The peaked forms rising from the rooftops suggest the Himalayan mountains, where Hindu deities live, away from the hot plains below.

A few miles from here is another mandir founded by the Jains 40 years ago.

- [Dr. Sushil] So we have been in Silver Spring location since 1984.

- [Ori] What we understand as Jainism today was begun by Mahavir, a contemporary of the Buddha, and the 24th saint in a line that goes back to a figure known as Adinath.

- [Dr. Sushil] The concept of Jainism depends upon the knowledge, the right knowledge, right thought process, and the right behavior.

Jainism is about the anekantavad, the theory of multiple viewpoints, where everyone is right in their own way.

The second one is nonviolence, nonviolence or compassion.

And the last is charity.

Whatever we need to sustain our life, we keep, otherwise we keep donating back to the community at large.

We are building a new temple in Beltsville, and that's all made with the best marble coming from Makrana, Rajasthan.

And it's the same material that was used to build the Taj Mahal.

- The creation of a new mandir by craftsmen back in India with the same material that was used for the Taj Mahal is another instance, another symptom of the way in which an immigrant community brings to its new home a sacred piece of its old home.

♪ I love you Lord ♪ Out in the Virginia suburbs, in Centerville, to which many Korean immigrants have arrived, there is a Korean Presbyterian church that embeds the culture of the old land in the culture of the new.

- [Owen] The church that I get to pastor is called Christ Central Presbyterian Church in Centerville, VIrginia.

It was completed in 2010.

It is a vast, beautiful campus.

There's a lot of Korean Presbyterians because the first missionaries to Korea were Presbyterian missionaries.

So by and large, most Koreans in Korea and in America would be Presbyterian Christians.

A lot of pioneering, brave souls with really nothing in their pockets came to America in search of a better life.

And my parents were among those members seeking their piece of the American dream, right?

Hoping for a better life for their children.

My parents immigrated in 1970.

Most of the people in our church hold white-collar jobs, middle to upper class.

We're in the suburbs of Northern Virginia.

It's a pretty affluent area.

And a lot of us grew up in the Korean-speaking ethnic church.

As second generation, we all speak English fluently.

And so a lot of times people have said to us, "Now that you can speak English, why are you still in your ethnic church?

Why don't you join the more majority white churches and kind of assimilate?"

As a second- and third-generation Korean American, we've always been what I would call minorities in someone else's majority culture, even in the church.

And so when they come to our church, where the majority is second-generation, third-generation, English-speaking Korean Americans, people say, "Wow, I feel like I'm at home."

(soft music) - [Ori] A recent addition to places of worship in the Maryland suburbs is the Kamran Dar-e-Mehr, a temple and community center built by Zoroastrians, one of the world's oldest religious communities originating in ancient Iran, or as it is otherwise called, Persia.

It would have enormous influence on the Judean religion that eventually became Judaism and Christianity and Islam.

- he legend is that the three wise men who came to the birth of baby Christ were magi.

Magi are the majus, leaders of the Zoroastrian faith.

- [Ori] After Solomon's temple was destroyed in the 6th century BCE, the exiled Judeans encountered Zoroastrians and their concepts in Persia.

- When the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus the Great conquered Babylonia, Cyrus set the Jews free.

They were in captivity there.

He gave them a subsidy to build the temple in Jerusalem.

Zarathustra, called Zoroaster by the Greeks, was supposed to have been born as a priest in the Mazdayasni tradition, pre-Zoroastrian tradition.

- The pre-existing Mazdayasni tradition revered the four elements of nature: fire, air, water, and earth, in a manner similar to what is in the Hindu Vedas.

Zoroaster dates from anywhere between 1700 BCE and 600 BCE.

- [Kersi] Zarathustra was born in the region of the steppes south of Russia, perhaps in the region of Azerbaijan, perhaps further east, maybe even closer to what is present-day Afghanistan.

- [Ori] Azerbaijan, part of the homeland of the Zoroastrians, which was at the time part of the Persian Empire, is known as the land of fire because fires have burned endlessly for centuries there due to natural gas beneath the surface bubbling up.

- Zarathustra received his revelation at the age of 30, and he came upon this concept of one god, Ahura Mazda.

Each individual is endowed with the mind for you to decide how you will lead your life in this world, whether you'll follow the path of righteousness, which is expressed in very simple terms of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, or you have the individual ability to decide to go the other way, but you will be accountable for the choice that you make in this world.

- [Ori] Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, taught that humans must all be part of the cosmic struggle between light and darkness, fullness and emptiness, because of our capacity for free choice.

Zoroastrianism rejects predestination.

Humans bear full responsibility for their actions.

Every time we choose between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, we affect not only our own eternal destiny, but potentially the cosmic balance.

- [Kersi] Zarathustra's own words have come down through the ages.

They're called the Gathas.

- [Ori] Zoroastrians believe that fire is sacred and keep it always burning in their fire temples.

- [Kersi] The Zoroastrians consider fire as a symbol of Ahura Mazda.

- [Ori] Water is also revered, and most temples have a well.

There are several festivals when water is venerated.

In ancient times, fire was placed on an elevated altar-like stand known as an Afarganu, but until the 5th century BCE, Zoroastrians did not build temples.

- [Kersi] The Achaemenians worshipped out in the open, so there are no temples in that time.

They believed that there should be nothing between humans and God.

- According to the 1st-century BCE Roman writer, Cicero, Zoroastrians thought temples were wrong for they, and I'm quoting him now, "keep shut up within walls the gods, whose dwelling place is this whole world."

When they did begin making them, temples were typically modest buildings at human scale, and they have remained so.

The farofar, a winged disc topped by a bearded man, is usually displayed prominently on the facade of fire temples.

- [Kersi] And you'll see, particularly in the rock carvings in Persepolis and other places in Iran, the ring is supposed to symbolize the ring of life, and the wings are supposed to represent the chapters from Zoroastrian scriptures.

- [Ori] After the arrival of Islam in Iran in the 7th century, many Zoroastrians fled to Gujarat in western India.

They are known as Parsis, and have flourished as a community in India's environment of traditionally accepting diverse faiths.

- [Kersi] And it's said that they took the fire with them, and that fire is still burning in Atash Behram in India, in a place called Udwada.

- The Atash Behrams are highest in the hierarchy of temples, and the installation and consecration of the fire there is complex and can take over a year.

Although there are many Zoroastrian temples in the U.S., there is none in that highest category as yet.

The prayer room in the Maryland temple, completed in 2021, contains an urn with fire, but this is not a consecrated, ever-burning fire.

Many Zoroastrian Iranians have immigrated to the United States.

After centuries of being separated, Iranian Zoroastrians and Indian Parsis are coming together in America.

A class held at the temple, for teenagers, serves children from both Indian Parsi and Iranian Zoroastrian immigrant communities.

- So you're going to get more questions about it as you get older.

When somebody asks you, "Oh, you're a Zoroastrian, what does that mean?"

what they're asking you is what do we believe in, what are the core tenets of our religion, and what makes it different from other religions, right?

The choice and free will is one of the biggest teachings of Zoroastria, and that comes down to, you know, how do you interpret some of these things for yourselves?

(ethereal choir music) - While Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest faiths on the planet, represented here in the D.C. area, the Church of Latter-day Saints is a much more recent form of faith also represented here.

The magnificent structure of the Mormon temple, built by the Church of Latter-day Saints in 1974, and towering over the Beltway in Kensington, Maryland, offers a sort of paradox, since this form of faith was born here in America, yet it underwent a series of migrations.

In the 1820s, Joseph Smith experienced a series of visions, brought to him by an angel he called Moroni, who instructed him to found a new church, a reshaped Christian church.

What he found inscribed on gold tablets, he transformed into the Book of Mormon.

In its narrative, the Book of Mormon asserts that the Israelites migrated to the Americas centuries and centuries before the current populations arrived here, bringing with them the faith that then was lost until it was reclaimed in the 19th century through Joseph Smith.

The Mormons endured decades of persecution in parts of America until they settled in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1847.

The 1933 Washington Chapel on 16th Street, that we briefly noted earlier, was the first church of Latter-day Saints established east of the Mississippi River.

It represented a sort of reverse migration from what became the homeland of Utah.

Some of the architects associated with it were related to Brigham Young, a leader of the church.

The 1974 edifice of the Church of Latter-day Saints, instead of bringing their traditions from elsewhere and planting them in new modes in America, created something uniquely American, with six marvelous pinnacles, towers, a structure made largely of marble and vetted with 24-carat gold, designed to emulate the church in Salt Lake City, with its spindles, its towers, crowned by the angel Moroni, trumpeting the arrival of a new faith.

This American-bounded religion reached out across the globe to proselytize.

Today, many of the immigrants coming into America from other countries, especially in South and Central America, became members of the Latter-day Saints Church in their own homelands.

So about 7% of Mormons are foreign-born.

It is fitting that the edifice that they have erected here join with the many structures reflecting spiritual and architectural traditions across Europe, Africa, South and Central America, and Asia, in the myriad sacred pieces of home that may be found across America, and in particular, in the American capital, Washington, D.C.

Thank you for watching "A Sacred Piece of Home."

I'm Ori Z. Soltes, and it has been a pleasure to be with you.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music fades)