The Buddhist Churches of America (abbreviated as BCA in English, ' or ''Beikoku Bukkyōdan'' in

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

) is the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

branch of the

Nishi Honganji is a Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist temple in the Shimogyō ward of Kyoto, Japan. It serves as the head temple of the sub-sect Honganji-ha. It is one of two Jōdo Shinshū temple complexes in Kyoto, the other being Higashi Hongan-ji, which is the h ...

subsect of Jōdo Shinshū ("True Pure Land School")

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...

. The BCA headquarters is at 1710 Octavia Street,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, and currently under the leadership of Terri Omori, its first female president. It is the oldest Buddhist organization in the continental United States.

Origins and development

An earlier separate branch of the Nishi Hongwanji-ha was established on the Hawaiian Islands in the 1880s when it was the Kingdom of Hawaii, the

Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii The Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii ( ja, 本派本願寺ハワイ別院, ''Honpa Honganji Hawai Betsuin'') is a district of the Nishi (West) Hongwanji branch of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, a school of Mahayana Pure Land Buddhism. History Jodo S ...

. Many Japanese had also immigrated to Hawaii to work on the

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

s there. The BCA hopes that ongoing American interest in the Dharma will lead to a new interest in Jōdo Shinshū and its revival in the United States. The BCA has attempted to accomplish this goal chiefly through

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...

, "minister's assistant" training, and through cultural events open to the public, such as the

Bon Festival or just is fusion of the ancient Japanese belief in ancestral spirits and a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist–Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people retu ...

taiko are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used specifically to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called and to the form of ensemble drumming ...

, and Japanese food bazaars. BCA was among the first American Buddhist communities to sanction same-sex marriage.

Seminary and education

BCA ministers have also been the only Buddhist chaplains to serve in the California State Senate and the California State Assembly, Rev. Shoko Masunaga (1975-1976) and Rev. Bob Oshita (2017-2018).

Style

In the United States, BCA priests may be addressed as either ''

sensei Sensei, Seonsaeng, Tiên sinh or Xiansheng, corresponding to Chinese characters , is an East Asian honorific term shared in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese; it is literally translated as "person born before another" or "one who c ...

'' ("teacher"), "Minister", or "Reverend". BCA ministers have historically been all male and ethnically Japanese, but there is now a substantial number of female, and non-Japanese, ministers. In 2022, the BCA appointed their first female president, Terri Omori.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Buddhist Churches Of America Jōdo Shinshū Jōdo Shin temples Buddhism in the United States Shinshū Honganji-ha