"Protestant Reformation for Hispanics"?
Some challenging stats regarding the growth of Hispanic Protestantism in the US via the Wichita Eagle:
Nationwide, there are now about 10 million Hispanic Protestants, according to the recent Hispanic Churches in American Public Life research project.
That number has doubled during the past 10 years, according to the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr., founder and president of the Sacramento, Calif.-based National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. The conference represents Hispanic evangelicals in the United States and Puerto Rico.
"This is the Protestant Reformation for Hispanics," Rodriguez said.
Nationwide, the U.S. Hispanic population grew from 22.4 million in 1990 to an estimated 42.7 million in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Among all U.S. Hispanics, nearly 70 percent are Catholics.
But a report on Hispanics and religion released earlier this year showed that half of Hispanic evangelicals came to the faith from other backgrounds and more than 80 percent of them are former Catholics.
That report -- conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based research groups Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life -- said that more than 80 percent of all Hispanic Christian converts cited a "desire for a more direct, personal experience with God" as a reason for their conversion. Few Hispanics -- only 7 percent -- said they left Catholicism because they were dissatisfied with the church's position on certain issues, the report said.
"They are saying, 'We like our Catholic faith. However, these evangelicals, they really have this going on with this personal relationship component,' " Rodriguez said. "'It has more animated services, it's more lively, it's more Hispanic.' "
Sherry's note:
Let's see: one half of the 10 million Hispanic Protestants converted from other faiths and more than 80% of those approximately 5 million Hispanics were Catholic. So that would make about 4 million Hispanic Catholics who have become Protestant in recent years.
Of that number, only about 7% or 280,000 left because they did not agree with Catholic teaching.
3,720,000 left because of a "desire for a more direct, personal experience with God"
So "I like my Catholic faith.: But it doesn't seem to include this personal relationship component. That I discovered elsewhere. And evangelicalism is "more Hispanic" than the Catholicism that has shaped them for many generation.
Comments?
posted by Sherry W @ 5:50 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Well if nothing else, making generalizations about Hispanic/Latino culture (such as to suggest that evangelicalism is "more Hispanic") is about as accurate as making generalizations about European culture or Asian culture. Anyone who does so seriously jeopardizes the integrity of their argument.
I have heard Catholic evangelist, Jesse Romero, say that in his experience, many Hispanics embrace Evangelicalism because they see it as a step up on the social ladder. They are anxious to leave behind what they see as the "peasant" religion of their homeland. He has experienced this first hand in his own extended family and in that of his wife. He also mentioned Protestant approval of irregular marriages as a draw. No doubt this all goes hand in hand with poor catechesis ... is this consistent with your experience?
I'm no expert in this area. I'm just quoting the article. And I'm sure that there are significant elements of wanting to leave "behind" the religion of their past. etc.
But we've got to be careful not to just be defensive here. In addition to all the fairly natural "I want to get ahead" dynamics, there is also the well-known "in a strange place, I hold on even more tightly to my culture" dynamic which, for instance, made Italians who hadn't stepped inside a Catholic Church for years suddenly show up for Mass when they got to America.
One question(and I'm just thinking out loud here) why is it that the Italians and the Irish, who were also poor, badly educated, and scorned by Anglo Protestants for their Catholicism as immigrants, didn't convert en masse to Protestantism? (When Elizabeth Ann Seton left Episcopalianism to become Catholic, her family's horror was largely class-based - she was leaving upper class Anglo respectibility to enter a Church made up overwhelming of *Irish* immigrants.)
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, being Catholic was *much* less respectable than it is today when many elites(just look at the US Senate)are also Catholic.
There are other factors at work today - one big one is the fact that evangelical Prostestantism, as we know it, didn't exist then with its evangelistic passion, 24/7 media expertise, and vast network of mega-churches and evangelistic institutions.
And evangelicals are much more likely to pay attention to every individual (one of the "benefits" of the individualism that Catholics so often deride in evangelicals)than we are in our huge, understaffed, and still largly *Anglo led* parishes that are still being run according to our cultural norms which do often strike people of other cultures as cold,formal,abstract, etc.
There is a shocking lack of Hispanic priests and parish staff while a Hispanic guy with an elementary education and a passion for evangelism can and does set up his little "church" in any store front.)
And we must remember that the majority of Latin immigrants are essentially "pentecostal" in many of their spiritual beliefs which fits American evangelicalism, which is now also heavily flavored with Pentecostalism.
We don't get it! The very things that commenters at St. Blog's so often deride evangelicals for: lack of intellectual heft and culture, individualism, pentecostalism, emotionalism, strong evangelistic emphasis, and their focus on how God can change *my* life, heal *me*,heal*my* family, etc. are huge assets when dealing with a poor, semi-illiterate wave of immigrants from cultures that value different things.
Good point about the Irish and Italians, I hadn't thought of that (although I don't think the mainline denominations would have taken them even if they wanted to convert, and, as you note, modern Evangelicalism did not exist then. I doubt tent revival Pentecostalism would have been appealing, nor teetotaling Baptist denominations.) What I find most curious about Hispanic movement toward Evangelicalism is the willingness to give up Marian devotion. It is hard to imagine even nominal Catholics throwing away their images of Our Lady of Guadalupe and their rosaries. The culture is so closely tied to the heart of Our Lady that I can't help but think that if fired up preaching, in Spanish, by the likes of Fr. Corapi or Jesse Romero was piping in via global radio explaining the treasures of our Faith, the reversions would light up the Church.
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