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Posted on 04/26/2007 6:58:28 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
The influx of Hispanic immigrants to the United States is transforming the Roman Catholic Church as well as the nation’s religious landscape, according to a study of Hispanics and religion released yesterday.
The study, conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that half of Hispanic Catholics practice a “distinctive form” of charismatic Catholicism that includes speaking in tongues, miraculous healings and prophesying — practices more often associated with Pentecostalism. Among Catholics who are not Hispanic, only 12 percent are involved in these practices.
The study also found that two-thirds of Hispanics choose to worship in “ethnic congregations” that have Hispanic clergymen and Spanish-language services, and where a majority of congregants are Hispanic. These congregations are cropping up throughout the country, even in areas where Hispanics are sparse.
Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States, doubling from 1980 to 2000, and projected to more than double between 2000 and 2020, Pew researchers said. As of 2005, there were 42 million Hispanics in the United States, about 14 percent of the population.
According to the survey, 68 percent of Hispanics are Catholic, 15 percent are born-again or evangelical Protestants, 5 percent are mainline Protestants, 3 percent are identified as “other Christian” and 8 percent are secular (1 percent refused to answer).
Among non-Hispanic Americans, the largest groupings are 20 percent Catholic, 35 percent evangelical Protestant and 24 percent mainline Protestant.
The religious identity of Hispanics will affect politics, the report says. The Hispanic electorate is largely Democratic (63 percent), despite being conservative on social issues like abortion and homosexuality. But Hispanic evangelical Protestants — whose numbers are growing — are twice as likely as Hispanic Catholics to be Republicans. This is a far greater gap than exists between white evangelical Protestants and Catholics.
About one-third of Catholics in the United States are now Hispanic.
Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said in an interview that Hispanic Catholics looked different from typical white suburban Catholics. “They are different in terms of beliefs, practices, language and culture, but they remain very Catholic,” Mr. Suro said. “The open question here is, Does the institution adapt to them, or do they adapt to the institution?”
The study also found that conversion is a common experience for many Hispanics. Nearly one in five changed either from one religion to another, or to no religion at all.
The biggest loser from all the conversions is the Catholic Church, while evangelical Protestant churches are the beneficiaries.
Despite the departures, it is Hispanics who are replenishing Catholic ranks, Luis E. Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said in a news conference.
“The gains for the Catholic Church in this country among Latinos, from immigration and higher fertility rates, are more than making up for those Latino Catholics, particularly in the second generation, who go to other churches or turn secular,” Mr. Lugo said.
The study, “Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion,” is based on several surveys — the main one conducted from Aug. 10 to Oct. 4, 2006 — that involved more than 4,600 adult Hispanics. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
It's not just churches it's everywhere that they choose to not assimilate.
Many, if not most Hispanic men (men in general?) seem fine with adultery.
What does that even mean?
I've gone to Spanish masses for years and never heard anyone mention speaking in tongues or prophesying. As for miraculous healings, well, that's pretty standard, unless you're talkin' about some redneck faith healer.
**that have Hispanic clergymen and Spanish-language services, and where a majority of congregants are Hispanic.**
Parishioners need to reach out to them in small ways and invite them into the mainstream.
The liaison for our Hispanic community told me (about six years ago) there are three steps:
Eat together
Work together
Pray together
Eat together — They are coming to our socials, dances, etc. We are going to their Divine Mercy, Our Lady of Guadlalupe fiestas.
Work together — They are joining in the work of the parish, especially the spirng and fall cleanup days.
Pray together — The number of our bi-lingual services has increased. In fact, for the last Reconciliation Service that we had at Easter time, we had three Hispanic speaking priests and three English speaking priests. (New to me to have this many priests who speak Spanish — Usually we only have one or two.)
Yes, there are still some English speaking people who voice their dislike the idea of these services, but I think as a whole, we are slowly becoming integrated.
And we must remember that God created us all in His image!
Didn’t catch this one;
Guadlalupe
Guadalupe
Related story from San Jose Mercury News with a little more emphasis on the political and some local clergy commentary:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_5756547
“Latino evangelicals are twice as likely as their Catholic counterparts to identify with the Republican party - 37 percent to 17 percent, respectively. Evangelicals are also more conservative on certain social issues. For instance, 86 percent of evangelical Latinos oppose gay marriage compared with 52 percent of Catholic Latinos.
“On hot-button issues like abortion,” said Luis Lugo with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, “they are, if anything, more conservative than white evangelicals.”
For a Mexican who wants to earn a good living in a white collar job and has no professional qualification, the ministry is a good field. All he needs is a Bible and Elmer Gantry-type gifts and he can build a congregation. Becoming a priest is a much harder row to ploy and he has to work his way into an organization dominated—still— by the Irish. The archdiocese of New York has never learned how to handle the Puerto Ricans. They managed to assimilate the Italians, whose religiosity was also very different from that of the Irish, but not the Puerto Ricans.
I’m hoping that the Hispanics’ love and devotion to the Virgin Mary will carry over to the Anglo community.
When it comes to the Virgin Mary there is never enough one can due to honor her!
May some of us don't like formal hymnography in English. What's so wrong with that?
And I include myself in the "us" even though, I *do* like most formal English hymnography but let me tell you, it took me years for me to learn to appreciate it.
Frankly, I don't want to "assimilate." I want to INCULTURATE. Two different things.
-Theo
Folks, the Pew Hispanic Center has published a fascinating report, entitled Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion which should be made mandatory reading for all those involved in ministry to Hispanics. Some of the findings may come as a surprise for other non-Hispanic Catholics, but they are old news to us. According to the Pew Hispanic Center,
Hispanics are transforming the nation's religious landscape, especially the Catholic Church, not only because of their growing numbers but also because they are practicing a distinctive form of Christianity.The Chapter index with chapter summaries follows:Religious expressions associated with the pentecostal and charismatic movements are a key attribute of worship for Hispanics in all the major religious traditions -- far more so than among non-Latinos. Moreover, the growth of the Hispanic population is leading to the emergence of Latino-oriented churches across the country...
... Most significantly given their numbers, more than half of Hispanic Catholics identify themselves as charismatics, compared with only an eighth of non-Hispanic Catholics. While remaining committed to the church and its traditional teachings, many of these Latino Catholics have witnessed or experienced occurrences typical of spirit-filled or renewalist movements, including divine healing and direct revelations from God. Even many Latino Catholics who do not identify themselves as renewalists appear deeply influenced by spirit-filled forms of Christianity...
... These two defining characteristics -- the prevalence of spirit-filled religious expressions and of ethnic-oriented worship -- combined with the rapid growth of the Hispanic population leave little doubt that a detailed understanding of religious faith among Latinos is essential to understanding the future of this population as well as the evolving nature of religion in the United States.
Chapter Index
Chapter 1: Religion and Demography More than two-thirds of Hispanics (68%) identify themselves as Roman Catholics. The next largest category, at 15%, is made up of born-again or evangelical Protestants. Nearly one-in-ten (8%) Latinos do not identify with any religion. Differences in religious identification among Latinos coincide with important differences in demographic characteristics. For example, Catholics are a more heavily immigrant population than evangelicals. Given current demographic trends, Latinos are projected to become an ever-increasing segment of the Catholic Church in the U.S.
Chapter 2: Religious Practices and Beliefs For the great majority of Latinos, regardless of their religious tradition, God is an active force in everyday life. Most Latinos pray every day, most have a religious object in their home and most attend a religious service at least once a month. By significant majorities, Latinos who identify with a religion believe that miracles are performed today just as they were in ancient times. Amid this overall religiosity, important differences emerge among Latinos of different religious traditions and between Latinos and their non-Hispanic counterparts.
Chapter 3: The Renewalist Movement and Hispanic Christianity Renewalist Christianity, which places special emphasis on God's ongoing, day-to-day intervention in human affairs through the person of the Holy Spirit, is having a major impact on Hispanic Christianity. Among Latino Protestants, renewalism is more than twice as prevalent as among their non-Latino counterparts. A majority (54%) of Hispanic Catholics describe themselves as charismatic Christians, making them more than four times as likely as non-Latino Catholics to identify with renewalist Christianity. The implications of this are particularly important for the Catholic Church, given that the rapidly growing Latino flock is practicing a distinctive form of Catholicism.
Chapter 4: Conversion and Views of the Catholic Church Nearly one-fifth (18%) of all Latinos say they have either converted from one religion to another or to no religion at all. Conversions are a key ingredient in the development of evangelicalism among Hispanics. Half of Hispanic evangelicals (51%) are converts, and more than four-fifths of them (43% of Hispanic evangelicals overall) are former Catholics.
By an overwhelming majority (82%), Hispanics cite the desire for a more direct, personal experience with God as the main reason for adopting a new faith. Among those who have become evangelicals, nine-in-ten (90%) say it was this spiritual search that drove their conversion. A majority of evangelical converts (61%) say the typical Catholic mass is not lively or exciting, although only about one-in-three (36%) cite that as a reason for their conversion.
Chapter 5: The Ethnic Church The houses of worship most frequented by Latinos have distinctly ethnic characteristics. A majority of those in the congregation are Hispanic; some Latinos serve as clergy; and liturgies are available in Spanish. The growth of the Hispanic population is leading to the emergence of Latino-oriented churches in all the major religious traditions across the country. While the prevalence of Hispanic-oriented worship is higher among the foreign born, with 77% saying they attend churches with those characteristics, the phenomenon is also widespread among the native born, with 48% saying they attend ethnic churches.
Chapter 6: Religion and Politics Two-thirds of Hispanics say that their religious beliefs are an important influence on their political thinking. More than half say churches and other houses of worship should address the social and political questions of the day. By nearly a two-to-one margin, Latinos say that there has been too little expression of religious faith by political leaders rather than too much. Churchgoing Hispanics report that their clergy often address political matters, although the extent of that practice varies considerably by issue and by religious tradition.
Chapter 7: Ideology and Policy Issues Religious affiliation and church attendance are strongly related to political ideology and views on a variety of social and public policy issues among Latinos. Even after controlling for language ability, nationality, generation and education, for instance, Latino evangelicals are still significantly more conservative than Catholics on social issues, foreign policy issues and even in their attitudes toward the plight of the poor. Catholics, in turn, are somewhat more conservative than seculars when it comes to gay marriage, government-guaranteed health care and increases in government services.
Frequency of church attendance tends to be correlated with more conservative views on social issues after controlling for a variety of demographic factors.
Chapter 8: Party Identification and Ideology Latino evangelicals are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to be Republicans. That is a far greater difference than exists among whites. Moreover, Hispanic conservatives who are Catholic favor the Democrats, while white conservatives consider themselves Republican regardless of religious tradition.
The Democratic Party holds a nearly three-to-one advantage among Latino Catholics who are eligible to vote (48% vs. 17% for Republicans). Because the Latino electorate is overwhelmingly Catholic (63%), Catholics represent the core of Democratic support among Latinos. Indeed, 70% of all Latino eligible voters who identify as Democrats are Catholics. Party identification among Latino evangelicals is more narrowly divided and appears to slightly favor the Republican Party. Among Hispanic eligible voters who are evangelicals, 37% say they consider themselves Republicans and 32% say they are Democrats.
If you are involved in ministry to Hispanics, you must read this report. I insist. Read it if you want to know how we're impacting the face of the Catholic Church in the United States.
I bet most hispanics can even say the word "inculturate". Is it even part of the spanish langueage?
Back to reality. Hispanics don't want to assimilate or inculturate in my experience. I know several that have been here for more than five years and I still can't understand them.
May some of us don't like formal hymnography in English. What's so wrong with that?
Nothing. I don't like spanish either. Listening to it makes me cringe - so disonant and almost offensive to my ears. What's wrong with that?
>>The study, conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that half of Hispanic Catholics practice a “distinctive form” of charismatic Catholicism that includes speaking in tongues, miraculous healings and prophesying <<
Honestly, this is good news to me.
It means that we can work to eliminate these practices in the mainstream Holy Mass and give them one time a week.
Perhaps if we take the Charismatic ideas and give them their own time, the other Holy Masses on Sundays can get back to a more tradtional flavor.
Charismatic and LifeTeen deserve their own times and not to be taken as “what everyone wants”
And actually, we have many hispanic families at our Slovak parish, and we are FAR from Charismatic.
.
Mexican immigrants are the best thing that has happened to the US in a very long time. Notwithstanding the cherry-picked gloom and doom reports that pop up on FR all the time.
When a Colombian priest was celibrating Mass, I couldn’t understand him. But when the gringo priest from NY spoke in his think white boy accent, it was the only Spanish I could comprende. The only other time I understand Spanish is when I drink Corona (the beer that Mexicans won’t drink, but Americans like me love it).
Yes indeed, the Lord works in mysterious ways.
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