US Hispanics undergoing a 'Latino Reformation' (TIME Magazine Features the Evengelico's)

Hispanics in the United States are becoming evangelicals at a rapid rate Time Magazine reports this week.

"Latino evangelicals are one of the fastest growing segments of America's churchgoing millions," said Elizabeth Dias, the author of the report.

Time calls the phenomenon "The Latino Reformation".

Dias's account is Time's cover story in its April 4 edition.

"They call themselves Evangelicos," Time's managing editor Richard Stengel told MSNBC."They are Latino Americans who have embraced an evangelical form of Protestantism."

"They have forsaken Catholicism for all kinds of reasons," he said. "They look at a kind of charismatic Protestantism as a way of becoming more American, of assimilating.

"Its changing the church, the country and it's fascinating," said Stengel.

The Time article also indicates that Hispanics are turning to evangelicalism because they believe it gives them a more personal relationship with God than Catholicism. There is no priest as a "middleman".

Currently 62 percent of the approximately 52 millionHispanics in the U.S. are Catholic according to a 2012 Pew poll.

Stengel predicted that by 2050 half will be evangelical.

"It is difficult to track the groundswell of these new Protestants," said Dias in a background story. "They often meet in storefronts or living rooms, and language barriers complicate the census process."

After Dias began noticing a number of Hispanic churches in her travels around the Washington, D.C. area she decided to investigate. She attended two of the largest congregations located in suburban Maryland.

"What I discovered signaled a Latino Reformation", she said."Both churches were doubling in size every few years.

Dias met with many of the people attending and listened to their stories.

"To the mainstream American culture, and even other white evangelical churches, they were invisible", she said. "But they were hiding in plain sight."

"The story of both churches repeats itself across America", added Dias.

The rise of Hispanic evangelicals appears to be influencing the current political debate over immigration.

The common view is that evangelicals oppose granting rights to illegal immigrants. However, ABC News reported this week that evangelical leaders in several states are producing an advertising campaign aimed at changing the minds of conservative Christians on immigration reform.

ABC noted that one of the reasons for the push for immigration reform among evangelical leaders could be the large increase in Hispanics attending their churches.

The senior pastor of a Houston church, David Fleming, told ABC that the current immigration system isn't working.

He also cited humanitarian reasons for the need for Christians to embrace reform.

"These people speak English, they work hard, they pay taxes," said Fleming. "They are great neighbor. They are friends of ours."

"We live together. We serve together. We serve together. We are all in this together."

Another significant influence of the Hispanic evangelical movement is its imact on future elections.

Stengel noted that Hispanic evangelicals are "extremely" social conservatives.

MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough indicated that this fact could contradict the idea that moving undocumented Hispanics into the mainstream of society will be a boon to the Democratic Party.

La Muerte is a serious concern. It is clearly a throwback to an Aztec death deity, and one that has around 1m at least casual followers.

The biggest problem is that they could get a charismatic leader who could turn them into an army of Thuggees, murdering (and robbing) people in Mexico and the US as a matter of faith.

The British in India were finally made aware of the Thuggee when they were going to hang five or six robbers and murderers, and while up on the scaffold, they called out to their goddess, then jumped, hanging themselves before being hung.

So they brought over a major criminologist, who with the help of the British Army, pretty much exterminated them. They did rise up a second time, and the British didn’t hesitate at all in exterminating them. To wide, popular approval throughout India.

Remember that there’s a long history there, and not a particularly nice one. Most recently seen in the Cristero War of 1926-’29.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristero_War

However the origins of anti-Catholicism in Mexico are somewhat like the anti-Catholicism of France, but with a twist. Historically, it wasn’t that long ago that the Indians of Mexico were pagans, and there was a lot of religious and secular persecution that went on for a very long time.

Even in the US, in living memory, though the church did not directly control public offices, as such, it had such inclusive social control over Catholics that it effectively got what it wanted in Catholic regions. And non-Catholics were pretty much shut out of the process.

In Mexico, by the time the atheists came to power, they wanted to do to the church what Henry VIII did to it in England, strip it of its properties, prohibit clergy from most public life, etc. There was real anger and hatred in what they did.

And to a great extent, there is still an undercurrent of that among Mexicans. While many are very devout, there are those who would not mind seeing the church destroyed.

>> “They look at a kind of charismatic Protestantism as a way of becoming more American, of assimilating.” <<

>> Assimilating is not they’re main interest here. <<

And the article makes no logical sense considering there are far more Americans of Irish or Italian Catholic origin than those from "charismatic Protestantism" background. (About 70 million Catholics in the U.S. vs. 30 million charismatic protestants), not to mention that charismatic Christianity is ALSO a growing movement WITHIN Catholicism itself (nearly one-quarter of all charismatics in the U.S. are Catholics), so if Hispanics were interested in charismatic Christianity, they wouldn't have to convert from Catholic to protestant in order to join a charismatic congregation.

Makes as much sense as arguing Hispanics are embracing Obamacare in order to curry favor with the general public, IMO.

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