Latinos Will Shape Future Religious Landscape

c. 2006 Newhouse News Service (UNDATED) The bongo drums and keyboard at Iglesia El Shaddai, a Pentecostal church in Elizabeth, N.J., are being played so briskly they can support a conga line. The El Salvadoran-born pastor shakes a tambourine, some women rock their hips and everyone sings praise to Jesus in Spanish. Soon the pastor […]

c. 2006 Newhouse News Service

(UNDATED) The bongo drums and keyboard at Iglesia El Shaddai, a Pentecostal church in Elizabeth, N.J., are being played so briskly they can support a conga line. The El Salvadoran-born pastor shakes a tambourine, some women rock their hips and everyone sings praise to Jesus in Spanish.

Soon the pastor takes the service down a notch. But just a notch. With his eyes shut, Renato Castro shouts, “Gloria, Jesus! Aleluya!” and paces before 300 people.


The worshippers, eyes also closed, shout as they feel the spirit _ the Holy Spirit _ moving them: “Oh, Dios! Dios!” “Gracias, Papa!” Lips tremble. Tears flow. In the first row, Evelyn Yax, 29, sways. Her right arm extends forward, her palm out. Her left arm clutches her 2-year-old daughter, Nathalie, to her bosom.

Like most Latinos on a recent Sunday praying in this rented second-floor church space, Yax was baptized Catholic. And like an increasing number of Hispanics, she left the Catholic Church to embrace an exuberant style of worship that she says brings her closer to God.

“I feel something special in this church,” said Yax, a dental assistant born in Guatemala who, like many people interviewed for this story, said Catholicism in America lacks the appeal it once held in their home country. “In this church you feel Jesus is very close to you. You feel something in your heart, you feel something is weird.”

Pollsters say Catholicism remains the religion of choice for most Hispanics in the United States. But evangelical, Pentecostal and other charismatic churches are drawing an increasing number of worshippers away from their traditional choices.

How Hispanics worship will shape the future of the American Catholic Church and the religious landscape of the country. Because of immigration patterns and high birth rates, the number of American Latinos will rise from 40 million to 100 million by 2050, or one-quarter of the population, the U.S. Census Bureau projects. There currently are about 67 million people in the American Catholic Church, 25 million of them Hispanic.

In interviews, Hispanics who have left the Catholic Church gave many reasons for switching.

Some echoed reasons behind other Catholic-Protestant divides: They say they don’t want to rely on the pope, or even a priest, to interpret the Bible for them. They feel the Catholic Church has too many rules, too many saints.

In addition, evangelical or Pentecostal churches often are smaller, can feel more welcoming to immigrants and have staff more likely to speak Spanish. Members feel American Catholic leaders focus too much on politics and dogma. They don’t want to register with a single church as Catholic dioceses ask. And they find the evangelical and Protestant services more animated.


“You go to a (Catholic) Mass, you hear the priest talking and there’s not that much participation from the members of the church,” said Isidro Reyes, 39, a member of Iglesia El Shaddai who was born in the Dominican Republic and raised Catholic. “I feel more spiritual here. I used to belong to the (Catholic) choir. I used to be active in (the Catholic) church. But something was missing.”

A few decades ago, about 85 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. said they were Catholic, according to Ron Cruz, executive director of the Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Today, studies suggest the figure is down to between 60 percent and 70 percent. Putting a more precise number on the shift is difficult because many polls are flawed, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, which studied several surveys funded by universities and foundations.

Some of the telephone polls aren’t conducted in Spanish, or are too narrow in s

cope to account for Hispanics’ geographical diversity, the center found.

Still, Catholic leaders across the Americas long have worried about losing souls to evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic churches. The U.S. bishops have had a national office for Hispanic ministry since 1945. Many dioceses have similar offices.

But while Catholic agencies run massive health care and social service operations that help Hispanics in large numbers, and bishops speak out forcefully on behalf of legal and illegal immigrants, shortages of Spanish-speaking priests haunt Catholic evangelization efforts.

“The reality is we do not have the trained staff of the priests and sisters needed because the numbers (of Hispanics) are so large, and it’s been such a fast growth,” Cruz said. “Our churches are not able to respond in the language or with the Bible studies and formation the people are looking for.”


The Newark Archdiocese, which includes Elizabeth in its jurisdiction, has programs for priests and church workers to learn Spanish. Several churches in Elizabeth and other Spanish-speaking areas also bring together small groups of Hispanic Catholics in popular programs like “Why Catholic?” to give people a small-church experience within a larger one.

The Rev. John E. Wassell of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary and St. Michael’s Parish in Elizabeth, where 350 Hispanics pack the main Sunday Mass, said that in recent years, more Hispanics have challenged him on the church’s practice of baptizing infants. Evangelical churches typically wait to baptize until a child can understand what is happening.

“They’re evangelizing more. (The evangelicals) are getting people that are nominally Catholic who are pretty ignorant of the Catholic faith,” he said. “To be fair, they’re out in the streets knocking on doors. The Catholic Church is waking up. We’re doing a lot more of that now than we used to.”

DSB/PH END DIAMANT

(Jeff Diamant writes for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

Editors: To obtain photos of Ministerio International Church, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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