c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) While politicians argue whether “change” is coming to America, there’s no doubt real demographic change is happening right now.

The Census Bureau recently reported that ethnic and racial minorities are rapidly growing in numbers. In just 15 years, the bureau predicts, the majority of America’s children under the age of 18 will be Hispanic, black, Asian, native Hawaiian and American Indian. By 2025, one in five Americans will be foreign born.

The report also forecasts that by 2040, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority (46 percent) in the United States for the first time in its history. Just 100 years ago, nearly nine in 10 Americans were non-Hispanic whites who traced their ancestry to Europe.

In the immediate years ahead, America’s older population will be mostly white _ think Social Security and Medicare recipients. Meanwhile the younger, working generations will increasingly be minorities, as immigration _ both documented and undocumented _ soars, along with high birth rates among today’s minorities. No wonder immigration is an emotional and divisive issue in the political arena.

What emerges from the Census Bureau report is a U.S. population less and less linked to Europe as it becomes a truly multi-racial and multi-ethnic country. We mistakenly speak of “globalization” in solely economic terms, but the study reveals human “globalization” within our borders. These population changes will dramatically impact every aspect of national life: political, social, economic, educational, cultural and religious.

The religious trends are well under way and visible.

The sharp decline in membership among the “mainline” Protestant churches _ Presbyterians, United Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, United Church of Christ, northern Baptists and most Lutherans _ will accelerate. The downward trend was evident 20 years ago when my late friend, Dr. Arie Brouwer, the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, said, “Today we are likely to be known as the old-line or even the sideline churches, instead of mainline.”

Most evangelical Protestant national leaders today are non-Hispanic whites, including Billy and Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen and John Hagee. But that may change if large numbers of Hispanics and other minorities move from today’s storefront charismatic and Pentecostal churches and enter the megachurches personified by Warren, Hagee and Osteen.

One in four Americans is a Roman Catholic. That percentage has remained fairly constant for several decades. But what has recently changed is the demographic profile of the Catholic church.

Not long ago, most Catholics were descendents of Irish, Polish and Italian immigrants. Today’s priests and nuns _ older and fewer in numbers _ represent that history. But Hispanics are becoming a larger percentage of the Catholic population, even as some parishes and parochial schools close. Without today’s Hispanics, the number of Catholics in the U.S. would be significantly lower.

The Jewish community is also experiencing demographic change. Nearly 70 percent of American Jews (including my family) trace their roots to Eastern Europe and the huge immigration that took place between 1881 and 1924, the year Congress passed legislation that imposed severe quotas limiting entry to the U.S.

As a result, synagogue liturgy and ritual, foods, humor, music, art and literature were frequently rooted in traditional Eastern European modalities. But that, too, is changing as hundreds of thousands of Jews from Iran, Israel, the former Soviet Union and Latin America become Americans _ all reflecting the distinctive life of lands they left behind.

It has been especially difficult for Jews who lived under the atheistic and anti-Semitic Soviet regime. They are often unfamiliar with Judaism and not sure-footed in America, where religious identity is voluntary and encouraged by the society at large.

“Mainline” Judaism _ mainly large urban Reform and Conservative synagogues housed in huge buildings _ is at best keeping its membership and finances above water as more Jews opt for smaller, more intimate worship and community venues. At the same time, orthodoxy, once thought a permanent minority among American Jews, is today growing and thriving. Indeed, traditional Judaism is providing increased spiritual energy and community leadership.

The Census Bureau report reminded me of Bob Dylan’s song written years ago: “Well you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin.”’

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

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