Hispanics turn evangelical

Christian Century, Dec 14, 1994

HISPANIC CATHOLICS in North America are abandoning their church at the rate of 60,000 a year, according to Andrew M. Greeley, the Catholic priest, sociologist and novelist. Some remain unchurched, but many have found a place in the pews of evangelical congregations. Twenty-five years ago North America was home to fewer than 100,000 Hispanic Protestants. Today there are slightly more than 5 million. Catholicism, once the overwhelmingly dominant religious tradition among Hispanic Americans, is no longer automatically their Christian community of choice. Many observers believe that this shift signals a change laden with profound implications for U.S. culture, politics and society.

In an indication of their growing numbers and sophistication, 500 Hispanic evangelical leaders gathered in Long Beach, California, in mid-November to launch the Alliance of Evangelical Ministries, known by its Spanish acronym, AMEN. Organizers hope AMEN will streamline their unwieldy, fast-growing religious movement and give it the visibility they think it deserves. Hispanics account for almost all recent growth in evangelical churches, even in predominantly black and Anglo congregations, according to AMEN President Jesse Miranda, a professor of theology at Azusa Pacific College near Los Angeles.

Hispanic Americans come to evangelical churches for a variety of reasons. Some critics say Latinos become Protestants because they have been lured away by what Pope John Paul II has called "rapacious wolves," the mostly Anglo-American evangelical missionaries in Latin America. But others say that to speak of Hispanics leaving the Catholic Church assumes that they were once really in that church. "I think most are really only cultural Catholics," says Jose Cintron, an Hispanic evangelical missionary. "They are nominal Catholics, Catholics in name only."

Given that fleeting attachment to Roman Catholic doctrine, it is no surprise, in Miranda's view, that many immigrants move easily into evangelical churches. "Some [recent immigrants] think Latin America is Catholic and that North America is Protestant," says Miranda. "They identify Protestantism with their new land, so they join Protestant churches."

Like most members of new religious movements, Hispanic evangelicals face serious obstacles. They are divided by theology, class, politics and national origin. Even language is a point of conflict; not all young Hispanics can or want to speak Spanish. The movement's ministers are often "long on enthusiasm but short on education," as one observer put it. The role of women has set conservatives against their liberal evangelical brethren. Also hobbling the movement's growth is widespread poverty and a cacique--or boss--mentality that pits church leaders against one another in the competition for status and authority.

If that isn't daunting enough, evangelicals say they also face a dominant Hispanic Catholic culture that shuns them, Alma Arias is one of those who contend that Catholic prejudice is a fact of life for America s Hispanic evangelicals. Born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, Arias was 14 when her father led the family from the local Catholic church into a newly established evangelical congregation. Relatives and friends were not pleased. "It was very hard at the beginning," she remembers. "It was very strange. All my friends stopped talking to me." Some former friends called her family hermanos separados--separated brothers. Others used less genteel descriptions. Cousins, uncles and aunts told her she had been brainwashed.

Other evangelicals argue that the tension between Hispanic evangelicals and Catholics has more to do with events in Latin America where, they say, a dominant Catholic majority. backed by the power of national governments, is working to eradicate the evangelical movement. "Working with Catholics here [in Chicago] would be like neo-Nazis working with Jew!," says Andreas Panasiuk, an Hispanic evangelical born and raised in Argentina and now a Chicago broadcaster. "We have to resolve the tension we have in Latin America before we can work together in the United States."

But Hispanic evangelical leaders in the U.S. are clearly more concerned with building a movement in North America than with healing Catholic-evangelical divisions in Latin America. At their Long Beach conference they discussed the need to educate ministers, implement economic-development programs in their communities and reach out to youth.

An abiding interest in social causes marks a dramatic difference between Hispanic and Anglo evangelicals. Anglos tend to emphasize the personal relationship between each believer and Jesus, and to discount--often as Catholic heresy--any emphasis on good works as a means of salvation. But Hispanics say an approach that de-emphasizes good works neglects the realities of their communities in the U.S.

"The needs of the Hispanic churches are more liberal, perhaps, than those of the Anglo churches," says Miranda. In his view, some Hispanic evangelicals are uneasy about being associated with their more conservative Anglo counterparts. "They don't even want us to call ourselves `evangelicals,' but evangelicos"--the Spanish version of the same word. Miranda dismisses the works-and-faith split as an Anglo phenomenon. "Ours is a civic spirituality, demonstrating divine grace on Sunday and good works on Monday," he said at the founding of AMEN.