Latinos Embrace 'Renewalist' Christianity, Pew Study Finds

Janet Chismar | Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer | Updated: Sep 18, 2007

Latinos Embrace 'Renewalist' Christianity, Pew Study Finds

Maria Hernandez didn't mean to cause a rift in her family. The 31-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants left the Catholic Church after attending a Pentecostal prayer meeting in Los Angeles where she experienced a "filling of the Holy Spirit." Although her parents view speaking in tongues as "voodoo nonsense," Hernandez says she now knows a depth of faith she never experienced in Catholicism. 

Jose Solis attends Sunday morning mass at Padre Sierra Catholic Church along with his parents and grandparents, but he also takes part in the parish’s evening charismatic service. Alvarez participates in a weekday Bible study and believes that he was healed of his addiction by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hernandez and Solis exemplify the latest trends in Latino Christianity found by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Hispanic Center. The study examines the growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity among Latinos, paying special attention to Catholics who retain their identification with the church, along with those who convert to evangelical churches.

The Pew report was based on a telephone survey of 4,016 Latinos age 18 and older conducted last summer and fall.

“The major findings in this study leave little doubt that a detailed understanding of religious faith among Latinos is essential to fully appreciating the evolving nature of religion in the United States," says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum.

One major discovery is that Latinos identify with charismatic or Pentecostal Christianity at significantly higher rates than non-Hispanics. The report uses "renewalist Christianity" to describe the charismatic tendency of Latinos and as an umbrella term for Christians who attend Pentecostal and charismatic churches. Renewalism stresses the direct presence of the Spirit in believers' lives as evidenced by speaking in tongues, miraculous healings and divine revelations.

Among the more than two-thirds of Latinos who are Catholic, 54 percent are charismatic or Pentecostal, as compared with one in 10 non-Hispanic Catholics. “This suggests that the renewalist movement, with its emphasis on an intense personal experience with God and on the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, is an important and distinctive characteristic of Hispanic Catholicism,” says Lugo.

Samuel Rodriguez, an ordained Assemblies of God pastor and president of the California-based National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, points out that the “spirit-filled ethos embraces emotions and experiential moments of faith, and ... that is the DNA of the Latino culture."

According to Roberto Ramos, president/CEO and co-founder of Latinvox, a full service Hispanic advertising agency based in New York, many of the Hispanics who elect to remain with the Catholic Church are redefining their parishes—“giving them a Latino makeover, if you will, by amalgamating traditional tenets with belief in the supernatural, such as miraculous healings.” 

The Pew study found that although they may embrace renewalist practices such as speaking in tongues, charismatic Latino Catholics are more likely than their non-charismatic counterparts to pray to Mary, pray the rosary, go to confession, and believe in the literal presence of Christ’s body and blood in communion.

But some Latino renewalists do choose to leave the Catholic Church, much like Maria Hernandez did. The Pew report said that more than 80 percent of all Hispanic Christian converts cited a "desire for a more direct, personal experience with God" as a reason for their conversion. Few Hispanics -- only 7 percent -- said they left Catholicism because they were dissatisfied with the church's position on certain issues, the report said.

Among Latino Protestants, 57 percent identify themselves in renewalist terms: 31 percent are Pentecostals and 26 percent are charismatics. The contrast to the non-Hispanic population is marked: less than one in five non-Hispanic Protestants describe themselves as Pentecostal or charismatic.

The Pew Forum found that Latinos who are Pentecostal Protestants, more than any other Latino group, say they share their faith with others at least weekly (70 percent), and even more (80 percent), say they read the Bible at least once a week.

The degree of renewalism among Latino Protestants varies somewhat by country of origin. More than 65 percent of Puerto Rican Protestants identify themselves in renewalist terms, compared with 53 percent of Mexicans. Similarly, Hispanics with less than a high school education are somewhat more likely to be Pentecostal than those with higher levels of education.

Another major finding in the Pew report is that Latino believers in the United States prefer worshiping with fellow Latino believers. Among Hispanic Catholics, 70 percent worship in ethnically and linguistically Hispanic churches. For evangelical Christians, the figure is 62 percent, for mainline Protestants, 48 percent. In the report, an "ethnic church" means one with at least some Hispanic clergy, worship services in Spanish, and a majority of Hispanic congregants.

According to Kathleen Garces-Foley, professor of Religious Studies at Marymount University, this perceived “self segregation” can be attributed to the slow speed of many Protestant churches to translate materials into Spanish, welcome Latinos as members, and take stands on political issues affecting Latinos, such as the anti-immigration legislation Proposition 187.

Garces-Foley, who has studied multiethnic evangelicals in Los Angeles, notes that the real dynamic is the dividing line between generations. Latino churches have long struggled with how to accommodate the needs of the Spanish-speaking immigrants and their children who prefer English. “While much energy has gone into dealing with the language division in churches,” says Garces-Foley, “the real issue is the cultural gap between the immigrants and the American-born.

“Old-timers worry that the young are losing the language and traditions and becoming too Americanized,” Garces Foley continues. “The second generation is much more likely to look upon their bicultural identity as a blessing rather than a limitation."

One generation X pastor who spoke to Garces-Foley explained, "For too long we have seen ourselves as caught between being American and Latino but instead we should see ourselves as a bridge, we are bicultural/bilingual and that is a gift."

Latinos Embrace 'Renewalist' Christianity, Pew Study Finds