Are Latino immigrants saying adios to religion?
Saint Paul's wish is "that I may gain Christ and be found in him," we hear in this Sunday's second reading. While the Catholic Church in the U.S. has gained membership thanks to Latino population growth over the past two decades ...
Saint Paul's wish is "that I may gain Christ and be found in him," we hear in this Sunday's second reading. While the Catholic Church in the U.S. has gained membership thanks to Latino population growth over the past two decades, a new analysis suggests a growing number eventually find themselves worshiping elsewhere or not worshiping at all.
A report released Wednesday by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut found Latino religious identification increasingly diverse and more "Americanized." The analysis, based on data from the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, compared responses to phone surveys in 1990 and 2008 conducted in English and Spanish.
"What you see is growing diversity--away from Catholicism and splitting between those who join evangelical or Protestant groups or no religion," said report coauthor Barry Kosmin, a sociologist and director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College.
While the Catholic Church in the U.S. added an estimated 11 million adults between 1990 to 2008, including 9 million Latinos, and while the Latino percentage of the total Catholic population rose from 20 to 32 percent in the same period, those who claimed "no religion" rose from fewer than 1 million (6 percent of U.S. Latinos) in 1990 to nearly 4 million (12 percent of Latinos) in 2008, the study found.
"As Latinos or any other ethnic group assimilates to American culture, they pick up the values of the broader American culture and are somewhat less likely to identify with the religious identification, or any other identification, that marked their parents or grandparents," said Mary Gautier, a senior researcher at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
The new data send a clear message, said Father Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J., executive director of the USCCB Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church. "The biggest challenge the Catholic Church faces is the movement of Latino people not to other religions but rather to a secular way of life in which religion is no longer very important," he said. "We really need to ask ourselves why that is and what response the church can develop for this challenge."
A report released Wednesday by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut found Latino religious identification increasingly diverse and more "Americanized." The analysis, based on data from the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, compared responses to phone surveys in 1990 and 2008 conducted in English and Spanish.
"What you see is growing diversity--away from Catholicism and splitting between those who join evangelical or Protestant groups or no religion," said report coauthor Barry Kosmin, a sociologist and director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College.
While the Catholic Church in the U.S. added an estimated 11 million adults between 1990 to 2008, including 9 million Latinos, and while the Latino percentage of the total Catholic population rose from 20 to 32 percent in the same period, those who claimed "no religion" rose from fewer than 1 million (6 percent of U.S. Latinos) in 1990 to nearly 4 million (12 percent of Latinos) in 2008, the study found.
"As Latinos or any other ethnic group assimilates to American culture, they pick up the values of the broader American culture and are somewhat less likely to identify with the religious identification, or any other identification, that marked their parents or grandparents," said Mary Gautier, a senior researcher at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
The new data send a clear message, said Father Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J., executive director of the USCCB Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church. "The biggest challenge the Catholic Church faces is the movement of Latino people not to other religions but rather to a secular way of life in which religion is no longer very important," he said. "We really need to ask ourselves why that is and what response the church can develop for this challenge."
Source: An article by Sharon Jayson for USA TODAY