Faith is a key to increasing Latino civic involvement

Faith is a key to increasing Latino civic involvement
by Rodolpho Carrasco
Saturday, February 5, 2000
San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group
[ Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena. Email him at rudy@qvo.cc

Next month, the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) of Claremont will begin the largest and most comprehensive study ever conducted on Latinos and religion. Funded as part of a $1.3 million grant by The PEW Charitable Trusts, the TRPI study specifically aims to measure the impact of religion on politics and civic engagement in the Latino community.

The study has been commissioned by two groups who in partnership won the PEW grant. The first is expected. The Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) of San Antonio, Texas, is led by a Catholic priest, Dr. Virgilio Elizondo, and is considered one of the leading voices for the 64% of Latinos in the United States who call themselves Catholic.

The second group is not only unexpected, but virtually ignored by the American public mind: Latino Protestants, represented by the Alianza de Ministerios Evangelicos Nacionales (AMEN), which, translated into English, means, "National Alliance of Evangelical Ministries.") AMEN gives voice to the 26% of Latinos who identify themselves as Protestant.

If we assume a U.S. Latino population of 30 million (a conservative estimate that excludes the undocumented and the island of Puerto Rico, both of which are included in the count of Latinos by many Latinos), that places the number of Protestant Latinos at about 8 million.

There are 8 million Protestant Latinos in the United States - I have to say it three times before it starts to sink in. I'm a Protestant Latino myself, and I'm wondering where we all came from.

I'm also wondering what we could all do if we organized ourselves.

Evidently, that's what TRPI, MACC, AMEN and The PEW Charitable Trusts are thinking, too. The rapid growth of Latino Protestants points to an obvious, if overlooked detail about Latinos: faith and religion are important to Latinos, perhaps more important than anything else.

Flashback. Mid-1990s. During the course of a month I was introduced to a circle of overachieveing young Latinos. The future Harvard University grad school student, the future Ph.D. candidate at Duke University, the Chicana reporter who covered the O.J. Simpson Trial for NBC Nightly News, the linguistic specialist on his way to the Sorbonne in France - these Gen X Latinos brimmed with confidence about the future.

Conventional wisdom said that what bonded these Latinos was either educational achievement, common ambition, or shared political inclinations. But conventional wisdom was wrong. Their common bond was as Apostolicos, members of the Apostolic Assembly, a Protestant denomination that makes no distinction between its member churches in Mexico and those in the U.S.

One night I sat with this group for dinner. The conversation flowed from Proposition 187 to faith to education to God to television to the Biblical definition of justice. Faith was their glue, their common reference point, the meaning that gave meaning to everything else.

It's about time that a magnificently funded, top-flight, academic study will identify Latinos like these for what they are - believers first. Most studies overlook the importance of faith, choosing instead to squeeze Latinos like these into political, social or economic boxes, when in fact the best way to understand them is by their religious beliefs.

The TRPI study is not emerging in a vacuum. Researchers throughout Southern California, at places like USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture, are studying the massive Latino population growth as they plan our region's future. In the quest to encourage Latinos to become more involved at a civic level, they have discovered that the energy many Latinos would put in to civic issues is presently directed toward practicing their faith.

The route to greater Latino civic participation may or may not involve directing that faith energy to the public square.

There is the problem of evangelism. These days in civic Los Angeles County it's considered impolite to evangelize others. But the heart, energy, and drive for many Latino churches and storefronts is in introducing people to Jesus. Every Assemblies of God, Praise Chapel, Victory Outreach and Calvary Chapel I can think of is like that. Catholic groups like the Missionary Servants of the Word are like that, too.

Should faith-motivated Latinos be asked to check their hearts at the door of civic involvement? That's how it's been done in the past, and I believe that's one reason why there has been a general dearth of Latino civic involvement. That approach must be re-engineered, in light of necessary church/state boundaries, for there to be a rise in Latino civic participation.

But another reason for lack of involvement may be that the call to civic involvement has not been made from a faith approach. Both Catholics and Protestants will perk up at the Biblical stories of Joseph and Daniel. Both men, dedicated worshipers of the Hebrew deity Yahweh, served as prime ministers in the governments of Egypt and Babylon, respectively, and ruled well.

Then there's Nehemiah, who heard a message from God which said, "Seek the peace of the city," then returned to war-destroyed Jerusalem and rebuilt it.

Any Nehemiahs out there? Many of us, not just the folks behind the TRPI study, would like to know what will motivate you to go rebuild your own Jerusalem.

The copyright for these materials are owned by Rudy Carrasco.  These materials were use with permission by TechMission