Latino Protestants in America by Mark T. Mulder

Author:Mark T. Mulder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

Public and Community Involvement

Much as they have variable levels of time commitments to their congregations, Latinos also have a variety of opinions about how robustly the church should enter public debate and about whether it should register opinions regarding social and political issues. In general, almost as many Latinos say that the church should remain silent (44 percent) as say that religious institutions should (47 percent) enter public debates. Again, though, Latinos from different religious traditions tend to have distinctly divergent opinions on this matter. Latino mainline Protestants tend to favor silence from the church: only 37 percent indicated support for churches speaking out. On the other hand, six in ten (61 percent) evangelical Latinos indicated that they thought the church should express viewpoints on various social and political issues. Opinion regarding the role of the church in society, however, has not been static among Latinos in the United States. For instance, from 2006 to 2013 mainline Protestant Latinos became less enthusiastic about the church expressing views. The percentage approving church expression fell from 55 to 37 percent. Evangelical Latinos moved in the same direction but not nearly as dramatically: in 2006 64 percent noted approval compared to 61 percent in 2013.[37] In sum, then, Latino Protestants seem to have become more hesitant about the mingling of congregations and politics.

Of course, size of congregation and relative resources play a role in their ability to develop capacities for civic and social engagement. Based on the study from Chicago, very few Latino Protestant congregations generate budgets that would allow for robust levels of civic involvement. The vast majority (89 percent) of Latino mainline congregations in Chicago generate budgets of less than $101,000 annually. Though fewer Pentecostal (71 percent) and evangelical (61 percent) churches have similarly small budgets, all three strands of Latino Protestantism still look quite sparse compared to Latino Catholic parishes in Chicago: 56 percent have budgets that exceed $201,999.[38] These types of revenue-generating discrepancies certainly play a role in determining the degree to which a congregation enters into social service delivery or civic engagement.

In Illinois, the CLCS noted that Latino Protestants also demonstrate different expectations for certain social behaviors. Compared as a composite group with their Catholic counterparts, Latino Protestants feel more pressure from larger congregational expectations to forgo the use of alcohol and tobacco. Only a small minority of Catholic churches expected attenders to abstain from alcohol or tobacco (23 percent and 8 percent, respectively). Thus, it could be concluded that there exists little stigma for Latino Catholics in the Chicago area to drink alcohol and use tobacco. In contrast, the aforementioned CLCS also found that almost nine in ten (89 percent) religious leaders from Latino evangelical congregations and almost eight in ten (77 percent) from Pentecostal congregations expected attenders to forgo tobacco use. On the same issue, only 27 percent of leaders from Latino mainline churches held the corresponding expectation. On the related topic of alcohol use, nine in ten (90 percent) Pentecostal leaders and a little more

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