The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States

[cbayer]

http://www.pewforum.org/2014/05/07/the-shifting-religious-identity-of-latinos-in-the-united-states/

MAY 7, 2014
The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States
Nearly One-in-Four Latinos Are Former Catholics



Most Hispanics in the United States continue to belong to the Roman Catholic Church. But the Catholic share of the Hispanic population is declining, while rising numbers of Hispanics are Protestant or unaffiliated with any religion. Indeed, nearly one-in-four Hispanic adults (24%) are now former Catholics, according to a major, nationwide survey of more than 5,000 Hispanics by the Pew Research Center. Together, these trends suggest that some religious polarization is taking place in the Hispanic community, with the shrinking majority of Hispanic Catholics holding the middle ground between two growing groups (evangelical Protestants and the unaffiliated) that are at opposite ends of the U.S. religious spectrum.



The Pew Research Center’s 2013 National Survey of Latinos and Religion finds that a majority (55%) of the nation’s estimated 35.4 million Latino adults – or about 19.6 million Latinos – identify as Catholic today. 1 About 22% are Protestant (including 16% who describe themselves as born-again or evangelical) and 18% are religiously unaffiliated.

The share of Hispanics who are Catholic likely has been in decline for at least the last few decades.2 But as recently as 2010, Pew Research polling found that fully two-thirds of Hispanics (67%) were Catholic. That means the Catholic share has dropped by 12 percentage points in just the last four years, using Pew Research’s standard survey question about religious affiliation.



The long-term decline in the share of Catholics among Hispanics may partly reflect religious changes underway in Latin America, where evangelical churches have been gaining adherents and the share of those with no religious affiliation has been slowly rising in a region that historically has been overwhelmingly Catholic.4 But it also reflects religious changes taking place in the U.S., where Catholicism has had a net loss of adherents through religious switching (or conversion) and the share of the religiously unaffiliated has been growing rapidly in the general public.

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[stone space]

1. This is interesting.

My wife, like most Colombians, is catholic, but she does have evangelicals in her extended family.

[cbayer]

2. We recently took a cross-Mexico road trip.

While it is very clearly very Catholic, we saw a substantial number of evangelical churches in some areas.

We also saw Mennonites, which seemed very strange.

[Goblinmonger]

3. My daughter is doing a semester in Argentina

How "stong" is the catholicism in Colombia? The family my daughter lives with is "Catholic" but doesn't really go to church and doesn't seem to follow many of the teachings of the church. From what I have learned, I would call them more "cultural" Catholics. Clearly that is a small sample so wondering how that translates to your experience.