Thursday, April 05, 2007

It's Not Just The Catholic Church Anymore...

In a religious trend playing out in Latino communities across the country, devout Catholics, many of them first-, second- and third-generation Latinos, are leaving the pews and cathedrals for more charismatic movements — in some cases bidding goodbye to the Virgin Mary.

They're speaking in tongues, being baptized in swimming pools and preaching door to door.

And they're getting involved in gang intervention where Christian rock music figures prominently.

It's a phenomenon that has left Catholic priests and parishes crestfallen yet realistic that it's merely a sign of the times as hundreds of thousands of immigrants continue to come to the United States, and smaller Spanish-speaking ministries crop up to meet the daily demands among poor immigrants.

"We're well aware of the migration, but one reason they're leaving is because they're being deceived by these fly-by-night organizations," said the Rev. Al Mengon of the Our Lady Help of Christians Valley Church in Watsonville, with nearly 2,500 parishioners.

"The poor people, many of them not educated, are being fooled by some of these ministries, who are lying and telling them that they're Catholic in order to first get them in the door"

But for the most part the exodus is due in part to the fact that Catholics, as a whole, "aren't aggressively proselytizing" as some of the evangelical ministries found in the Pajaro Valley.

"But maybe we should start, if that's what it's going to take to keep some of our parishioners," he said.

While Catholicism undoubtedly remains the dominant faith among Latinos, Catholic affiliation has tapered off, according to the Center for the Study of Latino Religion at the University of Notre Dame.

Today, around 70 percent of U.S. Latinos identify themselves as Catholic, compared to 90 percent 30 years ago.

"The longer they are in this country," said Edwin Hernandez of the University of Notre Dame, "the more likely they'll leave the Catholic Church. We know that and we're able to track that."

There are 43 million Latinos in the country, and 15 million identify themselves as born again, according to the Sacramento-based National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

"Latin America never experienced the reformation until now," said Samuel Rodriguez, president of the Leadership Conference, the nation's largest Latino Christian organization.

"What you're seeing is the Protestant reformation, the Martin Luther moment of the Hispanic community," Rodriguez said. "For the first time, they're a product of personal relationship with God. They're able to read the Scripture and apply it personally on a practical basis. They're going Pentecostal, and in a nutshell, it's all about personal power"

And evangelical establishments run by Spanish-speaking ministers are leading the way in the Pajaro Valley, appealing to immigrants who are either down on their luck or determined to change their sinful ways.

Felipe Piña, a member of the small La Iglesia del Rey in Las Lomas, a Southern Baptist church, was born Catholic. He was baptized with holy water in a centuries-old church in the Mexican border town of San Luis de Colorado, but he broke away from the "formality of Catholicism" and found comfort in being born again seven years ago.

Since then, Piña has undergone a massive metamorphosis — from a criminal who snuck illegal immigrants across the Arizona desert to a born-again Baptist who now washes cars to fund his missionary work.

"I used to make $10,000 a week doing what I did. I was living life big, but I was also living dangerously and in sin," said the 40-year-old Piña, a father of four. "I was drinking. I was doing drugs. Then I began to abuse my wife. I started hanging out with prostitutes. My wife tried to kill herself, and that's when I knew I had to change"

The Pajaro Valley, with a population that is 75 percent Latino, sports many one-time Catholics who now belong to other denominations — whether it's Jehovah's Witnesses in Las Lomas, the Calvary Christian Center, the Church of God or Iglesia Santa Pentecostes Templo Jerusalem, all in Watsonville.

George Rodriguez, a former Catholic who is now a Jehovah's Witness for the South Spanish Congregation in Las Lomas, said it has added structure to his life.

"It gives me guidance that I didn't have as a Catholic. It's based on the Bible and not the sort of tradition and philosophies that have filtered into so many other faiths," said Rodriguez, 30, a salesman from Salinas who remembers when he switched faiths: Dec. 19, 1998.

"There was about eight of us and we were at a gathering outside of Madera," he said. "We all submerged ourselves in a swimming pool, just as Jesus did in the Jordan River."

While Catholic churches try provide the same sorts of services, they are often limited by time and resources.

"One of the things that I've found challenging with the Spanish-speaking communities is trying to encourage leadership from within," said the Rev. Mark Stetz of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Santa Cruz. "... I think in other denominations there's less reliance on priests and it's more lay-led."

Piña, for example, helps host Christian rock concerts and is dealing with gang members trying to turn their lives around through the church-run program called "Terremoto," or "Earthquake" in Spanish.

He receives help from the church's senior pastor, Joel Jimenez, a self-described former "gangbanger" who was raised Catholic but turned his life around nearly three decades ago after his baby died.

Today, he's 48 and is director of the Central Coast Baptist Association in Gilroy.

"You have to repent and confess your sins," Jimenez said. "But it's more than just saying 'I repent.'

You have to turn away from your sins, once and for all. That's the goal"

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