The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States

By Juan Francisco Martinez

The first major historical overview of one of America's most vibrant Christian movements

This groundbreaking book by Juan Francisco Martínez provides a broad historical overview of Latino Protestantism in the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present.

Beginning with a description of the diverse Latino Protestant community and a summary of his own historiographical approach, Martínez then examines six major periods in the history of American Latino Protestantism, paying special attention to key social, political, and religious issues—including immigration policies, migration patterns, enculturation and assimilation, and others—that framed its development and diversification during each period. He concludes by outlining the challenges currently facing Latino Protestants in the United States and considering what Latino Protestantism might look like in the future.

Offering vital insights into key leaders, eras, and trends in Latino Protestantism, Martínez's work will prove an invaluable resource for all who are seeking to understand this rapidly growing US demographic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jan 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781467449243

Juan Francisco Martinez

Juan F. Martinez served as vice president for diversity and international ministries and professor of Hispanic studies and pastoral leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Latino Protestantism Today

One of the signs that Latino Protestants had arrived was the cover of Time magazine on April 15, 2013. The Latino Reformation issue highlighted the work of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), the most well known of the national Protestant organizations, and its leader, Sammy Rodríguez. It also focused on the largest Latino Protestant church in the United States, New Life Covenant Church in Chicago, and its pastor, Wilfredo de Jesús. Time had earlier described Luis Cortés, of Esperanza USA, as one of the most influential evangelical leaders.¹ Voices that had not been accounted for in the national media were finding their way into the national consciousness.

The 2013 article mentions that Southern Baptists hope to have seven thousand Latino churches in the United States by 2020. In it Richard Land, former president of the denomination, tells Baptist pastors that they ignore the Latino reformation at their peril: "Because if you left [Washington, DC] and drove all the way to L.A., there wouldn’t be one town you’d pass that doesn’t have a Baptist church with an Iglesia Bautista attached to it. They came here to work, we’re evangelistic, we shared the Gospel with them, they became Baptist."²

Interestingly, this increasing recognition of the growth of Latino Protestantism also highlights the complexities of the Latino Protestant community. In the first place, the very existence of a Latino Protestantism makes it clear that not all Hispanics are Catholics, still the default assumption for many, and it also points to the fact that a growing number of Latinas are converting to Protestantism. But by highlighting Sammy Rodríguez, Wilfredo de Jesús, and Luis Cortés, Time brings out another complexity of the community. All three leaders are of Puerto Rican descent, though Puerto Ricans make up less than 10 percent of the Latino community. Even though almost two-thirds of all US Latinas are of Mexican descent, the most well-known national Protestant leaders today do not come out of that community. This indirectly points to a third complexity, the status of Puerto Ricans. They are US citizens by birth but are usually seen as immigrants when they migrate to the mainland. This (indirectly) places the focus on the fact (fourth complexity) that, even though Latinas are seen as immigrants, the majority of them are born in the United States.

Latinas in the United States Today

Even a quick peek under the umbrella of the term Latino or Hispanic begs the question whether there is really such a thing, or if this is merely a social construction that made sense to the US Census Bureau but does not adequately define or describe the diversity of those under the US Census category of Hispanic. At the time of writing, the US Census Bureau is attempting to come up with a new and more effective way to count those identified as Hispanic for the 2020 census.

To understand those called Latino Protestants, one needs a sense of who Latinos are. Latinas come from varying national backgrounds, have become part of the United States in different ways, have different levels of Spanish-language ability, relate to the dominant culture in different ways, and maintain a distinct ethnic identity at different levels. Latinos constitute 17 percent of the US population with about 55 million people. Of all Latinas, 55 percent live in California, Texas, and Florida.³ Almost two-thirds (63 percent) have ancestral links to Mexico. Claiming at least 1 million people are Puerto Rico (9.2 percent), Cuba (3.5 percent), El Salvador (3.3 percent), the Dominican Republic (2.8 percent), Guatemala (2.1 percent), and Colombia (1.8 percent). The rest claim as their native country another nation of the Spanish-speaking world, including Spain. The category other claims 6.8 percent, and often includes those who trace their lineage to before the US takeover of the Southwest but do not find an appropriate category on the census form to specifically identify themselves, so they often choose other.⁴

The common narrative in the United States is that all Latinas are immigrants or descendants of immigrants to this country. But many of the other Hispanics trace their lineage in the Southwest to the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries. Their ancestors settled in the region, and later generations became US citizens when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), ending the Mexican-American War, granted them US citizenship. Puerto Ricans find themselves in a similar situation, since they became part of the United States when the island became a US colony after the end of the Spanish-American War (1898). So, when Puerto Ricans move from the island to the mainland, they are not immigrating if that means crossing a national border, since they are merely moving from one US territory to another. But they are referred to as immigrants, because they are coming to the mainland, even though they were US citizens before they arrived. It is also often overlooked that the majority of Latinas has always been US-born, even during the periods of significant migration from Latin America.

Most of the rest of the Latino population does have immigrant roots, though their histories often look very different from each other. Cubans were accepted as exiles after the Cuban Revolution (1959), and to this day any Cuban who arrives on US soil is almost automatically granted legal status, even if he or she enters the country illegally. Dominicans also first arrived in the United States in significant numbers after the US occupation of Santo Domingo (1963) and the US decision to deal with the ensuing political crisis via immigration. Because of this unique link, most Dominicans enter the United States legally through family reunification.⁵

The border regions between the United States and Mexico also represent unique situations, particularly in Texas. Many of the ancestors of the people from that region lived on both sides of the river before the US takeover (and do so to this day), and so the moving of the border separated families, who continued to connect across the border. Many border people moved back and forth throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, until changing laws on the border made that movement more difficult.

The other significant Latino populations come from Central America and are directly linked to the violence of the civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s in which countries in this region became proxies in the East-West conflict. The massive killings of civilians (over 250,000 in Guatemala, 200,000 in El Salvador, and countless others elsewhere in the region) caused many to seek sanctuary in the United States.

In spite of the significant migration, almost 65 percent of Latinos are US-born.⁶ This percentage will continue to grow as the number of US-born Latina children continues to outpace the number of new immigrants. New migration will continue to feed the Latina community and keep it tied to Latin America. But most of the continual growth in the community will come from US-born children.

National backgrounds and migration stories tell one part of the story. But Spanish-language usage, cultural adaptation, and ethnic identity maintenance all point to other important factors in understanding Latino Protestants, and the Latina population at large. These help us understand who Latinos are today and how they participate in dominant society and in Protestant institutions.

Most Latinos have a strong emotional attachment to the Spanish language, but this does not necessarily translate into its usage in everyday life. When asked, 95 percent of Latina adults state that it is important that future generations of Latinos learn to speak Spanish.⁷ But Spanish-language usage and fluency drop by generation. In second-generation Latinos, 82 percent say they can converse in Spanish (71 percent say they can read it). By the third generation, 47 percent say they can speak Spanish fluently and 41 percent say they can read it;⁸ overall, 90 percent of Latinas can speak English to some degree, and 78 percent can speak Spanish fluently.⁹ There are also over two million non-Hispanics who speak Spanish at home.¹⁰ This means that the number of Spanish speakers in the United States continues to grow, though not at the same pace as the Latino population. The size of the Spanish-speaking population makes the United States one of the largest Spanish-speaking countries in the world.¹¹

Use of Spanish also tends to be linked to ethnic identity maintenance.¹² Those who use Spanish regularly tend to have a stronger sense of a Latino identity, though it is not a guarantee of that identity. Losing Spanish is a potential marker of assimilation into majority culture, though there are many English-dominant Latinas who have a strong sense of Latino ethnic identity.

In practical terms, most Latinas are bilingual, and this affects how people live their lives. It creates tensions in the marketplace, as English and Spanish media compete to demonstrate which can best reach the Latino community. It also speaks into religious commitments. For some Latinas, worship should be in the heart language, so they tend to worship in Spanish, even if their English is stronger. For others, worship and ministry should be polished and well organized, which tends to draw them to some English-language churches, particularly those with a multicultural focus. Others opt for various types of bilingual models that seek to include multiple generations worshiping together.

Related to the issue of language is a person’s ethnic self-identity. Even though Hispanic has been used as a legal definition of the community for over forty years, most Latinos continue to use their national background as their primary ethnic identity marker. A majority of Latinos (51 percent) use their family’s country of origin as their principal identifier, and only 24 percent prefer a pan-ethnic label, like Hispanic or Latino, as their primary identifier. Sixty-nine percent see themselves as part of different cultures, and only 29 percent state that Latinos have a common culture.

This sense of identity also affects how Latinas see themselves within larger US society. Latinos are evenly divided as to whether they see themselves as typical Americans. The vast majority is happy to be in the United States, and most immigrants would migrate again if given the opportunity. But a plurality (39 percent) feels that the strength of family ties is better in their country of origin than in the United States.¹³

The issues of Latina identity and cultural assimilation are important when thinking about Latino Protestantism for several reasons. On the one hand, a common assumption historically has been that Latinos became Protestants in the United States as a means of cultural adaptation. In this understanding, seen directly or indirectly in many studies of Latino religious identity, becoming a Protestant is a sign of assimilation into majority culture.¹⁴

But if this were the case, Latina Protestants would demonstrate more signs of cultural assimilation than their Roman Catholic counterparts, such as a primary identification as Americans, the loss of Spanish, and intermarriage with non-Latinos. Various studies have demonstrated the opposite, particularly among Latina Pentecostals, the largest group of Latino Protestants. According to these studies, popular Pentecostalism provides support for ethnic identity maintenance and does not necessarily draw converts toward assimilation into dominant culture.¹⁵

According to the 2014 Pew study, 22 percent of the Latino population is Protestant. About two-thirds of this population would identify as Pentecostal or charismatic. (About 52 percent of Latina Catholics also self-identify as Pentecostal or charismatic.)¹⁶ The percentage of the Latino population that is Protestant continues to grow, though not as fast as in many places in Latin America. For example, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil all have a higher Protestant population than does the United States. This means that immigrants from these places have a higher probability of being Protestant before they come to the United States, making migration one of the sources for growth among Latino Protestants. Mexico, on the other hand, is one of the most Catholic countries in the world, and certainly the most Catholic country in the Americas; only 9 percent of the population identifies as Protestant, and most migration from Mexico has come from the most Catholic sections of the country.¹⁷

If one assumes that these numbers tend to carry over into the various national background communities among Latinas in the United States, then Puerto Ricans and Central Americans will be overrepresented among Latino Protestants, as a percentage of the total Latina population. This may help explain, in part, why Puerto Ricans are overrepresented in Latino Protestant leadership, even though they represent only 9 percent of the Latina population.

If one assumes a Latina population of 55 million, then about 12 million Latinos identify as Protestants.¹⁸ The majority of them are connected to US Protestant denominations, though many are part of Latino- and Latin American–based denominations and movements. Because many Latinas live a transnational existence, and faith, they are clearly linked to US Protestantism, but also to Protestantism in Latin America. Many Latina churches in the United States have strong links to sister congregations in Latin America. Often these links are not denominational, but are relational and network based. People and churches connect to the churches back home, whether or not they have a similar theological tradition. These links are maintained through regular visits and exchanges, financial support and new migrants.

Excursus: The Question of the Latino Nones

The aforementioned Pew study states that Latinos are moving away from the Roman Catholic Church in one of two directions, either toward evangelical Protestantism or away from identification with a specific faith tradition. The implicit assumption is that all Latino nones are similar to their counterparts in majority culture. Though there is truth in that assessment, it also does not tell the whole story. The Latina nones represent various realities that are not necessarily the same as majority-culture experience.

For example, movement from Catholicism to Protestantism is not always a clean or one-way process. Many Latinas are in an in-between state. They may not have a clearly identifiable church identity but may in fact be moving between the two groups. Also, a lack of church identity does not necessarily mean lack of commitment to the church with which they do not formally identify (for example, some expressions of popular Catholicism). As a result, one sees higher church participation, a more regular prayer life, and a more positive sense of the role of religion among Latinas who identify as unaffiliated than among the unaffiliated within society at large.¹⁹

Latin American Protestantism and Its Impact on US Latino Protestants

When telling the US Latino Protestant story, the tendency is to focus on Protestant mission work in the United States. It is impossible to tell the story, particularly of the earlier years, without looking at evangelization and the converts of those missionary efforts. But the story would be sorely incomplete without including the impact of the growth of Latin American Protestantism, independently of US Protestant missionary efforts, on US Latina Protestant communities.

The history of Latin American Protestantism is far beyond the scope of this book. But the dynamic north-south, south-north links have created a transnational Protestant identity that is both linked to US Protestantism and looks beyond it for part of its growth and inspiration.

In the early years, most Latina Protestant converts were the direct result of US Protestant missionary efforts and most Latino churches were directly linked to US Protestant denominations. The vast majority of immigrants from Latin America were Catholics, and the few Protestant immigrants tended to join existing US-based churches. There were a few Latino-based churches and denominations, but they were treated like an exception when describing Latina Protestantism. These groups were usually on the margins of society and often were not even counted in discussions about Latino Protestants.

This began to change with the growth of Pentecostal churches, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. But the explosive growth came because of the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches, particularly in Puerto Rico and Central America, that started in the 1970s. This growth produced new, large churches and megachurches. As people who had become converts in these movements migrated to the United States, some of them brought their churches and leaders with them. Also, US denominations began importing an increasing number of pastors from Latin America, as the number of new immigrants into new parts of the United States seemed to overwhelm many churches and denominations. Many Latino churches, including those within US denominations, have network links into Latin America, and many are doing mission work there. Some of that mission work is more linked to personal relationships than to denominational commitments. The ministries that are part of personal networks are often more enthusiastically supported by Latino Protestant churches.

Ideas and ministry models are also regularly exchanged across the Americas. From Latin America, leaders regularly preach and teach in the United States, creating a constant exchange both north and south. From the United States, a growing number of Latinos are developing ministries in the south. Many Latino Protestant churches have transnational people who live part of their lives here and part there, which adds to this exchange. They become an important link in the global communications networks that keep Latino Protestants connected to Latin America.

Latino Protestant churches grow in three ways: through converts, through Latin American immigrants, and through biological growth. These three represent very different experiences and framings of Protestantism, as will be seen throughout this book. The Latin American connection is maintained through the constant movement of peoples, whose role is often unseen in descriptions of the development of Latina Protestantism.

Latina Protestants in the Larger US Protestant World

The Mexicans living in what is now the Southwest became the focus of some Protestant missionaries in the 1830s while the Southwest was still a part of Mexico. And the first converts became parts of churches that were linked to existing US Protestant denominations. That has been the norm throughout the history of Latina Protestantism, although, as previously stated, a growing number of Latino Protestants are part of Latino- or Latin American–based churches and denominations.

US Protestants have had a conflictive relationship with Latino Protestants from the days of the first converts. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Latina Protestants tended to be invisible, even in the denominations of which they were a part. At best, they had a marginal role in the structures and often did not have leadership positions even in the Latino sections of their denominations.

One of the reasons is that Latino Protestant churches have often been seen as transitional structures. As early as the late 1890s the question arose whether the second generation would stay in Latino churches or would join Anglo congregations. This issue has continued to play a role in conversations about Latino Protestant ministry. Are Latino churches structures with a long-term future, or holding tanks for Latinas while they adapt to majority culture and get ready to be a part of existing English-language congregations?

This has created tensions within Protestant denominations and between majority culture and Latino leaders. Latino pastors want to keep their young people, and some US Protestant leaders assume that the second generation will leave for majority culture or intentionally intercultural churches. One sees both tendencies, but also realizes that because of new migration and intermarriage back into the immigrant generation, there is an eternal second generation. So the question of the place of Latino Protestants in the larger US Protestant world continues. Do Latina leaders participate representing clearly identifiable Latino congregations, or as part of the larger Protestant world (or both)? Will one model be considered normative, or will there be multiple ways of being a Latino Protestant within existing denominational structures? Which type of Latina leader do the denominations want as they look toward the future?

So Latino participation in Protestant denominations lags behind the population size, as it does in US political, socioeconomic, and other realms. Some denominations are barely discovering Latinas, while others are struggling with challenges of incorporating Latino leaders into their national structures. Meanwhile, a growing number of Latinos are joining non-Latino churches, particularly intentionally intercultural congregations. In some of those churches they become invisible because no one sees them as a community that needs to be represented in leadership structures. So, even as Protestant denominations recognize that Latinos will be an increasingly important part of their future, they are still struggling to understand what that future will look like.

Latino Protestants as Missionaries to the World

Historically, natives in Latin America and Latinos in the United States have been the objects of Protestant mission efforts. But as these communities develop, they also become mission-sending congregations. The first focus of Latino Protestant mission work is Latin America. A growing number of churches with north-south links are providing financial support to ministries in Latin America. These links are usually mutual, with money flowing south and ministry resources flowing north.

Latin American Protestants have begun sending missionaries around the world, particularly into areas where traditional missionaries from the first world are not welcome. Some of these efforts are linked to Latino churches in the United States. A growing number of Latino Protestant churches are finding it easier to link to missionary efforts in Latin America than to efforts of their own denominations in the United States. Others are working through US mission agencies willing to incorporate into their concept of mission work models that make more sense to Latinas.

So, even as it is difficult to define a Latino, and many Latinas are not sure that the category clearly fits them, it is also a complicated task to clearly define a Latino Protestant. There are places where the borders and boundaries seem clear. But in a growing number of spaces it is not clear who fits, who does not fit, or even if this is the correct question. Who wants to fit under the category, and how clear do the lines need to be to tell the story of the community?

There would seem to be a clear answer—the story is about the people who are at the intersection of Protestant and Latina. Yet, for all the reasons already stated, it is not always clear who belongs in the narrative, particularly as one moves further away from that intersection. So this history of Latino Protestants begins at the clear intersection and gradually moves out toward the fuzzy edges.

1. David Van Biema et al., The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, Time, February 7, 2005.

2. Elizabeth Dias, ¡Evangélicos!, Time, April 15, 2013.

3. Jens Manuel Krogstad and Mark Hugo Lopez, Hispanic Population Reaches Record 55 Million, but Growth Has Cooled, Pew Research Center, June 25, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/25/u-s-hispanic-population-growth-surge-cools/.

4. Sharon R. Ennis, Merarys Rios-Vargas, and Nora G. Albert, The Hispanic Population: 2010, 2010 Census Brief, United States Census Bureau, May 2011, http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf.

5. Chiamaka Nwosu and Jeanne Batalova, Immigrants from the Dominican Republic in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, July 18, 2014, http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-dominican-republic-united-states.

6. Jens Manuel Krogstad and Mark Hugo Lopez, Hispanic Nativity Shift, Pew Research Center, April 29, 2014, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/04/29/hispanic-nativity-shift/.

7. Mark Hugo Lopez and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, What Is the Future of Spanish in the United States?, Pew Research Center, September 5, 2013, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/05/what-is-the-future-of-spanish-in-the-united-states/.

8. Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America, Pew Research Center, December 11, 2009, updated July 1, 2013, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/12/11/between-two-worlds-how-young-latinos-come-of-age-in-america/.

9. Hispanic and Latino Americans, Wikipedia, last modified March 25, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans.

10. Camille Ryan, Language Use in the United States: 2011, United States Census Bureau, American Community Survey Reports, August 2013, http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf.

11. According to the Instituto Cervantes study, it is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, behind only Mexico. El español: Una lengua viva: Informe 2016, Instituto Cervantes, 2016, http://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/espanol_lengua_viva/pdf/espanol_lengua_viva_2016.pdf.

12. See my description of ethnic identity maintenance among Latinas in Los Protestantes: An Introduction to Latino Protestantism in the United States (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 20–24.

13. Paul Taylor et al., When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity, Pew Research Center, April 4, 2012, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/when-labels-dont-fit-hispanics-and-their-views-of-identity/.

14. See Larry L. Hunt, The Spirit of Hispanic Protestantism in the United States: National Survey Comparisons of Catholics and Non-Catholics, Social Science Quarterly 79, no. 4 (December 1998): 828–45.

15. See studies in Martínez, Los Protestantes, 59ff.; Hunt, "The Spirit of Hispanic Protestantism in the United