Since the year 2000 Latinos have accounted for more than half (50.5%) of the overall population growth in the United States. Already the nation’s largest minority group, Latinos will triple in size and will account for most of the nation’s population growth from 2005 through 2050. By the year 2050, the Latino population will make up 29% of the U.S. population, compared with 14% in 2005. This growth is impacting many religious traditions as well as the overall national profile of the U.S. religious identification. As a result of the rapid growth of the Latino population many religious traditions have increased their absolute numbers. However, the proportion of Latino Christians has declined by 10%, which is in line with the decline in the overall U.S. Christian population. However, contrary to much speculation as to which religious communities would gain the most by this influx of Latinos; Catholics, Mainline Protestant denominations, the Evangelical communities or other Christian groups of our nation, the fastest-growing religious identification among U.S. Latinos is “None”. None refers to that segment of the Latino population which self-identify as having no religion or none when asked to identify their religion. The number of Latinos claiming no religion is up from less than a million or 6% of the Latino population in 1990 to nearly 4 million or 12% of the Latino population in 2008.
Not the Expected
The change in the Latinos religious identification between 1990 and 2008 has not aligned with the predictions of many, including this author, the expectation being the large growth of the Latino population, both from immigration and procreation, of the United States would mean the growth of the Catholic Church as well as growth to Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and other Christian religious groups. These predictions where made under the assumption that Latinos were at their cultural base a Christian and spiritual people, albeit a predominantly Roman Catholic base, none the less a Christian people who would seek out religious affiliations within Christian communities.
Supports for these assumptions were based on a comprehensive study of the U.S. Latino religious landscape undertaken by the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life (HCAPL) funded by the Pew Charitable Trust. This was the largest and most comprehensive national study of religion and public life among U.S. Latinos and Latinas as of the date of that study; resulting in the published report in 2003: Hispanic Churches in American Public Life: Summary of Findings.
HCAPL learned that 93 percent of Latinos surveyed identified themselves as being Christian, with 70 percent of that group identifying themselves as Roman Catholic. Twenty-three percent of the participants in the study chose Protestant as their religious identity, while 6 percent of Latinos self-identify as having no religious preference/other, 1 percent self-identify as practicing a world religion other than Christianity, and less than one-half of 1 percent self-identify as atheist or agnostic. Dr. Gastón Espinosa, the study’s project manager, interpreted those statistics at the time as evidence that “rather than seeing a secularization of American religion and culture, Latinos may actually contribute to a re-Christianization of American society, albeit with a more experiential and hybrid Latin American flair”
However, as we fast forward to the year 2011 the data presented by the U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990-2008: Growth, Diversity & Transformation study tells a different story. The 6 percent of Latinos self-identify as having no religious preference/other reported on the HCAPL report, which represented less than a million persons at the time, did not seem to draw much attention. However, that has not remained the case for that segment of the Latino population. As stated earlier the numbers of Latinos self-identifying as having no religious preference/other has grown to 12 percent or well over 4 million Latinos.
As with the general U.S. population the growth of the Nones is one of the major developments on the religious scene over the past two decades. The Nones are young and have doubled their proportion of the Latino college educated population to 25%. In real numbers, college-educated Latinos over age 25 years increased by about 2 million between 1990 and 2008. These two trends in combination suggest that Latinos flow towards irreligion will continue to do so into the future.
According to the authors of the report; U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990-2008: Growth, Diversity & Transformation, “Americanization is leading to de-Catholicization and religious polarization. U.S.-born Latinos and those most proficient in English are less likely to self-identify as Catholic and more likely to identify either as “None” (no religion) or with conservative Christian traditions.”
Next installment: Part 2; Why is “None” the Fastest Growing religious Identification Among Latinos?
