CV NEWS FEED // Despite growing claims to the contrary, political scientist and statistician Ryan Burge is explaining that Hispanics aren’t “flocking” to evangelical Christianity.
Burge, who is also a Baptist pastor, responded in a blog post on April 1 to a Free Press article published in March, which stated that Latino people are leaving the Catholic Church to become evangelical Christians and therefore becoming more politically conservative.
Excerpted from author and journalist Marie Arana’s latest book, LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority, the Free Press article predicts that “by 2030, half of U.S. Latinos will identify as Protestant evangelicals who actually lean right—a shift that will shape voting patterns for decades to come.”
Ultimately, Arana suggests that the so-called influx of evangelical Hispanics represents a “positive trend” for Republicans—namely, that Latino voters are becoming more conservative as they leave the Catholic Church and align with evangelical Christianity.
However, Burge, a top expert on religious statistics in the US, explains that empirical data contradicts the phenomenon alleged by Arana’s book, whose data stems from 200 interviews Arana conducted herself.
Citing the latest overarching data collected in 2022 concerning the general population of Hispanic Americans, Burge pointed out that roughly 25% have identified as “evangelical” for the past 16 years, with very slight fluctuation.
Further still, contrary to the article’s central claim, which is that Hispanics are “flocking” to evangelical Christianity, Burge’s data shows Hispanics have become increasingly more likely to identify as “nothing in particular,” or “nones,” than Protestant or evangelical.
To boot, in 2008, 5% more Hispanic immigrants identified as nones than identified as Protestant. That year, the portion of Hispanic nones was 3% percent larger than the first generation, 1% larger than the second generation, and 12% larger than the third generation.
The trend remained fairly consistent in 2022. Among immigrants, 3% more identified as nones rather than Protestant, while 15% more of the first generation, 8% more of the second generation, and 15% more of the third generation said the same.
While Burge states in his analysis that “a modest increase in the Protestant share among Hispanics across all levels of immigrant status” has occurred, the increase has not notably affected the overall percentage of evangelical Hispanics previously mentioned, nor does it indicate that Hispanics are leaving the Catholic Church to become evangelical.
