Pastor Arturo Laguna leads a predominantly immigrant church of about 100 members in Phoenix. He says his job as a pastor gets complicated during election season.
Laguna’s church, Casa de Adoracion, is located in Arizona. Arizona is one of seven closely watched battleground states that could decide the next president. It is also a microcosm of the larger Latino evangelical Christian community in the United States.
The soft-spoken Laguna said voting is “not an intellectual issue” for members of his congregation.
“It’s a matter of faith and spirituality,” he said. “We’re in a complicated moment because while we oppose abortion, we’re also concerned about the harsh rhetoric around immigration and lack of reform. It’s a difficult choice.”
This is not a new dilemma for Latino evangelicals. The number of evangelicals is increasing even as mainline white Protestant denominations are steadily declining. Latino evangelicals are an influential voting group. Faith and community leaders say both parties have tried to appeal to them in the past two election cycles, but neither has achieved significant results.
A 2022 Pew Research Center survey showed that 15% of Latinos in the United States identify as evangelical Protestants. Of all American evangelicals, they are the fastest growing group. About half of Latino evangelicals identify as Republicans or right-leaning independents, and 44% identify as Democrats or left-leaning independents.
Although U.S. Latinos generally support Democratic candidates, a majority of Latino evangelicals supported Donald Trump in 2020. Approximately 6 in 10 Latino evangelical voters supported Trump in 2020, and 4 in 10 supported Biden, according to AP Polling.
About two-thirds of Latino Protestants plan to support President Trump this year, while about two-thirds of Hispanic Catholics and religiously unaffiliated Hispanics plan to support President Trump this year, according to a Pew Research study released last month. He said he supports Vice President Kamala Harris.
Agustín Quiles, president and founder of Mission Talk, a Florida-based Latino Christian social justice organization, said conflicting priorities have left some Latino evangelicals feeling politically homeless. He says he is. Some say they are torn between conservative views on social issues such as abortion and a desire for immigration and criminal justice reform.
Quiles added that while many people are angry about President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, Democrats have yet to figure out how to dialogue with communities on issues such as abortion.
“So there’s a lot of silence among Latino evangelicals right now,” he says. “That doesn’t mean they’re not going to vote. There’s just a lot of frustration.”
Elizabeth Condefragier, a scholar at the Hispanic Theological Society, said that to understand Latino evangelicalism, it is important to understand its origins. She said the term “evangelical” refers to people who are not Protestant or Catholic, and includes a wide range of churches, cultures and traditions.
“When immigrants come here and have to reinvent themselves, Protestant, Pentecostal, and mainline churches are spaces where people create a new sense of community and family,” Condefrazier said. spoke. “People are trying to figure out what life should be like in this country.”
As white Protestantism declined and various mainstream denominations competed for loyalty to these communities, second-generation Latino Christians became part of the more dominant culture and often shared the fervor of white evangelical churches. She said she has come to accept it.
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“Latino churches began to align themselves with (white, conservative) evangelical churches in the United States to gain a sense of power and acceptance, and began to move away from their ‘evangelical’ roots,” Condefrager said. he said. She added that some Latino evangelicals are now increasingly at odds with white evangelicals because they are pro-immigration.
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Quiles said that in white evangelical churches with a growing population of Latino immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, there is a clear disconnect between what is said from the pulpit and how those in the pulpit perceive it. It is said that there is a dissonance.
“Just because a pastor promotes an anti-immigrant agenda doesn’t mean members accept it,” he said. “They selectively take what they want from the teachings.”
Pastor Juan Garcia, who leads the 100-member Hispanic ministry at First Baptist Church in Newport News, Virginia, said the word “gospel” represents the gospel to him. He said the label “evangelical” feels tainted by ties to one political party.
“Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican,” he said. “Some people think that their Christian values are represented by the Republican Party, while others think that some of their values are represented by the Democratic Party. is not a Christian.”
Garcia also feels that sense of political homelessness.
“There are candidates I can vote for, but there is no political party I want to belong to,” he said. “The most important value we must live as Christians is love: loving our neighbors, the poor, and those fleeing persecution.”
Garcia said he has “opinions and tendencies” but doesn’t think his preferred candidate is perfect. He warns his flock: “If one is the Antichrist, the other is not the Christ.”
The Rev. Jacqueline Tavares, pastor of the Pentecostal Church of God in Raleigh, North Carolina, says her diverse congregation cares more about the values a political party represents than its face or voice.
“Our community doesn’t care about politics,” she said. “They care about laws that impact our communities in terms of employment, opportunity, and education. And they see abortion and transgender laws as attacks on family values. When they look at the ballot, they don’t look at Trump or (Harris). They look at what the party stands for and how the community will fare under the candidate. ”
The Rev. Lori Tapia, an Arizona-based national pastor and president of Disciples of Christ Obra Hispana, said politics is not usually integrated into the life of the Latino evangelical church. Unlike white evangelical congregations, political engagement happens more organically, she said.
“The element of compassion has always been strong here, and there is a desire to see leaders who prioritize compassionate politics,” Tapia said. “I’m also frustrated by the slow progress on important issues. Anyone can promote a story or a political campaign, but where does it show up in the lives of people who are suffering?”
Bishop Ángel Marcial, who heads the Church of God, which oversees more than 15,000 churches, said some of the main issues for the faithful are medical education, public safety and housing.
“Voting in this country gives you respect and creates opportunities for marginalized communities,” he said. “As pastors, we don’t tell people who to vote for, but we do tell them about the platforms that best fit the values of the church and the needs of the community.”
John P. Tooman, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, observes that in Las Vegas, Latino evangelicals who attend large evangelical churches that hold services in English and Spanish tend to be conservative. There is. However, communities that form their own congregations and worship in Spanish or Mexico’s indigenous language, Otomi, are more likely to hold more diverse political views.
“Historically, they tend to support immigration reform with a path to citizenship and other elements of a social justice message that resonate with Democratic candidates,” he said.
Nevada is also a key battleground state.
Pastor Willie Pagan, who leads the 700-person church under the Church of God in north Las Vegas, said the economy is a top priority for his congregation.
“Certainly people are worried about immigration, but the people who are already here want the economy to stabilize,” he said. “They’re seeing an increase in homelessness and crime in Las Vegas. Our church was in a rough area, and it’s gotten even rougher lately.”
Pagan said some members of the congregation believe they were more financially secure during the Trump administration and are willing to vote Republican to protect their conservative religious values. That’s what it means. But some say they fear they or their loved ones will be deported.
“The struggle is real.”
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