This is a diary that I wrote over at dkos a few months ago but I thought I should repost it because it deserves some attention. I come from a largely Hispanic family, and most of us are what you would call yellow dog dems. However, with the lack of focus on our issues from the Democratic Party which is ironic considering that we’ll become the largest voting bloc by 2050, I believe that the Democratic Party is in danger of losing the minority vote.

In any case, keep reading below the cut for the rest of my diary. Hopefully you’ll find it informative and I always love feedback from others on this important issue!

Today, most Hispanics are Catholics, but that religious identification with Catholicism is declining at a small rate every year, and consequently, will have an effect on the voting patterns of Hispanics.

In order to examine the growing divide between Hispanics and their predominant religion as well as the shift in voting patterns, the initial immigration waves of Hispanics into the United States will be examined in this diary. In the early twentieth century, the Mexican Revolution sparked the first major wave of Hispanic immigration. The instability of the Mexican Revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1917, caused many Mexicans to flee to the United States.

WHAT IS THE ETHNICITY PARADIGM?

From the framework of the ethnicity paradigm, the subsequent waves of immigration also brought forth a decline in religious identification with Catholicism, which can be explained as a struggle between cultural pluralism and assimilation within the paradigm. The ethnicity paradigm was a challenge to the biological view of race and instead put race as a social construct.

WHAT ARE THE TENETS OF THE ETHNICITY PARADIGM?

In this instance, religion is also defined as a cultural factor, thus the decline in identification with the predominant religion of an ethnic group such as Hispanics is viewed from the struggle between assimilation and cultural pluralism tenets of the ethnicity paradigm. With assimilation, the ethnic group is assimilated into the main culture, and cultural pluralism, which is the preservation of group identity such as the Catholicism of Hispanic-Americans.

WHAT IS THE PROJECTED GROWTH OF THE HISPANIC POPULATION?

The projected growth of the Hispanic population in 2000 was over thirty-five million Hispanics and by the year 2050, the projected growth is expected to be over one hundred million Hispanics (U.S. Census of Bureau, 2000). With such a massive growth in population within the Hispanic community, it is no wonder why they will soon wield impressive power as a voting bloc in society by 2050.

HOW MANY HISPANICS ARE TURNING AWAY FROM CATHOLICISM?

According to Andrew M. Greeley in his sociological research, Hispanics turn away from Catholicism at the rate of 60,000 every year since 1975, which now numbers over 1.5 million “defections.”

Greeley notes that “in the early 1970s, 78% of Americans of Hispanic origin were Catholic, substantially less than is assumed. By the middle of the 1990s, that proportion had fallen to 67%.

If one divides 11% by 78%, the loss to Catholicism in the last quarter century is 14%. The equivalent of one out of seven Hispanics has left Catholicism in a little less than a quarter of a century.

DOES GREELEY’S PREDICTIONS STILL HOLD TRUE TODAY?

However, Gaston Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda took issue with Greeley’s assertion about the proportion of Hispanic Catholics in the 1990s in their report, “Hispanic Churches in American Public Life: Summary of Findings.”

They found that in 2002, the proportion of Hispanic Catholics was 70.2%. The authors of the report contend that it was “due to the significant influx of Catholics into the United States from Latin America and especially from Mexico, a country that has one of the highest rates of Catholicism in Latin America.

The US Census, for example, reported that the  population increased by 58 percent between 1990
and 2000″ (Espinosa et al., pg.14). As long as the influx of Hispanic Catholic immigrants continue to rise at the same level, the defections is not likely to turn up at a higher rate. However, the defections from Catholicism are happening within the second and third generation Hispanic-Americans at a higher rate.

WHY ARE HISPANICS TURNING AWAY FROM CATHOLICISM?

Timothy Matovina, in his article, “Hispanic Catholics: `El Futuro’ Is Here,” explains the Hispanic move from Catholicism to pentecostal and evangelical Protestantism. For instance, “relatively small Protestant congregations are attractive because they provide a stronger sense of family and fellowship, a strict moral code based on clear biblical principles, a pronounced orientation toward mission, more indigenous Spanish-speaking pastors, and worship services in which Latinos can pray in their own language and cultural style” (Matovina, pg.2).

In the article, Matovina makes an extremely good point about the sense of control that Hispanics feel in “more autonomous Protestant congreg-ations, particularly those of the Pentecostals and evangelicals, they are usually in charge” and on the other hand, in predominately Anglo-American Catholic parishes, Hispanics get a different message of control such as despite the welcome, “the notion that those in power will remain in power [and] Hispanic traditions and religious expressions will be tolerated, but the established group will control and limit the conditions of this pluralism and diversity” (Matovina, pg.2).

HOW DOES THIS TRANSLATE INTO THE INFLUENCE OF HISPANICS AS A VOTING BLOC?

Further statistics show that the over 50% of non-Catholic Hispanics want a greater involvement of religion in socio-political issues, and in educational issues as well. The trend of wanting greater involvement with religion in public affairs is a growing conservative trend.

However, “only 22 percent of [Hispanics] had been asked by their church, religious organization or leaders to engage in activities on behalf of a specific social, educational, or political issue,” and if a larger majority of Hispanics ask their churches to get politically involved, there will then be a greater shift in voting patterns (Espinosa et al., pg.18).

IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN DANGER OF LOSING HISPANICS?

Despite the initial belief that Hispanics are predisposed to the Democratic Party, within the past decade, there has been a noticeable shift from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

In the 2000 presidential election, “only 49 percent of Hispanics identified as Democrat, 14 percent as Republican, and a surprising 37 percent as politically `independent’. There was little difference between Hispanic Catholics (50 percent) and Protestants and other Christians (47 percent) in party affiliation” (Espinosa et al., pg.19).

According to the study, the greatest political volatility came in the 1996 and the 2000 presidential elections from Pentecostals and Catholics, where “in 1996 they gave Clinton 69 and 82 percent of their votes respectively, in 2000 they planned to give Gore 35 and 48 percent of their votes–a 34 percent swing. Although Latino Catholics still planned to give Gore a clear majority (48 percent vs. 26 percent) of their votes, Pentecostals planned to split (35 percent vs. 35 percent) their votes between Gore and Bush” (Espinosa et al., pg.20).

WHAT ABOUT THE RECENT 2004 ELECTION?

In the recent 2004 presidential election, there remains a murky area about the exact statistics of the Hispanic vote shift in favor of the Republican party, but the fact that such a voting shift, even a small percentage, exists is a sign that the Hispanic vote will become an area of hot contention between the Democratic and Republican parties in the next few presidential elections.

Richard S. Dunham, in his article in Business Week, notes that due to the volatility of the statistical polls during the election, that it was hard to gauge the exact amount of the voting shift. However, upon closer examination of “real election returns from 62 jurisdictions in 13 states – mostly places where Hispanics made up 75% to 95% of the population.

The bottom line: Bush improved on his 2000 performance in 85% of these heavily Hispanic areas, undercutting Dems’ claims that he didn’t make inroads. But his gains averaged just three percentage points,” which is different from the wild swings in the projected vote among Hispanics for Bush (Dunham, pg.1). The message is clear in that the Hispanic vote no longer can be taken for granted by the Democratic Party, and that in order to keep the Hispanic vote in the future, the Democratic party must redefine its approach towards minorities in the United States today.

AND WHAT ABOUT YOUR PROJECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE?

In conclusion, the growing decline of Hispanic religious identification with the Catholic party has contributed to the trending conservative voting shift in politics, with each succeeding generation of Hispanic-Americans. The assimilation viewpoint from within the ethnic paradigm has worked in the case of Hispanic-Americans, where religion is concerned.

With the trend of over sixty thousand defections from Catholicism every year, by the year 2050, entirely half of the Hispanic population will be non-Catholic, and that will have a major impact in the voting patterns of Hispanic-Americans. Right now, that impact is barely legible, but it is growing with each presidential election.  

In the year 2050, with over one hundred million Hispanic-Americans being projected for that year, that kind of effect upon a society will be felt everywhere in terms of society, politics, and education.  

In short, I’d like to hear your opinions on this and what the Democratic Party should do to rectify this small, but growing problem with the minority vote. Feel free to put in your two cents!