Hello! I’m back from vacation and initially wanted to write about my trip. However, yesterday, the Pew Research Center released a report about Latinx religion identification. Hemant wrote about it in his newsletter with a guest appearance by yours truly. I was also interviewed for another outlet, but it has not been published yet.

The report finds three in ten (30%) Latinxs are religiously unaffiliated (AKA: nones). This includes nearly half (49%) of young Latinxs under 30. Interestingly, even though Pew’s standard questionnaire includes the options of “atheist” and “agnostic” in their religious identification battery, they only give an overall “religiously unaffiliated” number. This is not the case with Protestants, which Pew divides between “evangelical” and “non-evangelical.” This means we don’t know from this report how many Latinxs identify as atheists or agnostics within the larger Latinx nonreligious population.

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We know from Pew’s 2014 Religious Landscape survey that at least 20% of Latinx nones self-identified atheists or agnostics roughly a decade ago: 16% said they were nothing in particular, and four percent identified as an atheist (2%) or agnostic (2%). Moreover, back in 2014, six percent of Latinxs said they did not believe in God, and an additional six percent were not certain about its existence. This means that atheist/agnostic beliefs were three times larger than the size of self-identification as atheist or agnostic. Among the young ones in 2014, 32% identified as nonreligious, including 23% as nothing in particular and nine percent (!) as an atheist (5%) or agnostic (4%). The same page shows that 11% of young Latinxs in 2014 did not believe in God, and nine percent were not certain.

I mention this because it is likely that the self-identified atheist/agnostic contingent is a similar size or possibly larger than the “non-evangelical” Latinx cohort, but we get no information about that. In fact, it is likely that, like in 2014, there are more self-identified Latinx atheists and agnostics than members of non-Christian religions combined. In 2014, four percent of Latinxs were members of non-Christian religions; this increased to six percent in the current poll. The latest survey did not have information about belief in God.

Refusal to admit that Latinx nones are here to stay

I’ve been on this beat for nearly 15 years, about a third of my life. And I’m starting to feel a bit like Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon movies… “I’m too old for this—-!”

After coauthoring the first report about the growth of Latinx nones about 13 years ago, my first Op-ed was a piece in Free Inquiry titled “Media Stereotypes and the Invisible Latino ‘Nones’” [gated] where I wrote this:

The normalcy of Latino Nones is their greatest liability and the driving force of their invisibility. They don't have crucifixes hanging from their necks or Bibles under their arms. Instead, they study, work, and live their own lives. As such, the media ignores them because they are not exotic or interesting. Yet, Latino Nones are not only invisible in their own country and its mainstream media; they are also invisible within their own community.

The reason is that for many Latinos, a self-image as a deeply religious group (regardless of religion, though overwhelmingly Christian) is seen as an important part of their identity. I realized this while teaching courses in Latino studies at the college level. I would start the semester brainstorming with my (mostly Latino) students about what it means to be a Latino. Some of the first responses were "faith," "religion," or some variant.

Nearly a decade and a half since I wrote those words, we continue to see this with the coverage the report has received. The hackiest article is published in the Associated Press wire titled “Poll: Among U.S. Latinos, Catholicism still largest faith.” Of course, Catholicism has nowhere to go but down. It technically started with a 100% figure forged out of genocide. In 10 years, when the next big Pew poll shows that a plurality of Latinxs are nones, the headlines will read “Poll: Majority of Latinos identify with some sort of Christian Faith.” The hackiness of the article is not limited to its headline. But the content is horrendous as well.

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We get gems in the AP piece like this quote, “Latinos, especially here in the U.S., are still very faith-centered,” from Rev. Carlos Velasquez, a Latino pastor. Or this one, “Even though Latinx Americans may be, like all other Americans, increasingly unaffiliated, that certainly doesn’t mean they’re non-religious,” from Prof. Elizabeth Drescher. She adds, “They may not be engaged in institutional religion for a variety of reasons, but they may still have the kind of classic of religious measures of religiosity — like belief in God or a higher power.”

Except that the survey says nothing about beliefs. And what it says is quite the opposite. Though the survey highlights that “Four-in-ten Latinos say religion is very important.” Among the nones, the vast majority (74%) say it is not too (31%) or not at all (43%) important. Ninety-seven percent of Latinx nones attend religious services seldom or never (86%) or a few times a year (11%). And 72% of Latinx nones pary seldom or never (61%) or a few times a month (11%).

We cannot aggregate these numbers, but there’s a fair chance that most Latinx nones do not perform any of these religious activities. I have been calling these in this newsletter “functional atheists.” They may not identify as atheists, but they don’t seem to care about God or practice any spirituality recognizable to Christians.

There are good pieces, like the one by Alejandra Molina in Religion News Service that quotes Prof. Jonathan Calvillo, a none-friendly Christian.

If the RNS piece is the good, the AP piece is the bad, and of course, the Washington Times is the ugly: with a headline that makes sense only in 1995, “Protestant evangelicals gain share among traditionally Catholic American Hispanics, Pew says.” I’m not a Pew defender, but even I am offended by the “Pew says.” Because Pew said that in 2007 and 2014, but not this time. This time they said, “the share of Latinos who identify as Protestants – including evangelical Protestants – has been relatively stable.” Of course, they cited notorious hack Rev. Samuel Rodríguez, self-appointed leader of the self-described largest coalition of Latino evangelicals.

Why are Latinxs leaving Catholicism…and religion?

That is the question that no one asks, except Hemant. I told him that this particular generation of 18-29-year-olds grew up after the sex abuse crisis in the Church came to light in the late 1990s and early 2000s. How many people decided not to raise their kids as Catholic after that? We don’t know. It would be nice to have numbers about religious initiation to know how many of these former Catholics were baptized or had first communion or confirmation. In other words, how immersed they were in the religion before they drifted away.

We know that people overall have lost trust in religious institutions. Latinxs are not immune to this. Christian Nationalists completed their takeover of the GOP, with Latinx evangelicals becoming willing participants. Latinx evangelicals are not gaining, something that I have noted before (see last link), but that, finally, Pew, after years of peddling the “Latino Reformation” schtick, admits.

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Unfortunately, this survey doesn’t ask about beliefs. It asks about vague practices such as prayer or energy-consuming ones like attending church. This is why I have difficulty buying the idea that Latinx nones (or any nones) have “beliefs.” I don’t think a nonreligious person having a sense of awe about nature, or some connection with other humans or living things is weird, or a reason to revoke a person’s “secular card.” We live in an amazing world with tons of stuff that we may understand but not really know how it works. But I don’t think it is very likely that a none, even a former Catholic one believes in virgin birth, immaculate conception, or transubstantiation. I wish I had survey evidence for that. If a secular funder is interested in doing a deep dive about the beliefs of the nones without the religious language we generally get from pollsters like Pew, my contact info is at the bottom of every post.

Another thing that I haven’t seen discussed is that, for the last ten years, the Pope has been a dude from Latin America. Supposedly a Pope from the region with the largest Catholic population in the world would make a difference. So far, he only has succeeded in pissing off traditionalist Catholics (and for that, I tip my hat to you, Francis). The decline in Catholicism and rise of secularism is steep among U.S. Latinxs but not limited to them. Catholicism has declined in Latin America, and secularism has been on the rise along with Protestantism. It is fair to say that there has been no “Francis Effect” in keeping people with Latin American roots in the Church.

Maybe people are increasingly disbelieving these fantastical stories about virgin births and resurrections. Maybe they are tired of self-appointed authorities telling them that they will burn in hell, or what to do with their bodies, or how to have a family with no evidence that the priestly class knows what they’re talking about. And maybe they are tired of the corruption, cover-ups, and awful behavior of people supposed to be God’s representatives on Earth. Even if you believe in (a) God, would you follow it with those guys (literally guys) at the helm? Probably not.

Next time I’ll address the political repercussions of the report.

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