Analysis: Latino worship in bomber plant

LOS ANGELES, July 14 (UPI) -- Editor's note: This is the third installment of a UPI series investigating the faith of U.S. Hispanics and the impact of evangelicalism on their community. Today's article describes a Latino evangelical congregation.

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Keith Hershey a handsome, charismatic man in a sports coat and jeans, prowls the brightly lit stage in what looks to be a state of the art television studio. He exclaims to his studio audience something that seems a little out of place in the high tech setting: "I grew up on a pig farm, and all I ever wanted to be was a pig farmer. And then the Lord delivered me from that. Hallelujah!"

When that gets a laugh, he calls out with a wink, "Am I preaching good now?"

In the 2,500-seat Faith Community megachurch in West Covina, Calif., Amens ring out from a congregation made up of most of the many ethnicities of Southern California, with Latinos perhaps representing the largest single group. A few listen to a Spanish translator on headphones.

For the Hispanics in the congregation, this five-year-old spiritual facility, a converted B2 Bomber engineering plant, is a long way from the Roman Catholic churches of Latin America. The megachurch's décor is as sleek and noncommittal as a studio where infomercials are filmed.

There is none of the rich iconography of a Mexican cathedral; there are no paintings or statues of the brown-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe who appeared in 1531 to the Mexican Indian St. Juan Diego.

The message is different, too. The dignity of poverty and patience is not a popular theme in West Covina. Hershey, a visiting preacher, asks, "If you're a complainer, you'll still go to heaven, but is that all you want? The Bible is a book of promises and if you want the promises to work for you, then you have to magnify the Lord in your life. You can see the promises working in your life: a good marriage, Godly children, good health, and relief from your pocketbook troubles."

About 23 percent of all American Hispanics are Protestants, according to a nationwide survey of 2,300 Latinos carried out as part of the recent Hispanic

Churches in American Public Life (HCAPL) study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust. Among those Hispanic Protestants, 85 percent belong to Evangelical churches like the Faith Community in West Covina.

Third generation American Latinos are significantly more likely to be Protestants (29 percent) than are first generation immigrants (15 percent). Yet, the percentage of Hispanics who are Protestant doesn't appear to have increased since the late 1980s, according to the HCAPL report, due to heavy immigration from highly Catholic Mexico. In recent decades, evangelical Protestantism is thriving in much of Latin America, especially among the poor, but it has yet to gain a large foothold in Mexico.

The encounter between Hispanics and conservative Protestant churches that laud this-worldly business enterprise has reopened a century-old debate inaugurated by the great German scholar Max Weber about the link between Calvinist Protestantism and the specifically American form of capitalism.

Extending Weber's theory, some observers believe that conversion to Protestantism will hasten the assimilation of Hispanic immigrants into the American middle class.

Father Andrew Greeley, the prominent sociologist, wrote: "Hispanic Protestants in the United States have higher income and educational levels than Hispanic Catholics. Whatever the explanation for this pattern, the emotional experiences in Pentecostal and evangelical congregations probably do help Latinos to take charge of their lives, and perhaps are a stabilizing influence on personal and family life."

The evangelical megachurches offer an all-encompassing social life that can provide youths with a sense of belonging that they might otherwise look for in gangs.

Some Republican strategists anticipate that Hispanic conversions to Protestantism will help them gain a larger share of the Hispanic vote. They had long hoped that the traditionalist moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on abortion and the like would impel Hispanic Americans toward the GOP, but that doesn't seem to have yet happened in any large measure, perhaps in part due to the Catholic emphasis on social justice and help for the poor.

While evangelical Protestant churches offer similar moral messages, they tend to be more free market-oriented in their economic and political views.