NEW YORK — Catholics remain the largest religious group among Latinos in the United States, but the number of Latinos who identify as religiously unaffiliated continues to grow.
Those are among the key findings in a comprehensive report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center that surveyed 7,647 U.S. adults from Aug. 1 to 14, 2022.
The report, which uses the terms Latino and Hispanic interchangeably, found that Catholicism remains the largest faith among Latinos in the U.S., even as the number of Latino adults who identify as Catholic steadily declined over the past decade. The number went from 67 percent in 2010 to 43 percent last year.
Still, the survey said Latinos remain about twice as likely as U.S. adults overall to identify as Catholic, and less likely to be Protestant.
“Latinos, especially here in the U.S., are still very faith-centered,” said the Rev. Carlos Velasquez, pastor at St. Brigid, a majority Latino Catholic church in an area straddling Brooklyn and Queens in New York City.
“Faith is a big part of all of people’s lives in Latin America … and when they come here, faith is what grounds them,” he said. The church helps with the difficult transition of emigration, when many are starting from scratch, he added.
Latinos who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – are now about 30 percent of the overall Latino population. That’s up from 18 percent a decade ago and 10 percent in 2010. The numbers of Latinos who are religiously unaffiliated is in line with U.S. adults overall, the report said.
The religiously unaffiliated — commonly known as the “nones” – are the fastest-growing group in surveys asking Americans about their religious identity.
“Even though Latinx Americans may be, like all other Americans, increasingly unaffiliated, that certainly doesn’t mean they’re nonreligious,” said Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University who wrote a book about the spiritual lives of the nones.
“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,” she said.
The poll says the “demographic forces shaping the nation’s Latino population also have impacted religious affiliation trends.”
Among U.S. Latinos ages 18 to 29, 79 percent were born in the U.S. Nearly half (49 percent) in this age group now identify as religiously unaffiliated. But only about one-in-five Latinos 50 and older are unaffiliated. Most of these older Latinos (56 percent) were born outside the U.S.
Overall, 52 percent of Latino immigrants identify as Catholic and 21 percent are unaffiliated. U.S.-born Latinos are less likely to be Catholic (36 percent) and more likely to be unaffiliated (39 percent), according to a 2022 Pew survey of Latino adults.
Hispanic Americans are also strikingly underrepresented in Catholic schools and in the priesthood.
Nearly a quarter of all U.S. Hispanics are former Catholics: While about two-thirds of Hispanic adults (65 percent) say they were raised Catholic, 43 percent say they are currently Catholic, according to the survey.
“What’s happening to Catholic Latinos (in the U.S.) is what’s happening to Catholics across the world,” said the Rev. Felix Sanchez, pastor of St. Pius V, in New York City.
“People are attending church less,” he said.
Protestants
Protestants are the second-largest faith group after Catholics, the report says. They account for 21 percent of Hispanic adults — a number that has remained relatively stable since 2010 — with 15 percent of Latinos identifying as evangelical Protestants.
“Latino evangelicals have received national attention recently due to the political activism of some evangelical churches,” the survey says.
“The interest in Latino evangelicals comes as white evangelicals have become a bulwark of support for Republican candidates in U.S. presidential elections, and after elections in which a rising share of Latino voters have supported Republican candidates.”
The report says 28 percent of Hispanic Republicans identify as evangelical Protestants compared to 10 percent who identify as Democrats.
Latino immigrants are slightly more likely than U.S.-born Latinos to be evangelical (19 percent vs. 12 percent).
