No disrespect to the Pew organization, but Reverend Samuel Rodriguez insists its numbers don’t tell the whole story. Pew recently released its survey on the changing faith of Hispanics in the nation, the largest minority group in the United States. As of 2022, Pew shows that 43 percent of adults identify as Catholic, a drop of 24 percent from 2010. And the number of religiously unaffiliated rose to 30 percent, up from 10 percent in 2010. What’s going on here? Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the world’s largest Christian Hispanic organization, says ‘unaffiliated’ in the Hispanic community does not mean not religious. The very opposite says Rodriguez: “We are a passionate Holy Spirit community, loving Jesus, either Catholic or evangelical or holding on to faith. And we don’t like the term affiliation! There it is”. On this episode of Lighthouse Faith podcast, Rodriguez has a lot more to say about the Pew survey, and also immigration, how Hispanics are voting Republican by nearly 45 percent, that they are pro-life, pro-family, and pro-traditional values when it comes to gender. Rodriguez has advised Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, and frequently consults with Congress advancing immigration and criminal justice reform. He can fill in the blanks left open by many a survey about the Hispanic community in America.
