Immigrants Are American Religion
Religion news reporting is an odd thing. Over the past couple of months, we have had a lengthy series of news items that, collectively, may represent the most important "religion story" of the past decade or so -- and yet few specifically religious outlets have even recognized the phenomenon, still less analyzed it. I am referring to the reports of the 2010 census, which have been appearing gradually since January, and which mainly receive media attention for what they portend about shifts in congressional representation. For anyone interested in American religious patterns though, and specifically for the nation's religious future, the census is an eye-opening and even shocking document.
Unlike many other countries, the US census asks no explicit questions about religious affiliation, but the data that are presented have major religious implications. Take for example the process of secularization, which is so marked in Europe and (hitherto) so relatively lacking in the US. Fertility rates are a useful if not infallible guide to religious attitudes. In a society with traditional views on religion, women are more likely to stay home and have large families, while those large families themselves keep communities tied to familiar religious institutions. When fertility rates drop sharply, as they have in Southern Europe since the 1970s, that trend coincides neatly with a decline in religious practice.
How interesting, then, to look at current trends in US family size. Overall, the US fertility rate is distinctly high for an advanced society, at almost 2.1 children per woman, but that raw number conceals significant ethnic differences. While Latino and Asian populations have high birth rates, Non-Hispanic whites presently have a low and almost European figure of around 1.8. As early as 2023, white children will be in the minority nationwide, and the white share of the population will shrink steadily over the coming decades. Quite likely, that fertility dip reflects a real weakening of religious allegiances among non-Hispanic whites, in contrast to Latinos, Asians and African-Americans. We have to speculate about the political and partisan implications of such an ethnic schism over the coming decades. Will more secularized whites lose interest in the culture war issues that have energized conservatives over the past 30 years?
Those fertility statistics also show that, of course, the US is becoming much more diverse even more rapidly than was projected even a few years ago, and moving swiftly to so-called majority-minority status, in which non-Latino whites no longer constitute an overall majority. That is already the situation in four states (California, Hawaii, Texas and New Mexico), and it will be true of the whole nation not long after 2040. The US now has 50 million Latinos and 15 million Asians, who together make up 21 percent of the national population. By 2050, that combined figure could be 35 percent, and that does not take account of people of African descent.
Not only are there more people with diverse ethnic backgrounds, but they are spread more widely across the country. The US is becoming far less segregated, in that people of one ethnic or religious background are much more likely to live near very different neighbors. And while diverse suburbs and "ethnoburbs" grow steadily, the once-homogeneous rural areas are stagnating or declining. Even states like Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas have now acquired sizable Latino and Asian populations. Meanwhile, African-Americans are no longer heavily concentrated in virtually segregated city areas, and have moved heavily into new social and regional settings, particularly into expanding suburbs. If there is a single lesson of the 2010 census, it is that diversity is no longer something that just affects other people.
The religious implications of all this are immense, especially the impressive growth of Latino and Asian populations since the key Immigration Act of 1965. As historian Oscar Handlin wrote in 1952, "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history." In the same vein, we can also say that immigrants are American religion. Mass immigration has transformed the nation's religious realities, especially in the Christian context. Roman Catholics alone account for over 40 percent of new immigrants, representing the equivalent of a substantial new Catholic diocese arriving each and every year. But increasingly, shifting demographics affect all denominations, including both mainline and evangelical Protestants.
Just think of the consequences of these changes, for instance, for suburban or small town churches that traditionally served an almost entirely white constituency. This does not mean that such churches necessarily practiced conscious segregation, but rather that Latinos or Asians (say) simply were not part of the church's catchment area. That situation is changing very fast, and those churches need to think urgently how to reach out to those new neighbors.
All churches need to plan for that not-distant day when they will live in a majority-minority nation and, possibly, a majority-minority state. But how can they respond to such an unprecedented situation, such a strange new world? Will they try and serve all ethnicities equally? How far, for instance, should churches aim for special ministry programs aimed at other ethnic groups, even special services? Should they try to incorporate other ethnic traditions, however unconvincingly, into services aimed chiefly at white members? Or will white churches remain fairly homogeneous ethnically, at the cost of becoming steadily older and grayer, and ever less relevant to the emerging multi-racial American culture? Just who are the churches seeking to serve?
The answers to such questions are not obvious. The good news is that, because of the 2010 census, those churches now have at least a decade or two to think through the possible responses -- should they choose to take advantage of that opportunity.
