Hispanic Congregations and the Second Generation
by Monte Sahlin
An important part of the growth of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America is the expanding number of immigrant churches, especially Hispanic congregations. Most of these function in the Spanish language and they provide significant support for newly-arrived migrants from Latin America. They also have serious difficulty holding on to the second generation—the young adults who came to “el Norte” as small children or were born here. They grow up with a different cultural experience than that of their parents and very high percentages leave the church as they establish families of their own.
An excellent ethnographic study of this reality was done by Ken R. Crane and has been published as Latino Churches: Faith, Family and Ethnicity in the Second Generation. (2003, New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing) Crane is an Adventist with a PhD in sociology from Michigan State University. He did his field work in an Adventist church as well as a Pentecostal group and a Catholic parish. His study provides useful insights for anyone seeking to understand what is going on with the changes in American religion.
Crane tells the stories of a number of young people to give the volume texture and accessibility. He also describes the larger picture, summarizing data from several sources along with his own work. He points out that the short-term impact of the growing immigrant sector “has been that some denominations like Seventh-day Adventists and Assemblies of God, which had been moving toward less tension with the world, find themselves in a ‘sectarian drift.’ The second generation however is moving in a less conservative direction. Surveys of Latino Adventist youth show that they depart significantly from their first generation counterparts on a number of fronts.”
Summarizing the research on second generation Hispanic young adults in the Adventist Church, Crane writes: “They are less aggressive evangelistically, less strident about certain defining doctrines, more open to seeing women in the pulpit, and more likely to be engaging in such activities as dancing (still a taboo among Anglo Adventists). In other words, the sectarian posture of immigrant Latino Adventists is not being reproduced in the second generation.”
There is also a strong sense of loyalty to the Adventist faith even among recent converts. Migrants find other Adventist families and connect, even if they were not yet baptized in their country of origin. Hispanic churches have good attendance at youth meetings on Friday night or Sabbath afternoon.
Crane’s stories and information paint a picture of a very dynamic set of realities as second generation immigrants get education and move toward what are likely to be middle class lives. It is difficult to predict where things will be in these Hispanic congregations 25 years from now or 50 years from now. I do know that there are patterns for this kind of thing. My great grandfather immigrated to the United States from Sweden in 1881. During the decades around the turn of the 20th century there were scores of Adventist churches planted among Swedish immigrants, functioning in the Swedish language. In fact, the denomination operated a Swedish seminary in Iowa for a period of time. Today there are no Adventist churches in North America operating in the Swedish language. The Swedish immigrant church has become completely assimilated.
Some say that because parts of the United States were once Spanish colonies and some entire states once were part of Mexico, there will always be a Spanish-speaking segment of the population. That makes sense to me, but that does not change the fact that immigrant communities are dynamic. There is an ongoing process of change in Latino churches. Don’t be fooled by your own stereotypes and assumptions.
The loss of the second generation sounds like the same trend observed in recent decades among other immigrant groups across America. That would seem to suggest that the presentation and practice of the Gospel does not have "staying power." It would be simplistic to suggest that this is particularly an Adventist problem because other denominations are reporting the same pattern of losing their youth.
We are losing our youth in all ethnic groups. That should be reason to ask serious questions:
1. What is the long-term future of the church? Will it grow or disappear?
2. Since the church lacks the power to retain the youth, is that not evidence we are lacking Divine empowerment?
3. What is there about our teachings and practices that is failing to connect our youth with God?
4. What can we do to reverse the situation?
Minimizing or dismissing these questions does nothing to identify and resolve the root problem. It is time we dug deeply to understand what is happening and discover the power of God to reverse the situation.
One practical thing that conferences can do is to refuse to hire pastors for immigrant churches that are not also fluent in English. This takes some courage because they often are strongly pressured by immigrant churches to hire pastors who are also new immigrants because they need jobs and the people relate to them and want to help them out. A pastor who has been here for a while and is strongly bilingual is in a better position to help new immigrants intigrate into American culture and can also relate better with the young people who are anxious to fit in to American culture as quickly as possible. Choosing the best parts of both cultures takes time and maturity two things that teen agers find to be short supply.
Some have commented that the task of "converting Hispanic Catholics" seems relatively "easy" compared, say, with successful assimilation of Anglo-European mainstream/liberal Christians. This is demonstrably true, statistically, but there is also a truism in evangelism that those who appear to be readily evangelized may also be the first to depart through the back door.
The Hispanic Catholic is often eager to leave behind a church that represents Catholic colonialism and limited opportunity; however, the children of these converts may see the Adventist Church as somehow a "Catholicism Light" that is not all that different from what their parents left behind. The hierarchical nature of Adventism is not perceived as all that dissimilar to that of Catholicism; the emphasis on works rather than grace is still alive and well in many parts of the Adventist Hispanic world.
Several conference-sponsored study books for second-generation Hispanics have appeared by the 10s of thousands of copies during the past three years to try to counteract the loss of second-generation Hispanics. While the first-generation converts by and large remain strongly tied to their new belief system, their children seem surprisingly ready to leave it behind, or replace it with another expression of Christianity. That this failure to bond with the second generation is being recognized is not an admission of failure; what it does is point out (in my opinion) that as among Anglo youth during the 1960s, we must recognize that the church can no longer take for granted that multi-generational Adventist youth will automatically follow the footsteps of their parents. More must be done to shepherd these new generations to a more satisfying realization of the beauty and appeal of Adventist Christianity and its mission. We have learned long ago that those we take for granted will readily reciprocate that feeling. That a large percentage of many second-generation Hispanic youth cannot, or do not, attend quality Adventist high schools and colleges is also noteworthy; much of the solidity in multigenerational retention of Anglo Adventism can be traced to larger percentages of Adventist Anglo youth who are advantaged by Adventist education and its gifted teachers, pastors, and guidance personnel.
Discussions about why our youth leave the church typically come from the view of a mature adult and because of this overlook the essential nature of a teen. Adolescence is the transition period between childhood and adulthood where youth observe and test every aspect of adult behavior and beliefs and then select what seems most likely to work for them. They embrace what works, then move on to test the next thing. Aspects of faith and church are not exempted from this testing. What they are seeing writ large in modern christianity is tradition being given more authority than scripture and ritual more than having an actual relationship with God. Adventism is no exception and actually is very "mainstream" in this.
The reality of our youth leaving in large numbers should be a warning flag to us that something is very wrong in the church. We cannot afford for the trend to continue or in another generation the church will be but a shadow of what it is today. .
If the Church wants to keep its young people, the #1 thing it can do is ensure Adventists marry Adventists. In my experience, even when two 'backsliders' with one foot out the door get together, they sometimes come back to the Church when they have kids. The worst thing for the long term retention of the Church is people being 'unequally yoked'.
Similarly, the amount of times I have seen a young man (because women seem stronger) 'on the slide' find a nice Christian girl and then – whamm – they are back in the fold. That young Adventist girl does more for that young man than a thousand sermons from the best speakers, or ten thousand Sabbath school classes.
The same goes for any religion, not just Adventists.
Many ancient cultures had and have official matchmakers. We Adventists have campmeetings, youth congresses and other activities, that do well as our unofficial matchmakers. Perhaps we could make it official…?
A friend and I once joked that each Church should have a matchmaker as an official ministry with a Board position. My own mother-in-law doesn't do a bad job at it in an unofficial capacity in our own local congregation.
Stephen,
Many a godly young woman has saved the man she married. Wonderful as that is, I find it hard to believe it could reverse the trend we are seeing with our youth leaving the church. Many youth leave before the age at which they would marry and never return to the church. I have seen them be marginal or leave, return to the church when they married an upstanding young woman and a few years later both of them were gone.
The one constant I have seen keep more young people in the church than any other is having parents and mentors who had an intimate and empowered relationship with God. This gave them a role model to follow as they built their own relationship with God.