Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, president of The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, America’s largest Hispanic Christian organization, spoke with The Christian Post on the increase of Hispanics in the country and their impact in terms of Christianity.
He said the 43 percent growth of Hispanics in the U.S. over the last decade is a “lifeboat for Christianity in American in the 21st century. They will be the spokesmen for the movement of sanctity and justice.”
The prominent evangelical said, “Previously, the Anglo-Saxon church was able to survive by reaching out exclusively to its own people, but now it can no longer do so.”
It contrast to the Hispanic population, the U.S. Census report showed that the non-Hispanic population grew only about five percent, and when compared to the total population, that portion of the population actually declined from 69 percent to 64.
Rodriguez also notes that the Hispanic church is seeing the fastest growth in history, and the largest denominations have corroborated, and said their growth is directly due to an increase in their Hispanic parishioners. The largest being the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, Churches of God, and The United Methodist Church.
The down side, says Rodriguez, is that though the Hispanic Christian population is growing quickly, many are lacking the education to be able to lead neither in the church or out of it.
To help raise the education level of the Hispanic youth in need, universities, denominations and churches launched the Alliance for Hispanic Christian Education.
“The message of the Hispanic community is about becoming ‘one’ and crying out, bringing America back to its core values that this great country was founded on,” said Rev. Mauricio Elizonado senior pastor of Walnut Park Assembly of God in Garland, Texas. “We are going to be the reconciling voices for the people who have been impoverished, the voices for the unborn, and the voices for people who have been marginalized. It is our time to rise up and shine – 50 million voices shouting together for the sake of our Lord, for the sake of humanity and for the sake of America, bringing our country back to revival.”
