Thread: PRESIDENT BUSH MEETS WITH LATINO PASTORS

President Bush met with Latino Pastors and he repeated that same, "This is a bill where people who live here in our country will be treated without amnesty but without animosity."

Latino evangelicals seek just immigration law

Political activism creates rift that could jeopardize conservative goals

Daniel González

The Arizona Republic

Jun. 8, 2007 12:00 AM

Latino evangelicals are becoming more politically active in hopes of persuading Congress to support an immigration reform package that weighs border security with a compassionate approach toward undocumented immigrants.

The political activism among Latino evangelicals, however, has created a rift with other evangelicals that could unravel political alliances on critical conservative issues such as abortion.

It also could dilute the voting power of a key segment of the Republican Party.

Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the evangelical movement. Latino evangelicals also are more likely to be Republican as Latino Catholics, who make up the majority of Hispanics. As their numbers grow, Latino evangelicals have the potential to offset the traditionally Democratic Hispanic vote.

The last election showed that Latino evangelicals are turned off by the hard-line stance on immigration taken by some conservative Republicans. As a result, any advantage Republicans stand to gain because of a surge in Latino evangelicals could be lost, making it harder for evangelicals to get support for conservative issues such as abortion, traditional marriage and school prayer.

Latino evangelicals are upset that other evangelicals either oppose any sort of legalization for undocumented immigrants or remain silent on the issue.

"Only a minority of White Evangelicals have spoken out on the issue. Most have avoided it, and we hear their silence," said the Rev. Luis Cortes, president of Esperanza USA in Philadelphia, one of the largest Hispanic evangelical groups in the country, with a network of 10,000 churches and groups.

"We are in a battle, so we need our brothers and sisters to stand with us. If they aren't going to stand with us, then how can they ask us to stand with them?"

The discord comes at the same time as a bipartisan immigration reform bill that would toughen border security while giving most of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States a chance to obtain legal status.

The bill maintained a balance of support in the Senate, but failed to pass procedural votes Thursday and may now be stalled. Democrats largely supported the measure. Many Republicans opposed granting legal status to illegal immigrants, largely, they said, because their constituents oppose it. Latino evangelicals hope their clout can change that opposition.

Morality of immigration

The Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research center, estimates that 4.1 million, or 15 percent, of the 27.5 millionadult Latinos are evangelicals.

Latino evangelical groups put the number much higher. There are about 15 million Latino evangelicals in the U.S., including 3 million who are charismatic Catholics, according to the Council on Faith in Action, a Latino evangelical organization. Together, Latino evangelicals and charismatic Catholics account for 25 percent of the 60 million evangelicals in the United States, the organization says. The number of Latino evangelicals is expected to keep swelling, largely because of immigration and conversions.

Latino evangelicals have been waging an organized campaign to sway other evangelicals to view immigration from a moral perspective, rooted in the Bible. As a group, evangelicals have a record of successfully lobbying lawmakers on other key issues, including gay marriage and abortion. More than two dozen states have approved constitutional provisions designed to block gay marriages. Under President Bush, lawmakers outlawed the practice known as partial birth abortion, which conservative Christians hailed as a victory.

Beginning Wednesday, hundreds of Latino evangelical pastors and church leaders will arrive in Washington, D.C., for the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast and Conference, where immigration is expected to dominate. Bush has spoken at the conference every year, and many Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have been invited this year, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

"These (Latino evangelical leaders) are people who rub shoulders with the White evangelical establishment, and they have been trying to call their attention to the issue of immigration as being a deeply moral issue that they should be supporting and to call them to task on this issue," said Edwin Hernandez, a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Latino Religion at Notre Dame University.

The response, however, has been "lukewarm at best," he said.

The difficulty, he said, is that Latino evangelicals tend to view illegal immigration as a personal issue that affects relatives, friends and fellow parishioners, Hernandez said. To them, immigrants who broke the nation's laws by being here unlawfully still deserve to be treated justly according to the Bible.

"The Latino community also wants to make a statement that these immigrants are contributing members of society and share many of the same fundamental American values such as a strong work ethic, an entrepreneurial spirit, family and a strong religious commitment," he said.

Many White evangelicals, on the other hand, view illegal immigration as a law-and-order issue that is hard to reconcile with Biblical teachings. To them, illegal immigrants are law-breakers, and giving them any chance at legal residency amounts to amnesty.

"The question is, to what degree will the evangelical non-Latino community move away from those stark positions on immigration and look at the more humane, moral aspects which Latinos are trying to highlight," Hernandez said.

Immigration is galvanizing Latino evangelical pastors because large parts of their congregations are made up of immigrants, said Eva Nuñez, an evangelical pastor and president of Almavision-Phoenix, a television station that broadcasts Christian programs in Spanish.

Some are meeting with White evangelical pastors or attending evangelical events to drum up support for immigration reform.

Others are gathering to pray every Friday at a church in downtown Phoenix.

"In the name of Jesus, we pray that God will bless President Bush and all the leaders in Congress to deliver a just and humane immigration law," Pastor Juan Beltran cried into a microphone one recent morning.

Successful alliances

Latino evangelicals are starting to achieve some success building alliances on the immigration issue with evangelicals, both White and African-American.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has declared support for an immigration bill that secures America's borders and treats undocumented immigrants justly.

Last month, a new coalition called Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform announced support for an immigration bill that beefs up border enforcement but also gives undocumented immigrants a way to earn legal residence.

The Rev. Derrick Harkins, a member of the coalition, said reaching a consensus on immigration among evangelicals is a long way off and may not come in time to affect the current debate in Congress.

"A lot of people who oppose immigration reform on any level keep throwing out firebombs of amnesty," Harkins said. "Sadly, it's been effective in the White evangelical community."

His group, made up of more than 100 mostly evangelical Christian leaders and organizations, doesn't see it that way. The coalition supports immigration reform that gives illegal immigrants an "earned pathway" to citizenship that requires them to pay some form of restitution, learn to read and write English, and demonstrate they are integrating into the larger society.

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They call us racists but then Bush only meets with latino pastors. What about the Amish pastors, the black pastors, the german pastors, the asian pastors and all of the other pastors out there that aren't latino?

This issue is being decided by one race and that's wrong!!!

As the evangelical movement has grown it has also spawned various political action agendas which are not central to its message. Sometimes there are even very apalling trends becoming attached: financial scams, militant groups, to name a few. Not unlike any other large scale movement.

So it is not surprising that some Latinos might veer off into extremist territory. Generally speaking. Christians are instructed to be obedient to a nations' laws, to remain humble in their conduct towards outsiders, even in other countries( so that they don't run afoul of the authorities) to not covet what others have, to be ready to go abroad for the Gospel.

With the great increase of evangelical religion in Latin America (and I personally know some of the greater names) there should be a corresponding move to improve justice and equal opportunity for all citizens in those countries. With all due respect to Catholics the "sanctuary" movement is largely a theological conclusion of their own, and not usually found in evangelical doctrine. We would not advocate people illegally entering another nation unless there was a clear record or threat of violence and persecution. To go somewhere else, illegally, simply for economic betterment would not normally be a proper reason.