A pope and a people

Nine out of 10 U.S. Roman Catholics have a favorable view of Pope Francis, according to a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center. At the time of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s election to the papacy, CNN reported that “news of a Latino papa has sent a jolt of euphoria through Argentina and throughout Latin America. Imagine winning the World Cup Championship times 10. There also will be a lot of excitement among Latinos in the United States, perhaps enough to reignite their passion for the Church and bring them back to Mass.”

Maybe. The question is an important one for individual lives and for Roman Catholics generally. Hispanics are likely to dominate American Catholicism because young generations are considerably more Hispanic than older ones. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University reported in 2010 that Hispanics comprise 54 percent of the U.S. Roman Catholic population born in 1982 or later, in contrast to only 15 percent of those born before 1943.

Though Hispanics comprise an ever-larger part of U.S. Roman Catholicism, Hispanics themselves identify less and less as Roman Catholic. Pew Research Center in its National Survey of Latinos and Religion identified a 12-point drop in U.S. Hispanics identifying as Roman Catholic, from 67 percent to 55 percent, in just three years ending in July 2013. The report says “a day could come when a majority of Catholics in the United States will be Hispanic, even though the majority of Hispanics might no longer be Catholic.”

Many U.S. Hispanics leave Roman Catholicism in order to become evangelicals. What do they make of Pope Francis? Though Hispanic evangelicals can applaud “the collective cultural significance of a Latino Pope,” said Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, doing so does not undermine their commitment to doctrine: “Our people want a personal relationship with Christ not based on what we do for God but rather on what God already did for us.”

Nevertheless, Rodriguez highlighted three areas of agreement—life, marriage, and religious liberty—adding, “In essence the Latino Pope serves as an inspiration for Hispanic Evangelicals to cooperate with Catholics without sacrificing doctrinal truth.”

Poverty and creativity

Long before the 1978 publication of Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, evangelicals thought about the relationship between their faith and helping the poor. A bevy of new work aims to broaden the conversation.

“The church is not the church if it’s not deeply concerned about the poor,” says Greg Forster of the Kern Family Foundation. He insists that churches should consider poverty relief within both a cultural and an economic context. Kern recently sponsored the Acton Institute’s video curriculum on the gospel and culture, For the Life of the World, and launched the foundation’s own Oikonomia Network, a consortium of pastors and local churches.

Founded in 2011, the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics (IFWE) emphasizes freedom, fulfillment, and flourishing, according to IFWE vice president Art Lindsley: “The more people are free to use their own creativity as image bearers of God the more they’ll be fulfilled and, as more people are doing that, there will be flourishing.” One recent IFWE book, For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty, includes chapters by Brian Griffiths, Peter Greer, and others. “Only God creates something out of nothing,” Lindsley said. “We are called to create something out of something.” —J.B.

—James Bruce is an associate professor at John Brown University and a graduate of the World Journalism Institute mid-career course