BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Tristate's growing Hispanic presence -- evident on supermarket shelves, in the workplace and on cable television -- is showing up in the pews of local churches as well.
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Dalia Alazar, 3, of Winton Place eats some cotton candy at the Hispanic Festival at St. Charles Borromeo church in Carthage.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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Catholics, Baptists and Pentecostals alike are responding to a 30 percent increase in the local Hispanic population by offering everything from Spanish-language worship to English-as-a-second-language classes. What began as an almost invisible outreach a few years ago is suddenly a top priority for many area religious groups:
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati opened a parish for the Catholic Hispanic Community in June in a Carthage church, St. Charles Borromeo, whose dwindling numbers had prompted its closure. A Hispanic center -- offering everything from legal services to English classes to secondhand clothes -- will open Oct. 2 at St. Charles. The community is holding its fifth annual Hispanic Festival this weekend.
Several local Southern Baptist associations are looking to hire a "circuit-rider" preacher to minister to the Hispanic populations of Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati and Hamilton. One local Southern Baptist church, Highland Avenue Baptist in Elmwood Place, already has a weekly Spanish-language service and Sunday school.
A Springdale Pentecostal church, Calvary Pentecostal, started a Latino outreach six months ago that has grown to include weekly Sunday school classes in Spanish, bimonthly fellowship meetings and its first Spanish-language worship service, scheduled for Wednesday.
The Diocese of Covington has a Sunday Mass and outreach ministry to the Hispanic Catholics of Northern Kentucky.
And local United Methodists, who brought Bibles and hymnals to Latinos in Lower Price Hill through a congregation there, now rely on a Panamanian pastor in Over-the-Rhine to minister to the local Spanish-speaking population.
"You look around and everywhere you go there are Hispanics," said Sharon Mullen, who coordinates Calvary Pentecostal's Hispanic ministry with her husband, Kevin. "We felt (Spanish) is the second-most prevalent language spoken in the U.S. right now and it really presents itself to befriend these people and try to lead them to the Lord and support them in whatever way possible."
Statistics support the observations of Mrs. Mullen and others. More than 12,260 Hispanics called the Tristate home in 1996, an increase of nearly a third over 1990, according to the Census Bureau. One study predicts there will be more than 67,000 Hispanics in Greater Cincinnati by 2020, with the largest increases expected in Hamilton and Butler counties.
The Cincinnati Hispanic Catholic community remains the largest in the area, with 200 to 225 people attending Sunday Mass. But contrary to stereotypes, not all Hispanics are Catholic. Calvary Pentecostal draws 15 to 30 people to its bimonthly fellowship, and about 25 Latinos come weekly to the Highland Avenue Baptist meeting.
The Rev. Andrew Greeley, the Chicago priest - sociologist - novelist, found similar numbers nationally when he looked at Hispanics and denominations. The number of Catholics in the Hispanic population dropped from 78 percent in 1970 to 67 percent in the mid-1990s, while the percentage of Protestants grew from 17 percent to 23 percent. Although Hispanic fundamentalists and Pentecostals draw a great deal of attention, Father Greeley found that nearly half of those who had left Catholicism joined a mainline Protestant church. Locals who have started a church outreach to Latinos find it isn't easy. There is a language barrier between most Tristate Christians and new immigrants. And the local Hispanic community is varied, with vast differences in their countries of origin, current homes and educational levels.
"The Hispanic community here isn't like New York or Chicago. There are quite a few Hispanics here, but we're scattered all over. There's no one area where there's a concentration," said the Rev. Santiago Samms, pastor of Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church in Over-the-Rhine.
"Long ago, most of the Hispanics who were here were what I call white-collar, upper-crust Hispanics, more educated -- your doctors, attorneys, engineers. Now you're getting the farm workers. They're different, and we need to help them in different ways."
There are other differences, in worship style and culture, that local churches need to observe when ministering to Latinos. For Hispanic Catholics, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is an enormous occasion, and St. Jude and St. Martin de Porres also receive special devotions. Baptisms are major events for the community, as is the Christmas procession known as the posada.
"It's all the differences you see in the cultures. For example, very often our Mass on Sunday -- I push to start on time, but in months past it'd be 15 minutes, half an hour before we'd get started," Father Nelson said. "It's much more emotional, compared to Cincinnati's traditional German Catholicism."
Even at Calvary Pentecostal -- a denomination already steeped in emotional worship -- there are still differences in style between the Latino newcomers and the earlier members.
"For our church, we'd start with the congregation singing and sing for half an hour," Mrs. Mullen said. "But these guys, singing for them is much longer than that. It can go on for hours. It's really spirited and really exciting."
The local churches provide similar services, especially to new immigrants: English classes, clothing and food, baptisms for new babies and help in finding work.
"If they need to get married, I perform the wedding. If they're in jail, I go visit them," the Rev. Mr. Samms said. "If they come to worship with us, I do the service in English and Spanish."
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