In Oregon, the number of Latino Episcopalians has increased more than five-fold over the past decade. Church leaders say the influx is, in part, because the denomination’s worship services look and sound familiar to Hispanics raised in the Catholic Church. But Northwest Episcopal Churches are luring Latinos with a focused marketing campaign.
The 10 o’clock high mass at Saints Peter and Paul Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon probably sounds a lot like it did when the congregation was founded nearly a century ago.
Father Kurt Neilson leads the liturgy, as he has for the past 17 years. He says attendance at the two morning services has been relatively flat. The real growth is in the afternoon.
“Courting” them is a good idea. Whether TEC is capable of growing its churches among Latinos any more than it has failed to do with other groups remains to be seen.
As a Catholic priest myself I was glad to see that the parish makes it clear that it is not part of the Catholic Church. Even so, I wonder how clear that is to those who come and go, Catholic-style, popping in and out of the liturgy. In my previous parish in London there was an old-style Anglo-Catholic church nearby. We had several instances of Poles and Filipinos who saw the sign advertising Mass and went there to have their children baptised, only to discover to their surprise, when registering them for parochial school, that their children had been baptised under the auspices of the Church of England. Well, baptism is baptism, I know, and we are all in Christ. But I thought it dissembling of the man not to make his ecclesiasal situation clear.
TEC has done well with Hispanics, at least here in Texas:
http://pr.dfms.org/study/exports/2898-1512_20120814_07433508.pdf
http://pr.dfms.org/study/exports/4029-4357_20120814_07441274.pdf
You can’t see charts, but the two Hispanic language parishes in the Epis. Diocese of Fort Worth (ACNA) have similar positive growth.