Tucson, USA - It is noon on a hot Tucson Sunday in August. Though the lights and air-conditioning have just gone out in the New Life Ministry/Ministerios Vida Nueva, hundreds of people continue to pour into its worship space.
On this particular Sunday about 300 people attend an English service, and all 700 seats in the Pentecostal church's worship space fill up for the Spanish service. More people stand at the back. Most of the worshippers have been coming to the church for five years or less. Just eight years ago, the church attracted fewer than 100 people for its Sunday services.
"In Mexico you feel pressure to go to Catholic Church. In the U.S. you don't have that pressure," said Tony Loya, 32, a native of Puerto Penasco, Mexico, who has attended New Life's weekly Spanish services for six months. "I grew up Catholic, but I like the fellowship here. The people are nice. It feels like home, and I'm comfortable."
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Loya is not alone. Hispanics converting from Catholicism, particularly new immigrants to the U.S., are fueling growth in Pentecostalism, which is a form of evangelical Christianity that is typically more spirit-filled and less structured than traditional Christian worship.
In Tucson, American Indians and people seeking to recover from drug and alcohol addiction are also bolstering growth in Pentecostal worship.
"Why should we have to be orderly and constrained in church? All I found in Catholicism were rituals and tradition," said Rosie Zayas, 55, who along with her husband, Milo, started a Pentecostal Church - Free Gospel of Life - nearly two years ago.
"In Pentecostalism I found self-expression, fellowship and worship of the true living God. And everyone is so happy," Rosie Zayas said.
Pentecostalism is filled with visible emotion - leaders often shout rather than read sermons and worshippers frequently speak mystical, foreign words they believe come from God.
And Pentecostalism in 2007 is "timely to the umpteenth power" because of its growth in the U.S. and the world, according to Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the largest evangelical Christian Hispanic group in the country.
A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life says at least one quarter of the world's 2 billion Christians are part of a Pentecostal or charismatic movement, between 400 million and 600 million people. Charismatic generally refers to Christians who believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit but are not members of Pentecostal denominations.
"In Arizona and New Mexico there is exceptional growth," Rodriguez said. "In the next 15 to 20 years a majority of Hispanics in Arizona will be evangelical, charismatic or Pentecostal Christians. And this definitely has political ramifications. Pentecostals are more conservative and more follow the lines of white evangelicals, particularly on social issues like marriage and sanctity of life."
But statistics on Pentecostalism in the U.S. are difficult to find, since many of the churches are independent and don't report membership numbers. Some scholars place the national population at about 10 million, but estimates vary greatly.
By most accounts, it is growing. Two of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the U.S. - Assemblies of God and Cleveland, Tenn.-based Church of God - reported healthy membership growth between 1990 and 2000. The denominations report a total of nearly 4 million worshippers nationwide.
Adherents to the Assemblies of God faith grew by 65 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to a census of American religion published by the Nashville-based Glenmary Research Center. The Cleveland Church of God added 24 churches in Arizona between 1990 and 2000, and reported membership growth of more than 100 percent, the Glenmary study says.
Exactly how many Hispanic Catholics are converting to Pentecostalism is also an elusive number. The Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported this spring that 68 percent of the country's Hispanics are Roman Catholic, and 15 percent are born-again, evangelical or Pentecostal.
Officials of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson acknowledge that Pentecostalism is luring Hispanics away, particularly new immigrants.
"Definitely there is a concern. The thing is that in the Catholic Church, everything is usually very subdued, like the pomp and circumstance and the liturgy," said Ruben Davalos, diocese director of evangelization and Hispanic ministry. "Those (Pentecostal) churches have more of an emotional thing. It gets you going and appeals to people's feelings."