With his hands lifted high and his eyes closed tightly, Nery Fajardo sings praises to his God. Next to him, wife Martha clutches her chest as she sings. And the hundreds of others inside the sanctuary of Iglesia Evangelica Bethania, Bethany Evangelical Church in Farmers Branch, do the same as a nine-member choir and a band that includes guitar, bass, keyboard and drums, lead them in worship that lasts more than an hour.
It's a far cry from the deep-rooted Roman Catholic tradition that Mr. Fajardo knew and loved so dearly that it led him to seminary early in life. The six years that he spent in seminary in Honduras, where he witnessed sexual abuse by priests and homosexual activity among students, turned him away from Catholicism.
But it is here, at an evangelical church in which 95 percent of the 2,000 people are former Catholics, where he says he belongs.
"I have the fulfillment now that I searched so hard for," Mr. Fajardo says. "My soul is at peace."
He says his duty as a Christian is to spread the news of Jesus Christ, to help others find the same peace. But Mr. Fajardo says he won't use the abuse scandal plaguing the Catholic Church as ammunition.
"The only thing that can change a person is the word of God," says the 35-year-old father of two. "I won't hide my love for Christ, but I also won't force anything on anyone. I would pray that they would see the light in me and want to have what I have."
Hispanic exodus
However, he says he has no doubt Latinos – for whom Catholicism is passed down from generation to generation – are looking for something else.
A 2001 survey by the Barna Research Group showed that 68 percent of Hispanic adults in 1990 said the church that they attended most frequently was Catholic. Last year, that figure dropped to 53 percent. The majority of churches they are turning to are Protestant churches that are not mainline churches, says George Barna, who directed the study. He expects that many Hispanics will leave the Catholic Church for a Protestant church in the next few years.
Some reports say that as many as 600,000 Latinos leave the Catholic Church every year. But experts say that number is hard to pin down because so many Hispanics are immigrants.
A study by the Instituto Fe y Vida, or Institute for Faith and Life, found that about 74 percent of foreign-born Hispanics are Catholic.
There are no official statistics, said Dr. Michael Foley, professor of politics at American University in Washington, D.C. It's difficult to compile those because many immigrants are hard to find, are not accustomed to registering at the parishes they attend and do not respond to English surveys. Dr. Foley said that for many, Catholicism is a folk religion that is home based with not much attachment to the church.
"There is also a phenomenon where people who attend Protestant churches also attend Catholic churches and don't think of themselves as having left the Catholic Church," he said.
Dr. Foley said he heard through his studies a woman who was attending a Methodist church for the social service programs it offered and a Pentecostal church because she enjoyed the worship music, but she still attended Mass.
Increasing numbers
In the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, Latinos make up about two-thirds of the 800,000 faithful.
The numbers can only continue to increase, said Joseph Claude Harris, an independent researcher who has studied the Catholic Church for 25 years. Mr. Harris said that in 2000, there were 90,000 baptisms of Hispanic infants in the Catholic Church compared with only 23,000 funerals.
Still, the majority of Latinos do not attend Mass regularly, experts say.
Lupita Moreno is not one of those Latinos. Mrs. Moreno and her husband, Jose Angel, and their four children, attend regularly and are very involved at St. James Catholic Church in Dallas.
Mrs. Moreno, 39, says she realizes many Hispanics only attend Mass on special occasions. She sees that every Sunday, she says. It is those folks who are most likely to leave the church because of the abuse scandal.
"If you don't get involved, you're just in the dark," she says. "You look at it from the outside in, and it's easy to say, 'Oh, it's a bad thing. I'm leaving.'
"If you get involved, you see that there is light, a strong light that makes you follow and follow and follow. That's what keeps me going in times like this – a deep faith."
The Rev. Virgilio Elizondo, a prominent theologian and creative program director of Catholic Television of San Antonio, says the scandal has for some, like Mrs. Moreno, deepened their faith, while for others it has prompted them to leave. It is difficult to say how many people will leave, he said.
"There's a concern that people are leaving the church, but I don't think that the church is doing things just to keep them in," he says. "The church is really rendering the pastoral service they deserve."
But it is also the responsibility of Hispanics not just to be served but to serve, Father Elizondo says. They need to prepare lay leaders and leaders in the vocation. Experts say one of the reasons that Latinos leave for Protestant churches is because they want a pastor who not only speaks their language but also is of their culture. In the Catholic Church, only a small percentage of priests are Hispanic.
Protestant training
Protestant denominations have stepped up their work to train more Latinos in the ministry. In San Antonio, the Hispanic Baptist Theological School just recorded the second-highest enrollment in its 55-year history with nearly 350 students. Most of those come from a Catholic background, officials say.
Rudy Hernandez, an evangelist who travels to Latin America, was recently hired by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention to help start Hispanic churches in the state.
"We feel sorry for the Catholic Church," he says, "but we refuse to grow at the expense of somebody else. We have chosen the high road. We will tell what good God has done through us and what they can do to find peace and comfort. But we are not targeting anyone."
Mr. Fajardo, who is now a leader at Bethania, says he felt like a traitor when he left the Catholic Church – like he had betrayed his family. But, he says, every person has to search for what is right for him. He hadn't been in any church for about 15 years until he and his wife found Bethania, he says.
"I didn't change my religion," Mr. Fajardo says. "I changed my lifestyle. For me, Christianity is a way of life."