The National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NaLEC) seeks to respond to a real need for Latino and Latina Evangelical voices committed to the common good and justice in the public sphere. A national coalition with the objective of educating from a common good Latino-Evangelical perspective in the public sphere may increase the probability of the enactment for just legislations. We seek to do this by promoting and amplifying the voices of this growing constituency. The aim is to both provide alternative voices to the existing partisan voices and  to create national awareness about the growing number of Latino Evangelicals who are not captive to partisan politics. The NaLEC initiatives can provide a platform for this growing and often unheard demographic

The main objectives include: 

• Building a national coalition and movement of Hispanic Evangelicals that will educate their constituencies around public policy issues that contribute to the common good.
• Providing established and promising Hispanic Evangelical leaders an access-ramp to a public policy education.
• Increasing the number of voices that educate for solutions to some of the most intractable national challenges facing Hispanic communities.
• Provide an alternative perspective to a monolithic understanding of Hispanic/Latino Evangelicals.
• Fostering  a global partnership with  well-respected Common Good organizations  in ways that our consistent with the NaLEC’s  strategic plan of education  to the church
• Our Campaign Focus: The P.I.E. Initiatives:

A national education campaign around three  major issues. We call these our P.I.E. (Poverty, Immigration, Educational Equity) initiatives

Initial campaigns will be:

• Poverty - Impact on Poverty and Hunger among U.S. under-served communities

• Immigration Reform
• Educational Equity - Educate around common sense education reform.

“Their numbers are growing—-and fast. Today there are 31 million Hispanics in the United States. By 2050 the population is projected to be 91 million—an increase of more than 200 percent. And Hispanics are younger than the rest of the nation: a third are under 18.” 
[“Latino Americans: The Face of the Future,” Newsweek, July 12, 1999, p.50]

The Hispanic Boom

Much has been said of the Hispanic boom in the United States. In March 2004 Business Week published a special feature entitled “Hispanic Nation” in which it asked, “Is America ready for the Hispanic Boom?” The 45.5 million US Hispanics currently make up about 15 percent of the population. While the vast majority of Latinos are Catholic, a January 2003 research project by University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (Hispanic Churches in American Public Life) reported the following statistics:

• 77 percent (8.1 million) of all Latino non-Catholics are Protestant or other Christian. Of this group, 85 percent (7 million) identify as Protestant. Of those the great majority are Evangelical or Pentecostal.
• Latino Mainline Protestants make up 14.8 percent (1.6 million) of all Latino Protestants, of whom 43 percent (more than 666,000) claim to be born-again.
• There are now more Latino Protestants in the United States than Jews, Muslims, or Episcopalians and Presbyterians combined.

The Absence of Hispanic Evangelical Voices for the Common Good:

Although Hispanic Evangelical voices are increasingly being heard in national conversations, few focus on advocacy beyond immigration reform.  Wherever possible this new organization will partner with initiatives that align themselves with our stated goals.

© 2010-2012 National Latino Evangelical Coalition