LEONARD DINNERSTEIN (Department of History, University of Arizona): People don’t like “the other” and in times of crisis, in times of great discontent, the minority group de jour is victimized as being the source of all the problems and also they have lower status so you can dump on them and most of your contemporaries agree with you.

High school students at demonstration: Our education is under attack. What do we do? Fight back.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: These high school students feel dumped on. They are protesting a new Arizona law that would cut the Tucson school district’s budget by $36 million a year if the district doesn’t stop the way it’s allegedly teaching its Mexican-American studies classes. State superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne wrote part of the law himself.

TOM HORNE: It says that you can’t have courses that are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnicity or that arouse resentment against other ethnicities. That’s the essence of it.

SEVERSON: The law also says ethnic studies classes cannot advocate ethnic solidarity or teach the overthrow of the US government. Horne was just elected Arizona attorney general after eight years as the state’s school chief. Each year he says he became more determined to shut down Tucson’s ethic studies program.

HORNE: It was necessary because in the Tucson Unified School District they were dividing kids up by race. They had Raza studies for the Mexican kids—La Raza, as you know, means “the race” in Spanish; African-American studies for the African-American kids; Indian studies for the Native-American kids, Asian Studies for the Asian kids. To me it sounds like the Old South dividing kids up by race that way.

SEVERSON: His primary witness against Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program is John Ward, who taught the class back in 2003 until, he says, he was pushed aside and eventually quit. Ward is Hispanic himself.

JOHN WARD: I think clearly their purpose was to create the next generation of ethnic radicals who could hit the pavement. They simply wanted to spread this message in a fertile classroom.

HORNE: They teach kids that they live in occupied Mexico, that the United States is run by a clique of white racist imperialist people that want to oppress Latinos.

SEVERSON: Abel Morado is the principal of the Tucson Magnet High School.

ABEL MORADO: If he believes that we are putting kids in a position to mistrust their fellow student and the authority figures in their life, then there’s not much I can say about that other than to say, well, you may be describing a program, but you’re not describing this one.

SEVERSON: Julio Cammarota is an associate professor of Mexican-American studies at the University of Arizona, where the faculty senate unanimously approved a resolution calling the law “distasteful” and “disturbing.” He says Horne has never attended an ethnic studies class in eight years.

JULIO CAMMAROTA (College of Education, University of Arizona): If he came to the classroom he would see that the classrooms are diverse. Students spend quite a bit of time learning how to respect each other’s cultures and cultural differences, so there is not this idea that one culture is superior to another, and that’s what he’s sort of implying, that there is cultural superiority of one group over the other. That’s ridiculous.

SEVERSON: This is a Mexican-American studies class at one of six high schools in the Tucson district. The class focuses on history and current affairs. The subject on this day was Native American Indian history. The teacher is Maria Frederico Brummer.

MARIA FREDERICO BRUMMER: I think it’s important for every one of our students to be strong citizens and knowing that they have a commitment to democracy, and part of that commitment is knowing exactly where our country is coming from, our history. Some of it might be negative and it’s our responsibility not to repeat any part of that negative history again

SEVERSON: Superintendent Horne says the classes are dividing kids by race, but not all the kids in this class were Hispanic, who make up over 60 percent of Tucson’s high school students. This is 15-year-old Shelbi Plank.

SHELBI PLANK: If you’re in a normal American history class, you learn the white perspective, like, and if you’re in the ethnic studies class you learn from the different races perspective, like from Asians you learn about how they have started their own perspective on things.

CAMMAROTA: And they’re not by far the best students at the school, but because of these courses they tend to do better than their peers at their school. They end up doing better. They end up scoring better on standardized tests, they end up graduating at a very high rate, they end up going on to college.

SEVERSON: Superintendent Horne disagrees with just how successful the program has been, but it does seem to have created some enthusiasm with the students. This is sixteen- year-old Carmen Camacho.

CARMEN CAMACHO: I love that class. I’m not going to lie to you. I love that class.

SEVERSON: Why do you love it?

CAMACHO: It’s just like you get to learn other people’s culture. You get to learn where other people came from.

SEVERSON: John Ward thinks the part of the new law that prohibits teaching the overthrow of America is not overreaching.

(speaking to John Ward): Do you think they were actually teaching that in these classes?

WARD: I do. When they teach that the entire governmental system is solely the product of the white power structure and that these students essentially have to resist that, the end result is that you essentially have to either totally overthrow or in some way totally remake the government.

CAMMAROTA: That’s treason, and we wouldn’t be teaching students to overthrow and be traitors of their country. We actually teach students to actually love the country, love to be here and be able to participate and contribute to this country.

SEVERSON: The turmoil here in Arizona over Hispanic issues like immigration and ethnic studies can be found in states throughout the US. In 2009 alone, over 200 state laws were passed aimed primarily at undocumented Hispanics. Ten states are now considering legislation fashioned after Arizona’s tough immigration law. It is, as they say, a hot-button issue.

Leonard Dinnerstein is an author and retired history professor at the University of Arizona. He says historically the finger-pointing in Arizona and other states, mostly directed against Hispanics, is nothing new.

DINNERSTEIN: So if you want to go through history with the ethnic groups, when the Scots Irish came, in colonial America they sent them out to the frontier because nobody wanted to live near the Scots Irish. They were irascible. The biggest prejudice in this country aside from anti-black and anti-Indian was anti-Catholic.

SEVERSON: He says one of the factors in today’s climate is that people feel vulnerable and fearful.

DINNERSTEIN: When people are unhappy they look for scapegoats: I’m not unhappy because of me, I’m unhappy because “those people” make me unhappy.

SEVERSON: One of the states considering an immigration law like the one in Arizona is Utah. But recently a group of civic and religious leaders created a compact http://utahcompact.com/ asking the legislature to consider more humane legislation. The Mormon Church supports it. So does Catholic Bishop John Wester.

REV. JOHN WESTER (Bishop of Salt Lake City and Chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration): My hope would be that religion can encourage people to look into the issues for themselves and to take a proactive, responsible position. All of us have a responsibility as citizens to weigh in on this and to be informed, not just to believe what you hear necessarily next door, but to really look into the issues, and then to really, to put a human face and to ask the question why are the immigrants here? What is it that’s driving them here? What do we need to do to solve this question? It’s a very complicated question.

SEVERSON: While the grownups fight it out in Arizona, the kids who attend ethnic studies are learning how democracy works.

CAMACHO: The government needs to really see what this class is about, and not just talking and saying, oh, it’s just, you know, negative stuff, because it’s not.

SEVERSON: Tucson educators say they don’t intend to change the way they are teaching because, they say, they’re not teaching anything wrong. Several have filed a suit against Superintendent Horne. The new law takes effect December 31.

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DEBORAH POTTER, correspondent: The outlook for many young African-American boys is grim. National studies say about half will drop out of high school. But for these boys the future is considerably brighter.

MARCUS WASHINGTON (WJA Assistant Headmaster, speaking to students): Five, four, three, two—two, one. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.

POTTER: This small middle school is bucking the trend.

WASHINGTON (speaking to students): Come on, fellas. Let’s get in line.

POTTER: In just eight years it’s built a strong track record, with every one of its graduates either enrolled in or graduated from high school. More than 80 percent have gone on to college.

STUDENT: Good morning, Mr. Washington.

WASHINGTON (speaking to student): Later on we’ve got to talk about something.

STUDENT: All right.

POTTER: Washington Jesuit Academy [WJA] is an independent Catholic school. All of its students are African American or Latino. Most are not Catholic. Tuition is $18,000 a year, but families pay nothing. The money comes mainly from private donations and foundation grants.

SHANA HAIRE (WJA Parent): I just love my kids, you know, and I want the best for them. If you have your education you can go anywhere. Anything that you want to do in life, you can do it.

POTTER: Shana Haire’s son, Domonic, is in seventh grade at WJA and willingly gets up before dawn to begin a rigorous 12-hour day at school, 11 months a year.

DOMONIC HAIRE: It’s fun to do because you learn more every day, you know, you get to interact more with the students, so it’s like it’s another part of your family.

SHANA HAIRE: I’m a single mom. His dad isn’t around. I like the fact that most of the faculty is men. He definitely needs that in his life—someone he can relate to.

POTTER: Male teachers, small classes, and well-equipped classrooms are the norm here.

TEACHER (speaking to student): Excellente!

POTTER: But what really sets the school apart is the student body. Three-quarters of the boys live in single-parent households. One in five has a parent in prison. The average family income is slightly above the poverty line, so the school feeds its students breakfast and lunch, as well as a complete dinner five days a week. And there’s something else on the menu:

JOSEPH POWERS (WJA Headmaster, speaking to students): Let us remind ourselves right now that we are in the presence of God.

POTTER: Religion and an emphasis on moral values

POWERS (speaking to students): Today’s focus is going to be on gratitude. Where have you seen gratitude? Where have you seen it in action here?

STUDENT: When I help somebody with their homework they said thank you.

STUDENT: Your peers recognizing your mistakes and trying to help you correct them.

POWERS: How about that, guys? Thanking, being grateful to your peers for pointing out something that you’re doing wrong. Most people don’t like being corrected, right? You’re doing something wrong and if your peers are pointing it out and you know you’re doing it wrong, you need to be grateful for that, because they want you to get better. We want you to get better every single day here.

POTTER: Washington Jesuit Academy is one of 64 schools in 27 states and the District of Columbia that use a similar faith-based curriculum. They’re part of what’s called the Nativity-Miguel Network, educating boys and girls from some of the poorest communities in the country. Two-thirds of the schools, including WJA, have opened in the past decade since a wealthy businessman set up a foundation to support the network with almost $10 million in grants. Many of the boys get scholarships paid for by individual donors.

MARY CLAIRE RYAN (Executive Director, Nativity-Miguel Network of Schools): People want to be a part of something good. People want to be a part of something that works. People want to be a part of something that is effective.

TEACHER (speaking to class): Make sure you get through all five religions today…

POTTER: Almost all of the network schools are affiliated with Catholic religious orders. About half are co-ed, and the vast majority are middle schools, focused on children ages 11 to 13.

RYAN: These are the years where students academically can slip very quickly and quite severely and get off path.

POWERS (speaking to students): It’s not a social period, it’s a work period, right?

RYAN: Generally students are coming to us below grade level. What many of our students are not lacking in, though, is a desire to do well and motivation to do well. A teacher senses in a child that level of ambition. Children can tell even by an environment, a physical environment, that “I matter.” Children know this.

ANN CLARK (WJA Director of Counseling Services): They come from schools where they’ve hidden in the back row for years and passed, and we ask them to work 12 hours a day 11 months of the year in very small classes where there’s nowhere to hide, in the service of a future that is not always imaginable to them.

POTTER: And yet they respond to that?

CLARK: They respond to that like plants to light.

POTTER: Not all students thrive, however. Nationally, about 30 percent of students who enroll in Nativity-Miguel schools don’t graduate. Many are dismissed for academic or behavior problems. Severe family dysfunction, not a lack of desire to learn, is often to blame.

CLARK: That’s pretty bad. That is pretty bad. But you know what? We all sleep well at night because we give them every possible chance, every possible chance.

TEACHER (speaking to students): Get your piece of paper, take it step by step. I’m not going to do the work for you.

POTTER: The support starts at school with a required two-hour study hall after dinner five nights a week, supervised by teachers and volunteer tutors. Nativity-Miguel schools also provide academic support and counseling to students after they graduate, helping them win scholarships to elite high schools like Gonzaga, a Jesuit prep school in Washington, DC, where Demitrius McNeil is now a junior. He wouldn’t be here, he says, without WJA.

DEMITRIUS MCNEIL: If you’re a good person overall, then academics will come, you know, so they taught me how to be a good person first, and then they taught me overall how to become well academically. It’s a wonderful opportunity that’s not given every day in every other school. You will quickly find that out. It’s for kids that’s willing to put in the work and the effort.

POTTER: With just 76 enrolled in grades six, seven, and eight, WJA isn’t easy to get into. There are at least three applicants for every opening. Admissions requirements include a low family income, decent grades, and a motivated parent. Most students, like Elijah Simms, came here because their mothers pushed them. As a Muslim, Elijah wondered how he’d handle being at a Jesuit school 12 hours a day.

ELIJAH SIMMS: My first instinct was like no, I will not, definitely, I will never go to this school ever in my life.

POTTER: Now he’s winning awards…

TEACHER (speaking at assembly): Most improved, seventh grade, Elijah Simms.

POTTER: …and thanking his teachers.

SIMMS: The teachers are more caring here. They care about me as a person. They push you to a higher level.

TEACHER (speaking at assembly): Seventh-grade student of the week, Domonic Haire.

POTTER: Remember Domonic? He’s a Baptist who couldn’t be more thrilled to have earned a bracelet with the words “Men for Others,” a paramount objective of Jesuit education.

DOMONIC HAIRE: It says “Man for Others,” and in our school being a man for others is a big thing; because it’s an all-boys school they want us to grow as men and to be helpful to the community and to be close to God and help others in need.

CLARK: We do this not to create Catholics, but because we are Catholic. It’s the social justice teachings of the church that drive us and that basically “Men for Others” kind of works in almost any religious setting that you have or any religious creed. It’s basically leaving things better than you found them.

POTTER: What many of these students find when they go home after school are tough neighborhoods where they’re expected to set a good example.

RYAN: We’ve all heard stories about the ridicule that a uniformed child might get. But to me it’s about, you know, does this learning environment create or help generate within a student a strong moral character that has them—that gives them the ability to navigate difficult situations within a community? Does it give them the ability to influence their peers, influence their family?

POTTER: Family involvement is critical at WJA. Parents must attend monthly meetings, and the school hosts an annual family retreat.

CLARK: A weekend to spend with your child and be able to sit down and talk to them is a great, great gift for them to give each other, and that’s what we hear from the parents and even from the boys sometimes: “It was just great to be with my Mom.”

POTTER: The school’s main goal is simple but audacious: to shatter the stereotype that poor minority students can’t succeed.

CLARK: When you’ve been told you can’t, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t, you believe you can’t. We tell them you can and you will. You can and you will, and then we say and look, you have when they get there, and they’re shocked.

POTTER: About 5,000 students have graduated so far from Nativity-Miguel schools nationwide. Two-thirds have gone on to college. They leave middle school believing anything is possible.

DOMONIC HAIRE: College-wise I want to go to Yale, MIT, the school called Texas Christian University, or Harvard.

CLARK: I think every time a graduate walks through the door and he is proud of himself and on the road to something meaningful for his life it’s just the greatest feeling, and they’re just great kids.

POTTER: And they’re kids who carry high expectations that they’ll give back to these schools and their communities, helping to break the cycle of poverty.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Deborah Potter in Washington, DC.

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BOB ABERNETHY (Anchor): We have a story today about a remarkable man in California.  He is a Catholic priest from Ireland who has ministered for 37 years to both African Americans and Latinos in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Saul Gonzalez reports.

SAUL GONZALEZ (Contributing Correspondent): The Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts has long been synonymous with inner-city desperation and despair. It’s the neighborhood that exploded in urban unrest, after all, in 1965, and then again during LA’s 1992 riots.

Today, Watts is still home to some of the meanest streets in the city, but they’re streets walked regularly by Father Peter Banks, a Catholic priest who, dressed in his robes, rope belt, and straw hat, looks like a fish very much out of water.

Born and raised in rural Ireland, Banks arrived as a young priest in Watts in 1973, assigned to the Saint Lawrence of Brindisi Church.

FATHER PETER BANKS: My picture of America before I came was Hollywood, Disneyland, and the beach. So I got into the car, we drove up Century and we crossed Vermont, and I began to realize this is a very different world. It was all black, and the very first Sunday I stood up on the altar and I said what am I doing here? How will I ever understand the people? Will they understand me?

GONZALEZ: In the decades since, though, this Irish priest and the people of Watts have come to know each other very well, and Father Banks has become a beloved figure both in his church and the wider community. Father Banks says his taking an active role in the day-to-day life of the community has been key to being accepted by the residents of Watts.

(Speaking to Father Banks): How important is it for you to do what we are doing now, to get out and to walk the streets?

FATHER BANKS: Oh, I feel part of the flesh and blood and soul of Watts.

GONZALEZ: As he walks through the community, Banks meets and ministers to the casualties of drugs, poverty, and violence in Watts. One of them goes by the name “Red Man.”

FATHER BANKS: Now, he never minds me saying this, but this man was shot thirteen times and survived.

RED MAN: I love this man. Really, he is the only white man who can walk Watts with no gun, just walking by faith, and walk here and know everybody. Everybody knows Father Peter. He is the true father of Watts. He is a real servant of God.

GONZALEZ: Red Man and a friend then ask Father Banks to lead them in an impromptu street corner prayer.

Central to the story of Watts and Father Banks’s church is the incredible demographic shift that has occurred in this community in recent years. Once synonymous with the African-American community, Watts is increasingly Latino. With that change has come tension.

FATHER BANKS: They call it the black and brown conflict. How do we get black and brown to come together?

GONZALEZ: That conflict sometimes expresses itself in violence, but often its face is a soft, unofficial form of segregation. Latinos largely stick to themselves, African Americans as well.

(Speaking to African American girl): You wouldn’t go out of your way to hang out with Hispanic kids?

AFRICAN-AMERICAN GIRL: Definitely no, I really wouldn’t because, I know it might sound racist, but if I see a Mexican girl or a Latino girl I’m just, like, not hanging out with her because she is just not my people. I know that’s wrong, but that’s just, like, the way it is in our society and our community.

GONZALEZ: It’s such feelings that Father Banks has tried to battle in Watts, making both African Americans and Latinos feel welcome in his congregation and breaking down walls of mutual suspicion and hostility. He’s done that by learning Spanish, slowly integrating some church services, and developing sensitivity to the problems of both Latinos and African Americans.

GONZALEZ: Father Banks says being Irish can actually be an advantage in his work in Watts.

FATHER BANKS: I feel it is. One time I was talking to the black kids, that’s when I came first, and they were saying something about the whites, and I held up my arm and said, “Look at me,” and this little girl said to me, “Father Peter, you aren’t white, you’re Irish.”

I can relate very much to the black in the sense of the Irish being persecuted. It used to say in the States, I think, “No black or Irish need apply.” So I feel I do identify a lot with the African-American people and their pain and their suffering. I’m able to relate to the Latinos and say I am an immigrant, and I tell the Latino people, I say, I am an immigrant, too. I came here and, I said, I am far away from my own land. I know what you go through, too.

GONZALEZ: Members of Father Banks’s congregation say they appreciate his efforts to build bridges of understanding between African Americans and Latinos.

MARIAN ANTUCHA (Latino parishioner speaking in Spanish with English translation): He helps all the people, African Americans, Latinos, the entire community. To us, Father Peter doesn’t recognize borders. He’s a person who helps everybody, and that’s why we’re here.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN PARISHIONER: If PR and public relationships, communications was a gift from God, poof, he got it ten times, you know, because he can get out there and talk to different people, and they just feel his love, and he will tell them to come here, and then they feel the love. It’s just a relationship that blossoms.

GONZALEZ: As he’s gotten older, Banks says he’s increasingly focused his ministry on the education and safety of Watts’ youngest, at the elementary and middle school operated by his church.

FATHER BANKS: They know more about pain than I do in my lifetime, and they are only six, seven, eight, nine years old. You saw them this morning there, dying for affection. If I don’t feel optimistic and I feel tired, I come over to the school. I get energy from the school, energy from these children.

Hope is to be able to sing in the middle of the darkness, and I think that’s what hope is for me. I can still sing in the middle of the darkness.

GONZALEZ: However, after serving the spiritual and material needs of this community for much of his adult life, Father Peter Banks will soon depart Watts. He’s been asked to take a job as a church recruiter in a rural area of California. Although he says he feels duty-bound to fill this position, Banks acknowledges he feels conflicted about leaving this community.

FATHER BANKS: That’s an emotional issue for me. It’s going to be a big struggle to leave here. It’s going to be—I’m at peace with God. That’s all I can say. I am at peace with God. I feel it is God’s will that I continue his work, and we need priests for the church and brothers and…

GONZALEZ: But it hurts?

FATHER BANKS: Oh, it hurts deeply. I have put so much of my life in here. I have invested so much in children. It is the biggest change of my life. I feel I am leaving home twice. I left Ireland 37 years ago, and I feel like I am leaving home again, too. But I’ve come to terms with it, and I know that I am doing it for a higher cause, a higher power.

GONZALEZ: The people whose lives Father Banks has touched in Watts hope his example will inspire others to continue his work of cultivating peace and understanding in a community that so needs them.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Religion continues to be a key factor in American politics, especially during election season, and we will be looking at that over the next several weeks. Today, the vigorous political organizing inside Latino churches. Hispanics are now the largest minority in America. Most Latinos are Democrats, but in recent elections, more and more have voted Republican. However, the debates over immigration reform could change that. Many Hispanics favor more liberal immigration policies than most Republicans have supported. But as Kim Lawton reports, it’s not yet clear how that will affect Hispanic voting.

Reverend Claudio Diaz

KIM LAWTON: Sunday morning at a Hispanic megachurch in Laredo, Texas. Latino evangelicals are praying for comprehensive immigration reform and for the political clout to make it happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN (at prayer rally): If we just pray only and leave this place just doing that, amen, it’s not going to make the greatest difference, because in this country that God has given us, the United States of America, the way to make our voice heard is at the ballot box, amen.

LAWTON: In Chicago, Latino Catholics are also praying for immigration reform, and they’re registering new voters outside the church after Mass. Community leaders say the national debates about immigration are mobilizing Hispanics to get involved politically as never before.

Reverend CLAUDIO DIAZ (Archdiocese of Chicago): They want to be part of that process that somehow will determine their lives and their future. So it’s been like a jolt of energy to really have a group of people, you know, be updated, get informed, be organized.

Professor EDWIN HERNANDEZ (Research Fellow, Center for the Study of Latino Religion, University of Notre Dame): Latinos are a sleeping giant that has been awakened as a result of these discussions, no doubt about that.

LAWTON: There are more than 42 million Hispanics in America, but most have not been politically active. In 2004, less than half of all eligible Latino voters actually went to the polls. Experts say an energized and still rapidly growing Hispanic voting bloc could have a huge national impact.

Prof. HERNANDEZ: Both political parties are understanding that, are hearing and listening carefully because their political futures, to a large extent, will depend upon how these alignments ultimately are figured out.

LAWTON: Edwin Hernandez is a research fellow at Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Latino Religion. He says much of the new political activism is centered in Hispanic churches.

Prof. HERNANDEZ: The church is one of those institutions that is owned and operated by the Latino community, and so it is also the place where cultural values are transmitted and preserved and enhanced. The more you participate actively in a particular community of faith, the more you’re likely to absorb and internalize those values and translate that into the public life.

LAWTON: The majority of American Hispanics are Catholic, although evangelical Protestants have been making big inroads. Both Latino Catholic and Protestant churches have framed immigration reform as a moral imperative.

Rev. DIAZ: From the Old Testament we have teachings on, you know, be good to the foreigner, be good to those who are not in your circle. And that teaching has certainly passed to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The theology is that foreigners are brothers and sisters through the Lord Jesus Christ. That reality cannot be denied and needs to be addressed.

LAWTON: The Catholic Church played a major role in organizing immigration protests in Washington, D.C. and across the country. Now, church leaders are pushing Latino voter registration and education. Father Marco Mercado helped found a group called Priests for Justice for Immigrants.

Reverend MARCO MERCADO (Good Shepherd Catholic Church): We cannot tell people to vote for this party or vote for this guy. But we can tell them you’ve got to go and vote. You’ve got to exercise the right that you have, and this is a moral obligation.

LAWTON: Hispanic Protestants are also mobilizing. In Laredo, Texas, an Assemblies of God Church called Iglesia Cristiana Misericordia is on the frontlines of the immigration battles — literally. It is five miles from the border with Mexico.

Reverend Marco Mercado

Reverend GILBERTO VELEZ (Pastor, Iglesia Cristiana Misericordia): Most of our church is composed of immigrants. Do I have illegal immigrants? I don’t know. I don’t know.

LAWTON: Pastor Gilberto Velez says he doesn’t check the ID cards of the more than 2,000 people who attend his church every Sunday. If he knows they’re illegal, he counsels them to return home. But his church also provides them humanitarian aid. He says his congregation members now realize political decisions often affect their ability to fulfill their mission.

Rev. VELEZ: We’re motivating them and educating them. You know, you want some rights, you need to vote.

LAWTON: In late September, Iglesia Cristiana Misericordia hosted a National Immigration Prayer Rally. The rally was sponsored by a coalition of evangelicals called the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

Reverend SAMUEL RODRIGUEZ (National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, speaking at rally): Immigration reform is not a conservative or a liberal issue. It’s not a Republican or a Democratic issue. We are involved, the church, because we have a spiritual and a Christian obligation to speak up for those that cannot speak up for themselves.

LAWTON: Conference president Samuel Rodriguez is a key leader in the Hispanic faith-based effort to influence public policy. He and other Latino Protestant pastors have partnered with Democratic politicians on immigration reform, but he has also worked with Republican leaders to support traditional marriage.

Rev. RODRIGUEZ: Both parties understand the power of the Hispanic voting bloc. The largest minority group in America, 42-43 million Hispanics, become the deal breakers of national elections.

LAWTON: Professor Hernandez says Hispanics don’t fit neatly into political categories.

Prof. HERNANDEZ: Conservative on family values, conservative on issues of abortion. On the other hand, there are issues related to education, housing, the job, the economy and issues that have to do with the bread and butter issues of how can we move up the economic ladder that Latinos align themselves in those other issues in a more progressive, liberal side.

LAWTON: Traditionally, Latinos, like other minority groups, tended to vote more with the Democratic Party. But that’s been changing. In 2004, the largest number ever — 40 percent of Latinos — voted Republican in a presidential election. Analysts credit Latino evangelicals for much of that. Hispanic Protestants are one of the fastest growing segments of the Latino electorate. They make up about one-third of all Hispanic voters, and they gave strong support to George W. Bush in the last presidential election. Fifty-six percent of Latino Protestants voted for Bush in 2004, up from 44 percent in 2000.

Rev. RODRIGUEZ: The honeymoon period is over.

LAWTON: Reverend Rodriguez says many Latino evangelicals are now reconsidering their support for Republicans. He says they were troubled by some of the Republican rhetoric during recent congressional immigration debates and they wonder what the party truly stands for.

Rev. RODRIGUEZ: Is it compassionate conservatism, or is it a xenophobic, sort of anti-immigrant, anti-Latino party? That’s a question that has to be answered. I don’t necessarily see Hispanics jumping the bandwagon and overwhelmingly voting Democratic. I do see them holding back and not participating in the voting, in the electoral process, and not going to the ballot box, waiting, all right. Let’s find out really who speaks on behalf of Republicans in America.

LAWTON: At the same time, Rodriguez argues that many Hispanic Christians are uncomfortable with Democratic support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

Rev. RODRIGUEZ: I think the Democratic Party has an opportunity of engaging many Hispanic voters. To do so, they would need to move a lot more towards the middle.

LAWTON: I asked him which issues he thinks Hispanic evangelicals will base their votes on this fall.

Rev. RODRIGUEZ: Immigration is right up there. However, they’re looking at life, they’re looking at the continuity and respect to an institution that has been around since the beginning. You know, if they had to pick one or the other, it’s probably going to be life and marriage over immigration. Not that immigration is not important. It’s going to be a tough call.

Prof. HERNANDEZ: It’s a tough issue to know what would trump the other, and I think only time will tell. But at the very core issue the immigration debate is about who we are, and when you put my family, my grandmother, my children — I’m going to protect them, and I’m going to seek their well being at the expense of any other issue.

LAWTON: However things shake down politically, experts agree the mobilization over immigration is creating unprecedented new alliances between various ethnic groups within the Hispanic world and between Catholics and Protestants.

Rev. DIAZ: I think it will leave a mark, and we’re making history.

Prof. HERNANDEZ: Pentecostal pastors, priests, lay Catholic leaders have come together and joined forces to say we as a community may be divided by faith and other areas, but on this issue we’re coming together, because we need to take a stand about the dignity of who Latinos are.

LAWTON: Those alliances are poised to reshape American politics for generations to come. I’m Kim Lawton in Laredo, Texas.