Here's the mention. I suspect that the piece was written by John Micklethwait and/or Adrian Wooldridge, who have written an insightful (and utterly readable) book about religion, titled God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World. I'm not so sure I buy the whole "role model theory" of faith. It could just be that Catholicism is kind of stale where evangelicals are very much engaged with the Bible and the world.
Some 68% of Hispanics in America are still Catholic, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, and their absolute number, thanks to immigration and higher birth rates, continues to increase. But about 15% are now born-again evangelicals, who are fast gaining “market share”, as Gaston Espinosa, a professor of religion at Claremont McKenna College, puts it. He estimates that about 3.9m Latino Catholics have converted, and that “for every one who comes back to the Catholic church, four leave it.”
The main reason, he thinks, is ethnic identity. Evangelical services are not only in Spanish, as many Catholic sermons are nowadays, but are performed by Latinos rather than Irish or Polish-American priests, with the cadences, rhythms, innuendos and flow familiar from the mother country. The evangelical services tend to be livelier than Catholic liturgy and to last longer, often turning into an outing lasting the whole day. Women play greater roles, and there are fewer parishioners for each pastor than in the Catholic church.
