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  3. The church of La Placita, "the little square", formally called Nuestra Se ora Reina de Los Angeles, was founded under Spanish ru

The church of La Placita, "the little square", formally called Nuestra Se ora Reina de Los Angeles, was founded under Spanish ru

admin2011-03-11  48
问题     The church of La Placita, "the little square", formally called Nuestra Se ora Reina de Los Angeles, was founded under Spanish rule at around the same time as the pueblo bearing the same name, the future Los Angeles. Catholicism and Hispanic culture seemed inseparable there.  
    They still largely are. Virtually all Father Estrada’s parishioners are Hispanic, most of them of Mexican extraction. When Guatemalan and Salvadorean refugees showed up in the 1980s, it was natural for them, as good Catholics, to find sanctuary at La Placita, where they slept on the pews and Father Estrada gave them food. It was natural again in 2006, when the country went on an anti-immigrant binge, for many of the Latino counter-marches to start from La Placita. Latinos still come from all over southern California for baptisms and prayer, social services and a sense of community.  
    But more and more grandmothers also come to Father Estrada with worries about children or grandchildren who have become hermanos separados, separated brothers, after defecting to an evangelical church, usually one with a Pentecostal flavour.  The converts may have followed one of the evangelicals who come to La Placita to recruit, or friends whom they met at a spiritual rock concert or picnic. "I don’t worry, but I find it to be challenging," says Father Estrada.  
    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 everyone 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.  
    The evangelical churches are also more "experiential", says Samuel Rodriguez, a third- generation Puerto Rican Pentecostal pastor and the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an evangelical association.  In the Catholic Church, a believer’s relationship with Jesus is mediated through hierarchies and bureaucracies, he says, whereas the evangelical churches provide direct access to Jesus. The Pentecostals go one step further, with the "gifts of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians) letting believers speak in tongues and pray for divine healing.  
    "This is the first group in America to reconcile both the vertical and the horizontal parts of the cross," says Mr. Rodriguez. By this he means that the Latino evangelical churches emphasise not only " covenant, faith and righteousness"  (the vertical part), as white evangelicals do, but also " community, public policy and social justice" (the horizontal part), as many black evangelicals, but fewer white ones, do. To Latino evangelicals it is all one thing, he says, and the social outreach the church provides goes far beyond any government programme, with pastors snatching young men away from gang life and fighting to uphold the rights of immigrants.  
    This also means that Latino evangelicals as a political force are distinct from white evangelicals. Many of the whites have veered hard right, hating abortion and gay marriage and reliably voting Republican, though less so very recently. Latinos tend to be even more pro-life and traditional marriage than whites, says Mr. Rodriguez, but only because they know that "mom and dad in the home is the prime antidote to gangs and drugs. " That same pragmatism makes them believe in government services and the taxes that pay for them, and of course in immigrant rights. As voters, he reckons, Latino evangelicals are therefore the quintessential independents, up for grabs by either party.  
    But it may be American Catholicism that changes the most. About a third of American Catholics are Latino now, and their share is growing. They are also different Catholics, with more than half describing themselves as " charismatics ", according to the Pew report. Charismatics remain in their traditional denomination,  but believe in some aspects of Pentecostalism, such as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially the speaking in tongues.  
    Latino charismatics see themselves as a renewal movement within Catholicism, as it converges with other churches.  And in general all churchgoing Latinos tend to see themselves as renewing Christianity in America. That makes them a powerful force as demographic changes turn America ever more Hispanic, and increasingly different from secular Europe.  
According to the text, why can evangelical church provide social outreach that goes far beyond any government programme?
选项 A、Evangelicals are most Latin Americans and Latin Americans take a considerable portion of US population.
B、The evangelical church reconciles merits from different churches that are adhered to by different communities of people.
C、Government policies are not thoroughly performed in the neighbourhoods whose inhabitants are mostly Latin Americans.
D、Government does not take much care in the affairs of Latin Americans as they are usually not in the mainstream of the society.
答案B
解析 题干是说福音教堂为什么能够接触到更广泛的社会层面。本题的切入点在第七段Rodriguez所说的话里，即关于“水平部分”和“垂直部分”的解说。垂直部分是指“契约、信仰和正义”，这是拉美人的特点，而水平部分则是“团体，国家政策和社会公正”，这是白人的特点，正是综合了这两种特点，福音教堂才能够延伸到更广泛的社会层面。那么再结合选项，A项是说信福音的多是拉美人，而拉美人口比例很大，前半句符合文意，但是后半句在文中并未有相关说明。B项说福音教堂综合了诸多宗教的特点，而这也与Rodriguez的话相对应，故B项是符合题意的。C项说政府的政策未能得到全面落实，这在文中没有提及。D项说政府不关心拉美人的事务，他们不是社会主流，但后文可以看出拉美人在社会中的影响已经越来越大，这也并不是政府政策不能深入拉美人社会的原因。故此可以判断B项正确。   
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