Holly Meyer

hmeyer@tennessean.com

Every Sunday, the Catholic prayers and songs of the Sagrado Corazon congregation fill the 3,300-seat auditorium of a former Southern Baptist megachurch with the Spanish language.

From young to old, members filled the pews on the lower level of the vast space and even spilled into the upper deck during a 10 a.m. service on a Sunday in October. The priest celebrated the Mass in Spanish from a platform at the front of the auditorium as the congregation stood, sang, kneeled and prayed in unison at various moments during the service.

"There's many, many more people that come to church now. It's very emotional to me in a good way," said Angel Lopez, a student at Stem Preparatory Academy who attends and helps out at the church. "It just has a lot of space. It just brings me up. A lot of people come. They hear what God has to say and it's just like a honor to get this church."

The church’s weekend services draw thousands of Spanish-speaking believers like Lopez, reflecting the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville’s thriving Hispanic ministry as well as the changing face of Middle Tennessee. With Nashville’s growth as a driver, the city’s Catholic community — once predominately Irish — has evolved in recent decades into a soundly multi-cultural church, Nashville Bishop David Choby said.

“I find that really quite exciting because the very notion of the church being Catholic is its openness to people of all cultural backgrounds, of all ethnicities,” Choby said. “Now we find it expressed in the culture of many different countries.”

Fellowship at Two Rivers property sold to Catholics

Sagrado Corazon moved into the former The Fellowship at Two Rivers property on McGavock Pike just across Briley Parkway from the Opryland hotel in April 2015. The building now serves as home base for the diocese's Hispanic ministry. While it shares the 220,000-square-foot building, now known as the Catholic Pastoral Center, with other diocesan programs and offices, the Hispanic Catholic congregation is the second in less than a decade to find a home in a former Baptist church in Nashville.

More on Hispanic Heritage Month

Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, the diocese's first Hispanic parish, moved into the former Radnor Baptist Church on Nolensville Pike in 2007. Its four weekend Masses serve about 4,000 people, and Sagrado Corazon's three weekend services draw 3,000 plus, the diocese estimates.

"What it says, like all of the years before, is this group of immigrant people are settling into our community," Choby said. "They're becoming rooted in our community."

White Christian America

It's also a microcosm of a greater national reality — the U.S. is no longer a majority white Christian country, said Robert P. Jones, the chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based Public Religion Research Institute.

Jones wrote about a similar evolution of another church, the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, Calif, in his new book "The End of White Christian America." The landmark was built by Reformed Church in America televangelist Robert Schuller, but it was sold to the Catholic Diocese of Orange in 2012 after Schuller's ministry went bankrupt. Now called Christ Cathedral, it offers Mass in multiple languages, including Spanish and Vietnamese.

In Nashville, The Fellowship of Two Rivers, formerly known as Two Rivers Baptist Church, opted to sell its 37.5-acre Donelson campus near the Gaylord Opryland complex because it was far larger than its needs. The 2014 sale capped a seven-year saga the began with a lawsuit by church dissidents trying to remove a pastor and view church financial records. The diocese bought the property to bring its programs under one roof.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, born out of St. Edward Catholic Church's Hispanic ministry, took over the former Radnor Baptist Church, whose predominately white and shrinking congregation could no longer afford the property nor meet the needs of the diversifying neighborhood. They sold the church in 2007 to Catholic investors.

"I think we’re seeing a lot of these kinds of changes across the country and they do reflect more than just local realities, they really are reflective of these larger national trends," Jones said.

The Fellowship church moves to renovated warehouse in Mt. Juliet

The country's demographics are shifting primarily due to immigration, specifically immigration of Latinos, Jones said. But also the rise of the religiously unaffiliated is contributing to the decline of a white Christian America, he said. In 2007, almost 55 percent of Americans identified as white Christians, but that number dropped to 45 percent last year, a PRRI analysis of Pew Research and PRRI data shows. The religiously unaffiliated made up more than 16 percent in 2007, but almost 23 percent in 2015.

Tennessee numbers travel in the same directions. In 2007, 68 percent of Tennesseans identified as white Christians, but it dropped to 59 percent in 2015. Religiously unaffiliated rose to 18 percent in 2015 from 12 percent in 2007, according to PRRI.

Hispanic Catholic ministry

Nashville's Hispanic community has grown dramatically in the last three decades and makes up 10 percent of the city's population. In 2014, it numbered more than 66,000 people, which is nearly 17 times what it was in 1980, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Today's Hispanic ministry in the Nashville diocese began in the early 1990s when a bishop in northern Mexico allowed four priests in his diocese to come to Middle Tennessee and help minister to the Latino population moving into the area, said Choby, who was not the Nashville bishop at the time.

"Recognizing this influx of a new group of people, the diocese wanted to be in position to respond to their spiritual needs," Choby said. "I think overall we’ve done a pretty good job of responding to their needs."

Today, about half of the diocese's 54 parishes and missions offer Mass in Spanish. Bilingual and Spanish-speaking priests, deacons and nuns help meet the spiritual needs of tens of thousands of Hispanic Catholics across Middle Tennessee. Some of the clergy and women travel a religious circuit, while others serve in more permanent positions. Choby doesn't require seminarians to study Spanish, but many chose to do so on their own, and young men in the Hispanic congregations are considering the priesthood, he said.

For Sagrado Corazon, moving from a smaller space in the old Castner-Knott department store in Donelson Plaza to a bigger and more permanent space in the Catholic Pastoral Center allows them to reach more people. It's not escaped the notice of congregation members, including Lopez and Ricardo Pena, who lives in Hendersonville with his wife. Pena joined the congregation about 18 years ago and has watched it grow.

"We started when there was nobody. Now there's a lot of people," Pena said. "It's a great church."

Reach Holly Meyer at 615-259-8241 and on Twitter @HollyAMeyer.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church

Located at 3111 Nolensville Pike in Nashville

Former Hispanic ministry of St. Edwards Catholic Church

First Hispanic parish in the Nashville Diocese

Four weekend services in Spanish that draw about 4,000 people

Moved into former Radnor Baptist Church in 2007

Sagrado Corazon

Located in the diocese’s Catholic Pastoral Center at 2800 McGavock Pike

Not a parish; serves as home base for the diocese’s Hispanic ministry

Congregation worships in the large auditorium at the pastoral center

Three weekend services in Spanish that draw 3,000-plus people

Moved into the former Fellowship at Two Rivers in 2015

Catholic Pastoral Center

2800 McGavock Pike

Headquarters for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville

Houses many of the diocese’s programs, including Catholic Youth Office, Tennessee Register, Catholic Schools Office, Catholic Charities of Tennessee’s administrative offices and Hispanic ministry.

Purchased from the Fellowship at Two Rivers in 2014

Replaced the Catholic Center on 21st Ave. South in Nashville, several other locations

Sources: Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville