Nestled between lofty brick family homes on a bucolic street, Iglesia Betania blends in almost seamlessly. If it were not for its decorated lancet windows and boxy red entrance sign, the church could easily be mistaken for a neighbourhood townhouse.
Inside, two women speak in hushed tones as they take down Christmas decorations and prepare the pulpit for the upcoming Sunday service. Pastor Tony Perez, who opened the conservative Hispanic evangelical church in 1990, overlooks the ornamental adjustments.
Despite his “playboy” personality and incendiary remarks on Latino immigrants, most of Perez’s 200-member strong congregation voted for Donald Trump.
“If your house is burning, you don’t care what the firefighter does in his spare time. You don’t care what he’s like. You just want him to put out the fire,” Perez says, dimples forming on either cheek as he smiles to finish his allegory.
“To me, our country was on fire and I just needed the best firefighter to put it out. And I think Trump is the guy.”
Where moral values and politics meet
Religion and politics go hand in hand at Iglesia Betania. For its devout followers, moral issues are often the alpha and omega of their principles – largely influencing how they vote.
“We are very pro-life,” Perez explains. “I personally only vote pro-life, so against abortion and euthanasia.”
The soft-spoken pastor does not explicitly preach politics to the 75 families who attend his services, but advocates for traditional values such as the sanctity of marriage and family in his sermons. During the elections last November, he “encouraged people to vote on those values”.
Guided by these traditional values, some Latino voters had adverse opinions about the stance Democrats took on topics such as same-sex marriage and transgender rights. During a recent service, Perez explains how one of his congregants put their son in a private school after he brought home a children’s book about a transgender boy in his rucksack.
“We send our kids to school to read and write,” he says firmly. “Not to learn gender ideology,” which Perez considers a “cult”.
While the Puerto Rican native admits being ruffled by the unorthodox “personal choices” Trump made in the past and thinks that he talks too much, these are sins the pastor and his followers were evidently willing to forgive.
The measured absolution Perez grants Trump is somewhat reflected in his aloof response when asked about the Calvary United Church of Christ a stone’s throw away from his iglesia. In a short five-minute walk, passersby can observe a rainbow flag banner that hangs off the main church window. “God is still speaking,” the banner reads. A support network for Reading’s LGBTQ+ community, the pastors of this church position themselves as activists for social change.
“They have an LGBTQ+ service and I think they even have a lesbian Mexican pastor,” Perez says with a wry smile. He insists there are no conflicts between the two neighbourhood churches, but says they do not communicate much either.
“In Reading, we have a consortium of churches,” he explains. “But it’s divided … I would not feel comfortable preaching in the ones that run with a lot of these liberal causes.”
Not blue, not red, but a green election
Perez used to preach in both Spanish and English when he first opened his church. But the mass arrival of Latinos in Reading in recent decades created an overwhelming demand for Hispanic sermons in non-denominational churches, so the pastor now only preaches in Spanish.
Reading is home to Pennsylvania’s largest Latino community and is the fourth biggest city in Pennsylvania after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Allentown.
While Kamala Harris won the vote in Reading by a close margin in the 2024 presidential election, Trump made significant inroads in the city, winning nearly 35 percent of the vote compared to 27 percent in 2020.
Nationwide, Trump also swept up a large percentage of Latino votes in 2024, winning 8 percent more votes than in the previous presidential election.
“Hispanics are very conservative. Faith is very important to them and it is also an important part of the Republican values,” Michael Rivera explains from his office on the 13th floor of the Berks County Courthouse in Reading. Half Pennsylvanian Dutch and half Puerto Rican, River became the first Latino county commissioner in 2020.
For the conservative elected official, the newfound popularity Trump has enjoyed can also be explained by the economic difficulties his mostly working-class constituents have faced in recent years.
“We have seen first-time homelessness increase for the first time in years,” he says. “People aren’t making as much as they were three or four years ago. Groceries have gone up. Housing has gone up. Gas and other utilities have gone up. So people’s quality of life has gone down, because their cost of living has spiked but their income has not increased.”
Though the economy grew under Joe Biden, a multitude of factors made it difficult for the outgoing president to shake off voters feeling stung by inflation and therefore blaming him for their increased costs. “Bidenflation” ran rampant in the US, mostly due to Covid-19. Even though earnings rose less during Trump’s first term as president than under Biden, inflation back then was far lower, so families felt like they could get beyond just making ends meet.
Trump has repeatedly touted the use of tariffs on foreign products as a way to bring down inflation. But experts say the measure is likely to make inflation worse by increasing the price of imported goods across the country. Rivera admits he doesn’t quite understand how the policy could help lower inflation, but is convinced the tax cuts on Social Security benefits and small businesses Trump is promising will be a good thing.
“I’ve always been a small business owner and I believe that businesses should be able to run with as little interference from the government as possible,” Rivera maintains.
Pastor Perez believes that for most voters in Pennsylvania, economy was the number one issue in 2024. He is convinced it was a crucial factor that helped the president-elect win significantly more votes from the Latino community in the last election.
“The colour of this election was not blue or red,” he says before sitting down on a velvet chair in the main hall of his church. “It was green.”
Immigrants with anti-immigrant sentiments
Donning aviator sunglasses and camel brown dress shoes, Joseph Nunez walks into a local Colombian cafe alongside two friends with an air of undeniable confidence. His gait matches his card, which has the words “Minister of Business” printed in large font across the front.
“The pro-business stance Trump took resonated strongly with Latinos,” says Nunez, a jack-of-all-trades who works as an independent real estate agent and political strategist. “We are a community of builders and entrepreneurship is very important to us.”
The son of Dominican parents, Nunez spearheaded the local campaign for the Republican party in Reading last year. The 40-year-old grew up in a Catholic and Democratic family, but confesses having switched political camp after being marked by a traumatic personal event back when Barack Obama was president.
“I am married to a Guatemalan woman. When we were coming back to the US from our honeymoon, the authorities denied her entry and deported her back to her country. It was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever had to experience,” he recalls. “I ended up having to leave everything behind to join her.”
Though Nunez was eventually able to bring his wife to the US, the experience left a bitter taste in his mouth. “I have no issue with illegal immigrants coming to the country,” he says. “But I am not happy with the chaotic way immigration has been handled.”
The Biden administration saw a spike in illegal immigration to the US, from 1.9 million arrivals in 2021 to 2.9 million in 2024, which prompted fervent criticism from its opponents who accused the outgoing president of adopting a laxist policy. The issue reached a boiling point in 2023 when a rumour that illegal immigrants were getting $2,200 per month spread like wildfire. While the claim has been repeatedly debunked by several news outlets, many Trump supporters still believe it to be true.
Back in Iglesia Betania, Perez points to the two women redecorating.
“The woman on the right arranging the flowers had to wait 12 years to come to the United States,” he whispers. “Many long-established Latinos here feel they have been treated unfairly because undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally are getting more benefits then they ever could have dreamed of.”
But this could not be further from the truth for Mireilla, a young waitress who works in the center of Reading. She arrived with her 7-year-old daughter from Honduras in 2023 after a long and perilous journey. Even though she considers herself lucky to have found a job, she deplores the “dispiriting” welcome immigrants get when arriving in the city, where she has found it “extremely difficult” to find housing. With a quavering voice, she describes a daily life tainted by the fear of being deported and says she is “very worried” about the arrival of Trump.
A masculine leader with a ‘tough hand’
It has been several years since Nunez decided to place all his bets on Trump. But he readily admits that the violent outbursts made by the president-elect about Latino immigrants bothered him. During a campaign rally in September 2024, Trump falsely claimed that migrants crossing the border were slaughtering people across the country and previously called Mexicans “rapists” on several occasions. Still, the Democrat-turned-Republican believes the US needs a “strong, masculine” leader capable of commanding respect.
“In the Latino community, we are still men. We still want to be men who take charge and lead our families into a better place,” he says, leaning back on his chair. “We couldn’t live with the fact that we had a weak president [Biden] in charge of the greatest economy in the world.”
The machismo Nunez purports is also shared by some Latino women, even if the majority of Trump’s supporters are men.
Estefania Tyler and her husband Rhys walk into Pastor Perez’s church and take a seat next to him. She arrived in the US from Ecuador three decades ago and moved to Reading after one of her aunts told the family about cheap housing opportunities in the city.
“I like the fact that he is unpredictable,” Tyler says assuredly. “I am Latina and I like a tough hand, maybe that’s a cultural thing, but I like seeing a fighter and I think Trump is one.”
“When Trump said insulting things about immigrants, I understood that he was talking about criminals. I never interpreted it as being every single Latino,” the young woman explains in defence of the incoming president. “His words didn’t shock me as much as the superiority that I heard from the Harris camp. She doesn’t understand the culture of the people. Maybe of California, maybe of the elite, but not of the people. She spoke like she knew better than us.”
The growing romance between Latinos in the US and Trump is a big deal, as the community has historically voted Democrat. It was something that former Republican president Ronald Reagan prophesied back in the 1980s when he told his Hispanic outreach director that “Latinos are Republicans, they just don’t know it yet”.
Because of deep-rooted Democratic support in the Latino community, making the switch to the Republican camp was not easy. Many people, including Nunez, recall having lost friends and even family members in their transition to Trump.
“For a long time, it was taboo for Latinos to vote Republican because they were always considered the rich party,” confesses Pastor Perez. “But now they are a working-class party,” he says with an air of pride.
“Families will not be switching back.”
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