Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Religion in Brazil



Religion in Brazil is very diversified, although over seventy percent of the population declared being Roman Catholic in the last IBGE census, which took place in 2000. About ninety percent of Brazilians declare some sort of religious affiliation [1].

74% of Brazilians (about 150 million) declared being followers of Roman Catholicism;
15.4% (about 25 million) declared being followers of Protestantism;
7.4% (about 12 million) consider themselves agnostics, atheists or having no religious affiliation;
1.3% (about 2.2 million) are followers of Spiritism;
0.3% are followers of African traditional religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda;
1.7% are members of other religions.
Brazil has a large number of Jehovah's Witnesses (about 1,100,000) and Latter-day Saints (about 1,000,000) [2] nowadays, which entered in the field of Protestants in the census referenced above. Among the field of "other religions" were Buddhists (415,000), Jewish people (300,000), and Muslims (27,000). In the same field were those who practice a mixture of different religions, such as Catholicism, Candomblé, and indigenous American religions.[3]

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