Colombia is a traditionally Christian-Catholic country, which is why Easter has an important connotation for citizens. Proof of this are the results of the Political Culture Survey, which the National Administrative Department of Statistics -Dane- conducts every two years: it found that Catholicism continues to predominate in the country, since 8 out of 10 respondents, or 78.2%, identify with this belief, while the rest follow the currents of Protestant Christianity (9.2 per cent).
Although religion remains a determining factor in society, the results of the survey show that the number of people who believe in a higher being but do not profess any religion increased by 877,000 in six years, equivalent to an increase of 72.4 percent between 2015 and 2021. The increase in people who are distant from religion has meant that the number of faithful in churches has fallen, in the case of Catholicism by 2.3 per cent in the last six years.
On the other hand, if you look at the data in a disaggregated way, you can find that the younger people are, the less likely they are to identify with a type of religion. For some, this is because fathers failed to effectively convey their beliefs; and that churches fail to touch young people because their practices have been spent.
“The Catholic Church is increasingly less efficient in responding to the spiritual needs or expectations of new generations, especially among those under 40 years of age. The population has difficulty feeling part of and committing to the Church,” sociologist William Mauricio Beltrán Cely wrote to El Tiempo.
In addition, the expert believes that another factor that has affected the churches is the scandals largely related to sexual abuse, corruption and other problems, which have been heard not only in Colombia but in the world.
“There is a crisis in the religious dynamics of the Mass, but also of religious leadership: there is less and less trust in priests, exacerbated by scandals of the moral and sexual behavior of many of them,” added Beltrán Cely.
It is important to note that in the survey it was also determined that there are some areas of the country more believing in Catholicism than others. For example, Antioquia and the Coffee Region are the areas with the greatest concentration of Catholics, while in the Caribbean, it is the territory where there are the least believers of Catholicism with 71.2% of people, but it is the region where the Protestant movements are growing the most, with 11.2% of people identifying with the evangelical movement and Pentecostal.
“For them, charismatic discourse, which gives freedom to express feelings, is much more striking than Catholic rites, which tend to be more organized, rigorous and serious,” the researcher explained to the Bogota media.
Finally, in the category of believers who do not attend any church there are two: those who follow the same Christian faith that the country has traditionally welcomed; and those who believe in the movement of the new age: creative forces, or in eastern doctrines such as reincarnation and karma.
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