The 2022 Census data released on June 6 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed that the evangelical religion gained the most followers in Brazil over the past 12 years but at a slower pace than in previous demographic surveys, according to BBC News. For the first time in 62 years, the growth rate of evangelicals slowed down, with a 5.2 percentage point increase in 2022, down from 6.5 percentage points recorded between 2000 and 2010.
Evangelicals now make up 26.9% of the Brazilian population—approximately one quarter of Brazilians—the highest level in history, up from 21.7% in 2010 and 15.4% in 2000. Despite this growth, Catholics in Brazil continue to lose followers, with a decline rate of 8.4 percentage points. In 2022, Catholicism led in all major regions of Brazil, with the highest concentration in the Northeast (63.9%) and the South (62.4%).
In absolute numbers, there are 100.2 million Catholics and 47.4 million evangelicals in Brazil, with the number of evangelicals having nearly tripled in 30 years. The percentage of Catholics in Brazil fell to 56.7%, down from 65% in 2010, continuing a trend of loss of strength for the religion in the country.
Demographer José Eustáquio Diniz Alves noted that the deceleration in the growth of the number of evangelicals in Brazil, revealed in the IBGE Religion Census on June 6, 2023, is projected to delay the replacement of Catholicism as the country's main religion by 17 years. "By my previous projection, the Catholic Church would lose 7 to 1, by a landslide. And it turned out that the Catholic Church lost 1 to 0," he said, according to BBC News. Before the 2022 Census data, Alves estimated that the transition from Catholicism to evangelicalism would happen in 2032.
"If the new evangelical growth rate of 5.2 percentage points between the 2010 and 2022 Censuses and the Catholic decline rate of 8.4 percentage points are maintained, the religious transition in Brazil is estimated to occur in 2049," Alves explained. "Nobody knows what will happen in the future. Everything can change. Now you have to make some hypothesis, so I think it's a reasonable hypothesis. If we suppose that this trend from 2010 to 2022 continues," he added.
Anthropologist Jacqueline Teixeira, a religion scholar and professor at USP, assesses that there is a growth of movements of anti-evangelical conduct in aversion to an evangelicalism very focused on church and worship. "This consequently brings other possibilities, even socio-cultural, of religious belonging and even of reading of Christianities," Teixeira stated. She believes that the reduction of ties with churches is due to factors such as the statements of religious leaders in public debate and the democratization of internet access, which allows new relationships with faith.
One of these movements is the charismatic renewal, which seeks a more intense and profound experience of the Christian faith. "Several of these elements have brought a difficulty in declaring belonging to the church on the part of some people, and this has generated, consequently, movements of distancing in relation to evangelical religious belonging. We didn't see this ten or fifteen years ago," said Teixeira.
Between 2000 and 2010, the decline of Catholicism was more pronounced, with a decrease of 9 percentage points. The loss of faithful by the Catholic Church has decelerated, according to the 2022 Census. "The Catholic continues to lose, but continues losing at a slower pace than before. In this sense, it's a victory for the Catholic Church, because it stopped that bleeding. It shows a reaction," Alves said.
According to the 2022 Census, the number of Brazilians who declare themselves without religion grew from 7.9% in 2010 to 9.3% in 2022, totaling 16.4 million people. Of those who declare themselves without religion, 56.2% are men. The Southeast region of Brazil concentrated the largest proportion of people declaring themselves without religion, at 10.6% of its population. Roraima recorded the highest proportion of people without religion (16.9%), of other religions (7.8%), and of adherents of indigenous traditions (1.7%).
Other religious segments such as Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism also saw growth in followers in Brazil over the past 12 years. Additionally, followers of Umbanda and Candomblé increased from 0.3% in 2010 to 1% in 2022, contributing to a more diverse religious mosaic.
"The new data from the 2022 Census show a more plural Brazil from a religious point of view," said Magali Cunha, a researcher at the Institute of Religious Studies (Iser), according to Agência Pública. She believes that the greater diversification of religious beliefs in Brazil may be related to the fact that people are speaking more openly about their religious choices. "The Census is a self-declaration. In the past, people were afraid, for example, to say they were from Umbanda, from Candomblé. People continue to suffer discrimination, but this greater self-declaration may have affected the numbers," she observed.
Cunha pointed out, "All of this still needs to be measured. The IBGE data do not provide further details. The pandemic, for example, may also have been a factor leading to the loss of members in churches, because many people started to follow only online services. So we still need a greater refinement of these data."
An example of this trend is Juliana, a 26-year-old student from Juazeiro, Bahia, who comes from a northeastern family that has exchanged creeds between Catholicism and Protestantism over the decades. Raised Christian, she attended evangelical Sunday schools with neighborhood friends in childhood and was baptized Catholic. At 14, Juliana's entire family converted to the Assembly of God, following a strict routine linked to the religion.
At 20, Juliana severed her ties with the Assembly of God. For six years, she identified as evangelical but distanced herself from the church due to prohibitions on dating or wearing clothing other than long skirts. Entering university exposed her to people with different thoughts, and the politicization of the church pulpit during the 2018 elections contributed to her distancing. "It was when I realized that I could live a life away from the church or not be in the church 24 hours a day," Juliana stated.
Juliana began reading about Buddhism, practicing meditation, exploring more liberal evangelical churches, reconnecting with the Catholic Church, and attending Umbanda and Jurema Sagrada temples. "Opening myself to experiment and test so many things makes me not believe 100% in anything, and doubt a lot about various issues," she said. "But I am not able to believe in a God who condemns people to hell for not being from a certain church, not wearing skirts and wearing lipstick, for being who they are or for loving who they love. I can't accept the view that all the truth about humanity would be in a European religion," Juliana added.
The phenomenon is called the de-churched. While the radicalization of evangelicals mobilizes many people, it also alienates moderate sectors. Alves considers that the evangelical connection with the radical right agenda in Brazil may have alienated some believers. "There are a series of denunciations against evangelical churches, of practices of charlatanism, of asking for money. It seems that it reached a limit, and people got tired of this business," Alves said.
"Some researchers had already been sensing the loss of momentum in evangelical growth," according to BBC News. The IBGE did not release disaggregated data for the without religion group due to preliminary data disclosure. According to IBGE technicians, it is still being evaluated whether it will be possible to disclose these data due to problems with the quality of the collected information.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.