- Summary
- Adherents
- Religious Freedom
- Socio-economic
- Public Opinion
Religious Adherents1 |
Colombia | South America | World |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baha'i | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| Buddhist | 0.0% | 0.2% | 5.8% |
| Chinese Universalist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 5.8% |
| Christian | 95.7% | 92.3% | 33.3% |
| Confucianist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Ethnoreligionist | 0.7% | 0.6% | 4.0% |
| Hindu | 0.0% | 0.1% | 13.6% |
| Jain | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Jewish | 0.0% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Muslim | 0.0% | 0.3% | 20.8% |
| Shintoist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Sikh | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.3% |
| Spiritist | 1.0% | 2.7% | 0.2% |
| Taoist | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Zoroastrian | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Other Religions | 0.0% | 0.2% | 1.6% |
| Neo-religions | 0.0% | 0.2% | -- |
| Non-religious | 2.1% | 2.8% | 11.7% |
| Atheist | 0.2% | 0.5% | 2.3% |
Religious Demography
The country has an area of 439,735 square miles and a population of 41.2 million. The Government does not keep official statistics on religious affiliation, and religious leaders cited different numbers. According to the Colombian Evangelical Council (CEDECOL), for example, approximately 12 percent of the population was Protestant, while the Catholic Bishops' Conference estimated that 90 percent of the population was Catholic. A March 22, 2007, article in the daily newspaper El Tiempo said that 80 percent of the population was Catholic (with the footnote that not all are active practitioners), 13.5 percent belonged to non-Catholic forms of Christianity, 2 percent were agnostic, and the remaining 4.5 percent belonged to other religious groups, such as Islam and Judaism. The Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Methodist Church had 261,000, and 1,500 members respectively. The Anglican Church and the Presbyterian Church had approximately 10,000 members each. Other Protestant and Evangelical Churches had an estimated 5 million followers. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) claimed less than 1,000 members. Other religious groups with a significant number of adherents included Judaism, estimated at between 7,000 and 8,000 families, Islam, with an estimated 10,000 followers, animism, and various syncretic belief systems. Adherents of some religious groups are concentrated in specific geographical regions. For example, the vast majority of practitioners of syncretic beliefs that blend Catholicism with elements of African animism are Afro-Colombian residents in the western department of Choco. Jews are concentrated in major cities, Muslims on the Caribbean coast, and adherents of indigenous animistic religions in remote, rural areas. A small Taoist commune exists in a mountainous region of Santander Department.2
Sources
Note: All country histories and flags were obtained from The World Factbook, 2008.
1. The World Christian Database (WCD) is based on the 2600-page award-winning World Christian Encyclopedia and World Christian Trends, first published in 1982 and revised in 2001. This extensive work on World religion is now completely updated and integrated into the WCD online database. Designed for both the casual user and research scholar, information is readily available on religious activities, growth rates, religious literature, worker activity, and demographic statistics. Additional secular data is incorporated on population, health, education, and communications. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. Used with permission.
2. The U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom report is submitted to Congress annually by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. This report supplements the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. These State Department reports are open source.
