Because Brazil is so diverse and due to its colonization, this country is the home of several different religious ideals and affiliations. According to census data, approximately 90% of the Brazilians believe in God which makes it one of the most religious countries in the world and the most religious country in South America.  Also according to census data, less than 1% of the population doesn’t believe in God. It was only in 1988 with the new Constitution that Brazilians became free to practice any religion of their choice.

Catholicism

The major religion in Brazil is the Catholicism and nowadays the country has more Catholics than any other country in the world (approximately 123 million – 64,5% of the population). It has been the main religion in the country since the beginning of the 16th century because back then, Brazilians had no freedom to choose their religion so Portuguese settlers and Brazilians were compulsorily bound to the Roman Catholic faith and forced to pay taxes to the church. However, within the last decades the population that identifies as Catholic has been dropping. Rio de Janeiro is the state with the lowest concentration of Catholics (45% of the population) and Piauí has the largest proportion of Catholics (87,93%).

Protestantism

Protestantism was brought to Brazil by American Missionaries in the 19th century and started to grow very fast since the 20th century. The 2010 Census reported that 22.2% of the Brazilian population is Protestant, about 44 million people, which makes it one of the world’s largest concentration of Protestants. The country has different versions of Protestantism in which Baptists, Adventists,  Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans and Kardecists are the mainline.

Mormonism, Witnesses and Eastern Orthodoxy

The Mormonism, Jehova’s Witnesses and Eastern Orthodoxy are also popular religions in Brazil. There are 6 Mormon’s temples in the country and the church reported that they have an amount of 1,173,533  members but the Census Data of 2010 reported that only 226,509 people identifies their selves as Mormons. When it comes to Eastern Ortodoxy, it rounds one of the top 5 religions in Brazil and it arrived in the country n the past century, primarily via a wave of immigration from places such as Lebanon, Syria, Armenia, Greece, Russia and the Ukraine.

Afro- Brazilian Religions

Afro-Brazilian religious are also a very important aspect of the country. The two most popular groups are the Umbanda and Candomblé and although they are not the most popular religions in the country, it has been growing up a lot. Umbanda is religion that combines African religions, Spiritism, Catholicism and Indigenous religions. It is basically the only syncret religion that is more popular in the South than in the other parts of the country. Similar to Umbanda, believers of the Candomblé religion practice surrender to “Orixás” or spirits, to the point of complete possession. Unfortunatelly, these religions have experienced hostility from Christian religions and were often classified as “satanic”.

Buddhism

Brazil has the largest Japanese immigration and all these immigrants have brought their traditions and beliefs to the country. However, the curious thing is that  Buddhism is not so popular amongst the Japanese community in Brazil because most of them have converted to Catholicism. According to the latest research of IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) 243.966 Buddhists were counted in Brazil.