Leaving Religion in Brazil

Brazil is the most important country in the world for Pentecostal-charismatic deconstruction. The country has gone from Catholic-majority to almost evenly split between Catholic and evangelical-Pentecostal in a single generation. Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Assembleia de Deus, and a thousand smaller neo-Pentecostal franchises have built a parallel society in the favelas and the suburbs of every major Brazilian city. The exit from these churches looks nothing like the slow, quiet fade of cultural Catholicism. It is fast, painful, and often involves leaving an entire social network, an entire economic system (a lot of small business in evangelical Brazil runs through the church), and an entire interpretive framework for your own emotional life.

The Catholic exit in Brazil is its own thing. Brazilian Catholicism is layered with Afro-Brazilian religious tradition (Candomblé, Umbanda), and many people who leave the institutional Catholic Church do not leave religion entirely — they shift toward those traditions, or toward spiritism (Kardec is enormous in Brazil and has been for over a century), or toward some private mix.

And there is a fast-growing "sem religião" population, especially among urban young people, who have walked away from both the Catholic and Pentecostal options and are figuring out something post-religious. The pillar pages on Pentecostalism and on the guilt that lingers will speak to a lot of you. The texture of the family rupture in evangelical Brazilian families is often sharper than the Catholic version.