The Brazilian religious transition and the process of diffusion of evangelical affiliations in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Catholicism has been the hegemonic religion in Brazil. However, in recent decades the country is undergoing a major religious transformation, with a drop of Catholic affiliations and rapid growth of evangelicals, and a increase to a lesser pace, of other religions and no-religion. Hence, there is a growing religious plurality, although Christianity remains widely majority in the country. But within the Christian religion there is a change of hegemony between Catholics and evangelicals. An innovation of the dogma and the evangelical practice occurred in the twentieth century, in the United States, allowed the spread of Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal messages. Brazil, as the largest Catholic country in the world, is highlighted in this process. The state of Rio de Janeiro features as having the smaller proportion of Catholics and the most religiously diverse in the country. Its metropolitan area is the most advanced urban agglomeration in this changing process of hegemony. This paper shows, additionally, that the process of evangelical diffusion follows a spatial pattern that goes along the main roads of the Rio de Janeiro territory having as the focus of diffusion the periphery of the metropolitan area of ​​the State.