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2022 Census and religion in Brazil

Censo de 2022 e religião no Brasil
Rodrigo Toniol

Resumos

Este artigo propõe uma análise inicial dos dados sobre pertencimento religioso do Censo brasileiro de 2022, divulgados pelo IBGE em junho de 2025. O objetivo principal é duplo: em primeiro lugar, apresentar uma análise escrita “no calor da hora”, que situe os números recém-divulgados em relação às séries históricas e às interpretações já consolidadas sobre os censos anteriores. Em segundo lugar, o texto busca destacar o que emerge, à luz desses dados, como parte fundamental da agenda de pesquisa para a próxima década no campo religioso brasileiro, sugerindo novas questões e abordagens para estudos futuros. A análise acompanhará os grandes grupos religiosos tal como o próprio IBGE apresenta seus dados: os católicos; os evangélicos; os sem religião; os de religiões afro e os de umbanda; e os espíritas.

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Recebido: 10/06/2025
Aceito: 11/06/2025

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1When Brazil was still an Empire, in 1872, the first general census asked inhabitants not only about their age, color, and profession, but also about their religion. In that first census, in a country where Catholicism was official and almost unanimous, the question served to confirm a collective identity. Since then, with rare interruptions, this variable has persisted through regime changes, dictatorships, and constitutional revolutions, remaining one of the most enduring features of Brazilian statistics. Over 150 years, while countries like France, the United States, and Argentina abandoned or never adopted this practice, Brazil accumulated one of the most extensive and continuous historical series in the world on the religious composition of its population.

2The regularity of the census question reflects the fact that religion has never ceased to be one of the constitutive axes of Brazilian social life. If in 1872 the objective was, albeit tacitly, to count and confirm a predominantly Catholic society, the subsequent records gradually began to capture the fissures of this unique model.

3A century and a half after Brazil’s first census, the question about religion remains fundamental to understanding the most profound transformations in Brazilian society. On June 6, 2025, the IBGE released data on religious affiliation for the 2010s. The numbers were surrounded by great anticipation from researchers in the field, especially regarding the magnitude of the growth of the evangelical population. But they also reignited questions that have mobilized us since the beginning of the 21st century: what is the potential for the advancement of the “no religion” group in Brazil? What relationship is established between racial identity and Afro-Brazilian religions in the country?

4In this article, I offer an initial reaction to the newly released IBGE data. As with the results of previous censuses (Altmann, 2012; Camargo, 1973; Fernandes, 2008; Jacob et al., 2006; Mafra, 2004, 2013; Mariano, 2012; Mariz, 2013; Teixeira; Menezes, 2013), an intense academic production is expected from these numbers. Over time, the data will be analyzed in greater depth, their implications expanded, and their meanings compared from different perspectives. Here, I propose a dual objective. First, to present an analysis written in the heat of the moment, which places the released numbers in relation to historical series and already consolidated interpretations of previous censuses. Second, to highlight what appears to emerge, in light of the data, as a fundamental part of the research agenda for the next decade.

5In structural terms, I choose to follow the major religious groups as the IBGE itself presents its data: Catholics, Evangelicals, the non-religious, those of Afro-Brazilian religions and Umbanda, and Kardecists. I leave out what the IBGE classifies as Indigenous Traditions and Other because I consider that both require contextualized and less comprehensive analyses. In each of the sections – of unequal length – I present not only the diagnosis of the current numbers but also the main agenda elements that derive from them.

Catholics

6Over 150 years of questions about religion in censuses, one constant traverses the numbers: the percentage of Catholics is decreasing. In 1872, they constituted 99.7% of the population. Fifty years later, it was 95%. In the 1960s, they had declined to 90%; in 1980, to around 80%; today, 56%. Since Brazil began to measure its religious demography, it also began to cease being Catholic.

7Catholicism is the historically majority religion in Brazil, and also a kind of universal donor: the tradition from which virtually all family genealogies of conversion to other identities derive. Even when rejected, it is in relation to Catholicism that the framework of religious identification has been structured.

8This interpretation is a historical formulation within the field of religious studies in Brazil. Fundamentally, what its authors point out is both the historical recognition of the strength of this religious matrix, observable since the sociogenesis of the Brazilian nation, and the reading of a type of radical cultural paradigm from which everything else would be founded (Sanchis, 2001; Steil, 1996; Velho, 1995). Even the mutations of the Brazilian religious field, as Pierre Sanchis (2001, p. 45) suggests through this interpretative key, do not break with the structuring traits of this ancient logic: “it is worth asking ourselves whether these mutations [of the religious field] would not continue to follow the outlines of an ancient logic.” In other words, religious change would not necessarily mean a rupture with the Catholic-Brazilian culture, but a reconfiguration within it (Toniol, 2014).

9The novelty of recent decades is that the erosion of the Catholic population has accelerated as never before. In four decades, Catholics have lost more than a third of their original base. The numbers released by the IBGE present us with two distinct sets of questions. The first is more familiar: why are so many people ceasing to be Catholic? The second: why did fewer people cease to be Catholic this past decade? Be that as it may, Antônio Flávio Pierucci (2004) would add, the sociology of religion practiced in Brazil is the sociology of the decline of Catholicism.

10There are internal reasons, structural to Catholicism itself, that would have led to its dehydration, and there are external reasons. Let’s start with the internal ones.

11There is a counter-intuitive fact that needs to be considered: there is an inversely proportional relationship between the number of Catholics in Brazil and the institutional strength of the Catholic Church. According to official data from the Church itself, there have never been so many parishes and dioceses in the country. Similarly, the ratio of priests per inhabitant and priests per Catholic has never been so high. The problem is not a lack of priests, therefore. Indicators of the Catholic Church’s institutional strength show that the crisis is not institutional, but rather one of identification.

12The Church’s internal data are even more revealing when they show the continuous decline in the number of nuns in Brazil. That is, while the number of priests grew, that of women religious decreased. This process profoundly altered the internal ecology of the Church (Steil; Toniol, 2013, 2021).

13During the period of the Church’s greatest social presence, female congregations were responsible for a significant part of education, healthcare, and popular catechesis – institutions that ensured the daily insertion of Catholicism into Brazilian social life. Nuns were central figures in these networks of daily ties. Their weakening compromised the Church’s social embeddedness and signaled the masculinization of its structures. Brazilian Catholicism became more masculine, more institutional, and more distant from the daily lives of the faithful.

14This is precisely the opposite of female protagonism in the field of evangelical churches. Perhaps therein lies one of the reasons for their growth. Jacqueline Teixeira (2018) and Lorena Mochel (2025) are just two of the Brazilian researchers who identified this at the beginning of the last decade.

15The data recently released by the IBGE, however, show a decrease in the rate of decline in the percentage of Catholics. It had been speculated that the drop would be equal to or greater than 10 percentage points over the past decade, but the newly published figures indicate a decrease of 8.3 percentage points between 2010 and 2022. If we look at the historical sequence from 1991 to 2022, what the Census reveals is a deceleration in the annual rate of decline for Catholics. We went from an average reduction of 1.33% per year in the 1990s, to 1.25% in the 2000s, and 1.17% in the last decade. Catholicism continues to lose faithful, but the speed of erosion is slowly and continuously decreasing.

16The deceleration may be associated, albeit residually, with factors such as the valorization of Catholic tradition by conservative groups, the increase in digital presence, and the charisma of Pope Francis. None of the research I have conducted or followed in the last decade, however, points to the unequivocal predominance of any of these elements. On the one hand, the research agenda in the Catholic field largely remains the same as in previous decades: understanding the reasons for dehydration. On the other hand, for the first time in many years, there are indications that justify evaluating whether the decline has found structural limits and whether there are consistent reasons for the deceleration of its pace.

17Any research agenda on Catholics, however, must start from the dissonance between the expectation of a linear decline, so widely propagated in the last two decades, and the most elementary demographic lesson: population changes do not follow straight lines.

Evangelicals

18The main question of the 2022 Census is that evangelical growth was lower than expected. Far from the overwhelming expansion suggested by so many recent analyses, the numbers indicated a more contained advance. Between 1991 and 2022, the percentage of evangelicals in Brazil increased from 9% to 26.9%. However, analysis of the annual growth rate reveals a curve of constant deceleration: 6% per year in the 1990s, 3.7% in the 2000s, and just 1.6% in the last decade. Instead of the anticipated explosion, the data expose increasingly slower growth.

19Two necessary sociological exercises emerge here. The first concerns the demography of the evangelical field itself: why did they grow less? The second pertains to the order of political sociology: what does the hyper-inflated expectation of evangelical growth reveal about those who so heavily fueled it?

20At least part of this expectation was driven by a moral panic surrounding the figure of the “Evangelical Other,” constructed as a collective perceived as a threat to democratic order and recent social achievements. As the political and social crises of the last decade deepened, evangelicals were often hastily identified as responsible for the advance of conservatism and the intensification of liberal democracy’s dilemmas.

21The public projection of this group was further accentuated by its growing presence in Congress and executive positions, a phenomenon that reinforced the impression of accelerated demographic growth. Political visibility amplified their presence in the collective imagination far beyond what the numbers indicated. Few imagined that the growth, though real, could be more moderate. The slower pace recorded by the 2022 Census contradicts these forecasts and challenges the often-repeated impressionistic notion that the country was inevitably heading toward becoming an “Evangelistan.”

22The 2022 Census redirects us to concrete data and reintroduces the sociological dilemmas of a group that grew exponentially in recent decades but now, facing a much broader population base, sees its expansion rate decline.

23Several factors help explain this inflection. The first is demographic. As the evangelical population base expands, maintaining the same percentage growth rates becomes statistically more difficult. Growing from 5% to 15% is simpler than advancing from 25% to 35%. Population dynamics thus impose a natural brake on growth, which does not mean stagnation but the maturation of a cycle.

24Another relevant factor is the internal fragmentation of the evangelical field. If in the past growth was driven by large Pentecostal denominations, today growth is dispersed among a myriad of small, independent churches. This is the new configuration of evangelicals in Brazil. Datafolha research, coordinated by myself, Juliano Spyer, Christina Vital, and Vinicius do Valle, shows that 71% of São Paulo faithful attend small and medium-sized churches – spaces that receive up to 50 and up to 200 people, respectively. This predominance suggests a dynamic of decentralization of religious practice, contrasting with the more visible image of large temples.

25This fragmentation has deep historical and theological roots in the evangelical field. The more evangelicals there are, the greater the number of denominations and temples tends to be, in a dynamic that combines numerical expansion with institutional dispersion.

26Starting with the 2000 Census, a new movement began to overlap the multiplication of churches: the change in the pattern of religious self-identification. While until then a person who declared themselves evangelical would usually answer the census taker with the name of their denomination – ”Assembleia de Deus,” “Batista,” “Presbiteriana” – from that moment on, more generic categories gained strength. Many began to identify simply as “evangelicals” or “Christians,” signaling the emergence of non-denominational sensibilities that would set the tone for the evangelical field in the 21st century.

27Initially noted by anthropologists Emerson Giumbelli (2001) and Clara Mafra (2013), this subtlety in self-presentation inaugurated what we now call the “desigrejados” (those without a church affiliation). Far from meaning an abandonment of religion, many of these evangelicals continued to circulate among different groups, attending services, participating in cell groups and prayer meetings, but without a formal link to a church. This is a transition: from the rigid denominational model to more fluid forms of belonging, accompanying the growing individualization of religious trajectories and the pluralization of the evangelical field.

28These changes help shed light on the new pace of evangelical growth in the country. As the field fragments and trajectories individualize, the expansive dynamism that marked previous decades dilutes. The model based on large conversion movements, driven by robust and hierarchical churches, gives way to more flexible, less regimented, and institutionally weaker forms of belonging.

29The dispersion among small churches, the circulation among different groups, and the growth of the contingent of evangelicals without solid denominational affiliation indicate that the missionary impulse – the historical engine of evangelical expansion – no longer operates with the same intensity. In an increasingly plural and segmented religious field, growth depends less on large flows of collective adherence and more on dispersed movements, difficult to capture by old categories of expansion. The deceleration, far from indicating exhaustion, reveals the maturation and complexification of the phenomenon.

30Commenting on the 2010 Census data, Pierre Sanchis (2013) identified, in the group that in recent years has come to be called “desigrejados,” a reinforcement of dynamics already widely recognized in the Brazilian religious field. In particular, faced with the emergence of the category “undetermined evangelical,” he suggested that this is the contemporary expression of a historical trait of national religiosity: a belonging marked by fluidity, heterogeneous composition, and, not rarely, by multiple ties and references. For Sanchis, more than a rupture with traditional forms of affiliation, this phenomenon represents the intensification of religious logics already inscribed in the Brazilian experience of belief and belonging. In this case, we would not be facing a novelty, but a reinvention.

31The multiplication of churches and the growth of evangelicals without solid denominational affiliation have not only altered the country’s religious profile; they have also transformed the political game. In an increasingly fragmented field, not only temples multiply, but also political platforms. Evangelical politics, which once orbited consolidated figures and denominations, now has to deal with fluid leaders and dispersed networks. Pablo Marçal’s noisy campaign in the first round of the São Paulo mayoral race illustrates this new logic, capable of capturing votes outside traditional institutional channels. The critical reaction of historical leaders, such as Silas Malafaia, to the rise of figures like Marçal is not coincidental; it reveals the discomfort of those who see denominational authority being challenged by new forms of mobilization, more horizontal and adapted to network logic.

32For at least two decades, the evangelical universe has been the main focus of research in the social sciences of religion. The data released by the IBGE in June 2025 seem to impose, for the coming years, at least two orders of questions. The first is demographic in nature and refers to the need to investigate more deeply the process of deceleration in evangelical growth. The second is morphological and concerns the intense process of internalization of evangelical churches in small and medium-sized cities, as well as the out-of-curve growth observed in the Amazonian region. This displacement is important because it demands a revision of the current understanding of the evangelical field as an essentially urban phenomenon (Almeida, 2004; Mafra, 2011).

33Finally, by focusing attention on the dispute between Catholics and evangelicals, we run the risk of losing sight of a broader structural transformation of the Brazilian religious landscape. Brazil remains a predominantly Christian country, but its demographic base is shrinking. In just four decades, the percentage of Christians in the total population fell by about 12.5%. That is, although the dynamic between Catholics and evangelicals redraws the national religious map, Christianity as a whole is in retraction. This inflection, still little explored, constitutes a decisive axis for the research agenda of the next decade.

34To understand this transformation, the key group is the “no religion” group. If they were a religion, they would already be almost twice as large as all Spiritist, Afro-Brazilian, and other religious minorities combined. They currently form the most dynamic frontier and the most disruptive force in the Brazilian religious landscape.

The non-religious

35No religious group has grown as much in Brazil over the past few decades as the so-called religiously unaffiliated. Between 1980 and 2022, their share of the population jumped from 1.8% to 9.3% – an increase of more than fivefold. This upward trend began in the 1970s, when fewer than 1% of Brazilians identified as having no religion. The growth was steady: 7% in 2000, 7.9% in 2010, and 9.3% in 2022. While recent figures still indicate growth, the pace has slowed over the last decade, suggesting a possible trend toward stabilization.

36More than just numbers, the growth of the non-religious reveals a silent and profound transformation: the weakening of traditional religious ties and the emergence of more individualized, fluid, and unstable forms of relating to the sacred. The category non-religious accommodates a diversity difficult to capture by conventional classifications. It encompasses atheists, agnostics, and those who do not identify with any religion but have not necessarily abandoned religious beliefs.

37Historically, this group has a greater presence among urban youth. For over two decades, anthropologist Regina Novaes (2004) has drawn attention to this group. The non-religious express two refusals: the refusal of religious institutions and the refusal of traditional mediators of the sacred – priests, pastors, pais de santo. They prefer spiritual paths that dispense with these instances of authority. They believe without belonging (Toniol, 2009).

38The profile outlined by the 2022 Census reveals that most of this group consists of young, urban, and educated individuals, with a higher concentration in the 20 to 24 age group. The majority are white (39%), live in the Southeast region – which accounts for about half of the total – and have a 20.5% rate of completed higher education, above the national average. Although they do not fully reflect the country’s diversity, they are the most visible face of a silent change: the gradual detachment from traditional religious ties.

39They haven’t necessarily abandoned spirituality, but they seek religious experiences outside formal structures. Their beliefs are generally less dogmatic and more open to combining diverse references: they mix elements of Christianity with alternative practices, incorporating beliefs in energies, nature spiritualities, or non-religious cosmological views. This is a personalized spirituality, lived at the margins of institutions, marked by autonomy and the rejection of forms of control over the experience with the sacred.

40Although the growth of the non-religious in Brazil is significant, it is still below the levels recorded in other Latin American countries. In Uruguay, about 41% of the population declares itself non-religious; in Chile, 25%; and in Argentina, 18%. Brazil, with 9.3%, is closer to the Mexican reality, where 8% of the population has no formal religious affiliation. What distinguishes the Brazilian case is that this advance of the non-religious occurs in parallel with evangelical expansion and the reconfiguration of a more hybrid and competitive religious field, different from the more linear pattern of secularization observed in the Southern Cone.

41The agenda associated with this group seems to remain, first and foremost, the challenge of understanding it, given that it is a dispersed universe, fragmented in principle, and without specific meeting places. More than two decades ago, Regina Novaes (2004) had already indicated fundamental elements for the advancement of this research, especially by drawing attention to the fact that the concentration of the non-religious among young people poses its own challenges. This becomes particularly evident in the face of instruments such as the Census, which relies on only one direct question – ”What is your religion?” – and, therefore, does not capture important nuances of youth religious experience. Such limitations are aggravated when we consider that religious belonging among young people is often intertwined with fluid trajectories, moments of experimentation, and low transference from family religions.

42The most intriguing question, however, might be another: why did this group not show exponential growth in the last decade? A plausible hypothesis is that this stagnation is related to the general aging of the Brazilian population and, consequently, to the proportional decrease in the young population. In this case, the advance of the non-religious would remain concentrated in a specific age group, revealing the limits of a broader process of decline in institutional religious affiliation in the country.

43The non-religious are not the only ones reshaping the country’s faith landscape. Other groups, historically marginalized, also emerge with new strength and visibility. This is the case of Afro-Brazilian religions, whose recent expansion carries implications that go beyond the numbers.

Afro-Brazilian and Umbanda religions

44Perhaps the most eloquent data point of this decade is this: Afro-Brazilian religious traditions were the ones that expanded the most in the country. Between 2010 and 2022, their presence in the population tripled, leaping from 0.3% to 1.0%. This is the fastest relative growth recorded among all religious groups in the country.

45More than just a demographic phenomenon, this expansion translates into a process of symbolic affirmation and political visibility. Afro-Brazilian religions, historically marginalized and persecuted, are gaining unprecedented public space, redrawing not only the religious map but also the Brazilian social and cultural imaginary.

46In recent years, there was an expectation that the growth of Afro-Brazilian religions would be strongly associated with the identity reconfiguration of a new generation: young people who, assuming Blackness as a central dimension of their identity, would adhere to African-matrix religions as a primary and affirmative affiliation. The 2022 Census data does not refute this hypothesis, but suggests a more complex reality that requires cautious interpretation. The majority of Umbanda and Candomblé adherents in Brazil identify as Black, comprising Black individuals (23%) and “pardos” (34%), which represents about 56% of the total, above the national average. The regional distribution of these religions has a center of gravity in Rio Grande do Sul. This state alone accounts for more than half the number of adherents recorded in the second-place state, São Paulo.

47The analysis of racial composition reveals a dual dynamic: Black individuals are overrepresented in relation to their proportion in the general population, while White individuals remain close to the national average, with a significant but not majority presence. “Pardos”, in turn, appear underrepresented – they constitute almost half of the Brazilian population, but only a third of the adherents. Yellow and Indigenous individuals continue with residual participation, less than 1%, both in the overall population and in the Afro-religious field. In terms of age, the distribution of practitioners is quite similar to that of the general population, which relativizes the idea of a predominantly young phenomenon.

48This does not mean, however, that the hypothesis of affirmative adherence of young Black individuals to African-matrix religions should be discarded. On the contrary, it remains a relevant interpretive line, especially when situated at the intersection of racial affirmation, urban experiences, and contemporary forms of religiosity, and deserves to be further explored in the coming years. The rise of Umbanda and Candomblé should be read in light of a complex social and racial geography, articulated with historical inequalities, regional dynamics, and ongoing symbolic disputes. Thus, the most promising research agenda is one that deeply investigates the intertwining of youth, racial identity, and African-matrix religiousness.

Kardecism

49Finally, the last comment concerns Kardecism. The trajectory of Kardecism in Brazil, between 1991 and recent years, reveals a movement of ascent and subsequent decline. Starting with 1.12% of the population in 1991, the religion experienced consistent and notable growth, reaching 1.3% (2.3 million people) in 2000 and culminating in a peak of 2% of the population (3.8 million) in 2010. This increase was particularly significant in the Southeast region, where the proportion of Kardecists jumped from 2.0% to 3.1% between 2000 and 2010, adding over one million adherents. However, the scenario changed from 2010 onwards, with Kardecism recording a drop to 1.8% of the population, representing a decrease of 0.3 percentage points compared to the previous decade.

50The most urgent data point is that, after decades of ascent, the demographic trajectory of Kardecism has changed direction. Its age composition has also become older than the national average: today, Spiritists are mainly concentrated among adults aged 40 to 60 years. In other words, in addition to having lost relative participation in the population, they have aged. It remains to be seen whether this decline will be continuous or merely punctual, something that only future censuses can clarify.

51Qualitative research on recent transformations in the Spiritist field is urgent. Among the hypotheses to be investigated, the possibility that some Umbanda adherents, who in previous decades declared themselves as Spiritists, may have explicitly assumed the Umbanda identity stands out. This reclassification movement could help explain, at least in part, the growth of Afro-Brazilian religions and the proportional decline of Kardecism. This is, however, a hypothesis that demands careful verification.

Conclusion

52As of the close of this text, the IBGE had not yet released the microdata detailing denominational affiliation among evangelicals. When published, this data should indicate which currents gained or lost momentum, and simultaneously, open a new set of research questions.

53Two final comments, however, seem indispensable. The first concerns the exclusion of children under ten years old in the 2022 Census. By not capturing the religious preferences of this age group, wouldn’t the survey be introducing a gap that could distort the results, especially in traditions where religious socialization begins very early? Catholics who baptize newborns and Pentecostals with organized children’s ministries would be examples of potentially underrepresented groups. There is no evidence yet that this effect is uniform, but it’s plausible to assume that traditions with high birth rates or a strong emphasis on religious formation were particularly affected. Shouldn’t the IBGE re-evaluate this age cut-off or, at least, clearly state its impact on the estimates produced?

54The second comment concerns the technology of producing the census numbers itself. As Clara Mafra (2013) observed, speaking of a “census of religion” is, at its core, a hyperbole. The questionnaire contains only one question – “What is your religion or worship?” – and provides no information about intensity of participation, dual belonging, or trajectories of religious transit. Given this weakness, researchers are forced to resort to complementary, often asymmetrical, sources to give interpretive depth to the data. Persisting with this methodological insufficiency seems unjustifiable. The least one could expect would be the inclusion of a broader range of closed alternatives, allowing, for example, the recognition of multiple belongings, in addition to incorporating a question about frequency of participation in services, rituals, or meetings. Measures like these would help reduce ambiguities – such as that of the “undetermined evangelical” category – and would make the Census a more coherent instrument with the diversity and complexity of religious life in the country.

55The 2022 Census confirms that 21st-century religious Brazil is less predictable than linear analyses supposed. Instead of a narrative of simple substitution – Catholics for evangelicals, religious people for atheists – what is revealed is a fragmented, multifaceted, and dynamic scenario. Hopefully, in the next decade, we will be able to exchange hasty certainties for interpretations more attentive to the density and complexity of the Brazilian religious field – supported, perhaps, by more robust statistics and less timid methodologies.

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Rodrigo Toniol, «2022 Census and religion in Brazil»Horizontes Antropológicos [Online], 72 | 2025, posto online no dia 31 agosto 2025, consultado o 17 fevereiro 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/horizontes/10499

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Rodrigo Toniol

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
rodrigo.toniol[at]gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1169-5253

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