Michael Paulson discusses a new Pew survey showing the Catholic Church on the decline in Latin America, where evangelicals have made major inroads in recent years:
A sweeping new survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center, finds that 69 percent of Latin American adults say they are Catholic, down from an estimated 90 percent for much of the 20th century. The decline appears to have accelerated recently: Eight[y]-four percent of those surveyed said they were raised Catholic, meaning there has been a 15-percentage-point drop-off in one generation. The findings are not a total surprise — it has been evident for some time that evangelical, and particularly Pentecostal, churches are growing in Latin America, generally at the expense of Catholicism. But the Pew study, which was conducted by in-person interviews with 30,000 adults in 18 countries and Puerto Rico, provides significant evidence for the trend, and shows that it is both broad and rapid.
The region remains home to over 40 percent of the world’s Catholics, but the trend is unmistakeable. Adam Taylor adds:
Their reasons for leaving one Christian church and joining another are complicated:
Across the region, the report found, more than 80 percent of former Catholics who had joined the Protestant church did so because they were seeking a “personal connection with God,” while 69 percent said they enjoyed the new style of worship at their new church. Fifty-eight percent said they had converted after the church reached out to them, the report noted. Pew’s report also points to a smaller, yet still considerable, number of people who don’t profess a religion — the “unaffiliated.” These people tend to be younger than Catholics and Protestants and don’t necessarily see themselves as agnostic or atheist: Most just have “no particular religion,” the report notes.
Peter Blair illustrates how the selection of Pope Francis was partly to stem the tide:
[I]t’s possible to read much of Francis’s papacy so far as an attempt to appeal to Catholics and former Catholics in his home region. The friendly, personable style of communication, his closeness with evangelical leaders both before and after his election as Pope (Argentine evangelicals said Francis was “an answer to our prayers” upon his election), his forthright attitude towards the Devil, even his lukewarm or perhaps hostile attitude to Pope Benedict’s liturgical reforms—all of this is consistent with an attempt to stem a growing defection to Protestant churches.
The Dish 