Anybody know why there’s such a big difference?
Being Catholic in South America is the default in most cases, especially if you’re poor. Being protestant almost always means you or your family had it pushed on you by American imperialism, or in rarer cases your family has been protestant for like 300 years and is descendant from early colonizers. That’s my understanding.
Not the case in Brazil. The number of evangelicals has seen a sharp rise in the last 20 years, mostly driven by the power of megachurches and televangelists, and most of these new converts are poor people. Nobody converts to catholicism, but plenty of people become evangelical.
You’re right that being catholic is the default, though - technically my whole family is catholic, even though most of them haven’t gone to church in years.
Yeah, depending on the context. I’ve noticed Catholicism (or any religion for that matter) has been a hit or miss with how based they are. I wonder if it’s because, like you said, it’s so normalized there, and has not seen a strong challenge in faith, that it becomes somewhat de-politicized.
Ireland is made up of a lot of Catholics, and they voted in same-sex marriage by a popular vote. Cuba has a referendum for same-sex marriage in 9 days, another Catholic country. While I am optimistic, many conservative Catholic groups are putting up quite the fight against it.
Keep in mind that this is just me making a hypothesis so don’t bully me if I’m wrong.
