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.
Protestants in South America are much more of a tool of American imperialism than Catholicism at the moment due to the history of liberation theology, etc. Evangelicals in particular have strong ties with doctrinal shifts in their American counterparts, so they tend to follow arguments on particularly American shit. They also import evangelical teachers from America as if they are God, and reject the history of Christianity generally unlike Catholics.
There’s a much longer answer here about class interests, prosperity gospel, and pentecostalism, but I think the above is generally good.
The “Option for the Poor” is a key Catholic doctrine and in South America especially leads to a Liberation Theology approach. Catholicism is a broad church, and judging it based on US tradcaths who think the only Church Council that counts is Vatican I is a mistake.
There is also the fact that the poorer classes tend to be Catholic and the richer Protestant.
The preferential option for the poor is my favorite part of Catholicism. It is a truly radical piece of doctrine. While calvinists here in the states will tell you that their wealth is their just reward for living a good Christian life, the catholics straight up say “no, God loves poor people more than you.”
Not exactly sure what that means for the folks in the Vatican… but it’s such a powerful tool for liberation theologians.
Also, I think every rich calvinist who gets the wall deserves a chance to try to fit a camel through the eye of a needle. Let them marinate in the fact that their next stop is hell.
If we blend the rich, we can use capillary action to pass them through the eye of a needle.
as bad as the catholic church is, it’s nothing compared to the psycho shit our evangelicals imported from burgerland
Catholics are taught the ten commandments and have some general idea of caring for others .
Where as evangelicals are told they can do what ever they want and as long as they say they are Christian they will get into heaven. 🤷
American Catholics are basically evangelicals
Could also do with the fact that the Catholic Church actually converted indigenous people. Where as evangelicas just seem to be European colonizing descendents.
It’s probably the latter
I’d like to point out that’s modern US Evangelicals as a whole. Plenty of other Protestants have a concerningly complete command of the bible (Sola Scriptura will do that) and The Quakers and Diggers and many others have been staunch champions of the working classes.
