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Religious Beliefs and Spirituality in Colombia

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Colombia, known in official circles as the Republic of Colombia, is a country situated in the northwest corner of the South American continent, bordered to the northwest by Panama; to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; and it shares maritime limits with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  The country is organized as a unitary, constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments.

The territory of what is now Colombia was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples including the Muisca, Quimbaya, and Tairona. These groups and others have influenced the religions in Colombia over the years and, to a minor degree, continue to do so today.

Cathedral in Bogota, SourceThe Spanish—and the Roman Catholic religion—arrived in Colombia in 1499 and initiated a period of conquest and colonization ultimately creating the Viceroyalty of New Granada, with its capital at Bogotá.  Independence from Spain was won in 1819, but by 1830 "Gran Colombia" had collapsed with the secession of Venezuela and Ecuador. What is now Colombia and Panama emerged as the Republic of New Granada. The new nation experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation (1858), and then the United States of Colombia (1863), before the Republic of Colombia was finally declared in 1886. Panama seceded in 1903.

Colombia is ethnically diverse, but religiously homogenous.  The descendants of the original indigenous inhabitants, Spanish colonists, Africans originally brought to the country as slaves, and 20th-century immigrants from Europe and the Middle East have all contributed to the country’s cultural heritage.  This has also been influenced by Colombia's varied geography, and the imposing landscape of the country, resulting in the development of very strong regional identities.

Religions of Colombia: Introduction

Determining the exact religious composition of Colombia can be difficult; the National Administrative Department of Statistics for the country—the Colombian equivalent of the U.S. Census Bureau—no longer collects religious statistics, and accurate reports are problematic to obtain.

Despite these challenges, an assortment of studies and surveys, including one conducted by the nation’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, have found that roughly 90 percent of the Colombian population adheres to Christianity, the overwhelming majority of which (85 percent) are Roman Catholic.  Nearly 4 percent of the Colombian population adheres to some form of the Protestant faith, while 3 percent of the population self identifies as either Atheist or Agnostic.

Roughly 2 percent of Columbians adhere to the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventist religions, and less than 1% belongs to one of the following faiths:  Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Indigenous religions, Hare Krishna movement, Rastafari movement, Orthodox Catholic Church, and spiritual studies, such as African Animism. The remaining portion of the population responded they did not know or did not respond to the various studies and surveys.

Prior to the adoption of the current Colombian Constitution in 1991, Roman Catholicism was the country's official religion.  The adoption of said constitution meant that Colombia had no official or state religion.  However, the document goes go on to state that the nation is "not atheist or agnostic, nor indifferent to Colombians' religious sentiment." Some have argued or assumed that this clause means that the Roman Catholic Church continues to retain a privileged position in Colombia; however, a 1994 constitutional court decision declared unconstitutional any official government reference to religious characterizations of the country.

As of the adoption of a public law agreement in 1997, non-Catholic religious organizations must receive special permission from the State in order to provide chaplains to public institutions such as hospitals or prisons or to perform marriages recognized by the government. Total membership, social popularity, and the content of an organization's statutes and required behavioral norms are considered before permission is granted. As of 2002, only 12 non-Catholic churches had received the necessary status to perform legal marriages.

Despite the appearance of being a deeply religious country, nearly 36 percent of Colombians admit that they do not practice their faith actively.

Roman Catholicism in Colombia

Iglesia de las Lajas in Narino, Colombia, SourceAs stated in the introduction, the overwhelmingly majority of Colombians adhere to the Roman Catholic faith, with more than 80 percent of the population either baptized or planning to be baptized in the Catholic Church.

The Colombian variant of the Roman Catholic religion is widely known as one of the most conservative and traditional in Latin America. Colombians are among the most devout of Latin American Catholics, although the percentage of Catholics who actively practice their faith is currently on the decline. 

A Brief History of Catholicism in (Modern) Colombia

Beginning in the 1940s, the church's involvement in such activities as social welfare and union organization flowed in part from changes in Colombian society—a society that was becoming increasingly modern. Of equal importance was the process of renewal that characterized the worldwide Roman Catholic Church in the early 1960s. Both Pope John XXIII (1958-63) and Pope Paul VI (1963-78) issued a series of decrees that were unequaled in their efforts to modernize the church as an institution and modify its role in society. These encyclicals, as they were called, stressed the government's obligation to reduce socioeconomic inequalities and the church's obligation to take a leading role in reform.

Although the papal decrees steered the Colombian Catholic Church in the direction of change, it was not until the 1968 Latin American Bishops Conference (the Conferencia Episcopal Latinoamericana, or CELAM) in the city of Medellín that these proposed reforms were brought home in the form of a declaration specifically involving Latin America. The core concepts developed during the Medellín conference were the conflict between the "haves" and "have-nots," the need for fundamental institutional reforms, and social action as the key means of Christian influence in the world. The conclusions of the Medellín conference gave the Latin American church the necessary mandate to implement social justice and church reform.

In keeping with the decrees laid out at the Medellín conference, the Colombian bishops endorsed the call for social action. Unlike other Latin American colleagues, however, the Colombian bishops shied away from some of the more dramatic aspects of Medellín. They did not, for example, accept Medellín's view that institutionalized violence characterized Latin American societies. Unable to change the shape of the Medellín documents, the Colombians published a dissenting treatise in the secular press.

The inability (or refusal) on the part of the Colombian bishops to agree on an approach to social reform and to implement it through strong and effective leadership increased the fragmentation within the church in Colombia and the controversy surrounding the role of the latter. Some of these problems developed over organizational rather than ideological disagreements between groups fighting for the same resources or powerful positions. The inadequate economic base and the lack of qualified personnel further limited developmental efforts. Consequently, only development programs operating in strongly Catholic areas had substantial success. Competition among upwardly mobile priests for the attention of the local bishop also detracted from reform and tended to promote those priests eager to conform to the status quo.

Aggravation over the lack of vibrant leadership caused some Catholic priests to strike out on their own. The first to do so was a man by the name of Camilo Torres, an upper-class Colombian who left the priesthood to become a guerrilla. Torres was killed in 1966, less than six months after he joined the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN), thus becoming the first so-called martyr of the Catholic left in Latin America. He became a symbol for many leftists with his commitment to radical change through violence.

In the latter portion of the 1960s, many Colombian priests, encouraged by Torres's example, were determined to work for social change. With the exception of Gerardo Valencia Cano, bishop of Buenaventura, none of the episcopate supported their work. Scorn by the hierarchy, the group attempted to develop a power base strong enough to break up the religious and secular hold of the elite. Basing their platforms on leftist, even Marxist concepts, they began to hold protest demonstrations to rally support against the hierarchal establishment and to propagate programs of radical social change.

Despite rejection of the Medellín conclusions by the majority of Colombian bishops, the activists led by Bishop Valencia became the initial group in Latin America to issue a proposal and a platform for social reform based on the resolutions of the Medellín conference. Meeting in 1968 under the name “Golconda Group (‘Golconda’ after the farmhouse where they first met),” the group led the revolutionary wing of the Colombian church until early in 1970. The Golconda Group promoted an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist stance and a platform that included recourse to violence under certain conditions. By advocating violence, however, the group touched a sensitive nerve among a wide section of Colombians and undercut latent support from many progressive Catholics who were ready to promote change.

The Golconda Group of Colombia became involved in political as well as social issues and encouraged the Colombian people to boycott the elections of 1970 and thereby refuse to give a democratic stamp to either of the official parties. This antagonistic attitude toward the government led to charges of communist sympathies and to the eventual repression and imprisonment of members of the movement. Because the group was small and radical and because government and ecclesiastical opposition were effectively organized against it, the movement was short lived.  After several members were imprisoned on the eve of its third annual meeting in early 1970, the Golconda Group ceased to exist as a single organization, although individuals continued to use its name. Despite the fact that their efforts to effect far-reaching social changes were not successful, members of the Golconda Group came to be considered forerunners of the controversial liberation theology movement among the Catholic clergy elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.

Following the demise of the Golconda Group, radical activity remained largely scattered and ineffective, appearing to have ebbed. Bishop Valencia was killed in an airplane crash in February of 1972, and with his death the radical clerics lost their only supporter among the elite hierarchy. Other groups were formed, and support grew for the radical wing of the church, but no group was as dynamic or controversial as the Golconda Group had been.

The deficiency of any type of active commitment on the part of the bishops had numerous effects in Colombia. On the one hand, the weakness of the hierarchy's approval and/or disapproval of radical clergy led to much confusion with regard to the public interpretation of Catholic social ideology among Colombians. On the other hand, the lack of protection against government repression convinced many that the official church was not genuinely interested in change. Finally, the national effort at socioeconomic development was hampered because, without consensus, the impact of the church on reform remained gradual at best.

The clarification for the Colombian church's relatively non-dynamic nature rested chiefly with the distinctive political context within which the church operated. The church had become most prominent in those countries of Latin America where a repressive political context simplified the church’s options and displaced ordinary social pressures.  The church also played a significant role in those regions where the Catholic leadership—more often than not encouraged by lower-level activism within the church—was willing to commit the institution to an active role in public conflict.  Sadly, neither of these conditions existed in Colombia after the Medellín conference.

The Catholic Church in Colombia functioned within a relatively open, yet competitive political system. Despite enduring high levels of violence, Colombia's political circumstances allowed some play of social and political forces, keeping open channels that, when closed in other societies, shifted pressures onto the church. The political system demonstrated at least some receptiveness to changing demands and was accompanied by considerable economic success. The nation's imperfect, oligarchic democracy, muddling as usual through a series of crises, did not offer a target to justify violent corrective action. No convincing case had been made by anyone-whether militants in the church or the secular left –that garnered significant popular support behind armed overthrow of the Colombian regime.

The absence of an authoritarian and repressive political context limited the political role of the Colombian church.  Certainly, after the 1960s the church's ability to shape the outcome of political issues declined substantially. The church also did not use its teaching authority compellingly enough to clearly affect the broader agenda of social choices. Its negative pleas—for example, against birth control and political violence—were notably ineffective.

The lone way in which the Catholic Church of Colombia may have been more important politically was in upholding the legitimacy of Colombia's oligarchic democracy. It came to this position in the mid-1950s, after having been long divided over identification with the Conservative Party. The horrifying spectacle of la violencia (1948-66) and the affronts of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla led the church’s leadership to endorse his overthrow and the subsequent regime of the National Front. It consistently defended the National Front regime and its successor against critics in the church itself and in society in general.

Colombia's “democracy” survived, against many predictions and in sharp contrast to the civilian politics of many other countries. The continuing support of the nationalized Catholic Church was one potential reason. A long line of "rebel priests" and nuns, beginning with Torres in the mid-1960s, believed that the church's legitimizing of established politics was both morally wrong and politically important. They frequently suggested that the church's support was crucial to the status quo.

The recent past, however, has not born out this assertion in any clear way. The church had demonstrated a potential negative power to topple a regime (for example, in helping bring down Rojas Pinilla in 1957). From that, however, the weight of its optimistic support, as distinguished from its neutrality, could only be indirectly inferred.  If progressive activists had been able to move the institutional church into a militant, liberationist position against the regime, they would undoubtedly have threatened the regime's foundations. In addition, if they had even won enough support for the church to have publicly divided internally over the legitimacy of the regime, they would have deeply shaken the regime's stability. However, neither development occurred.

Catholic Church in Colombia Today

In 1980, a report describing Catholicism in Colombia, noted that the church, as an institution, was very authoritarian and paternalistic and had been historically associated with elite structures in the society.

The Concordat of 1973 spelled out relations between the Colombian government and the Vatican—the seat of the global Catholic Church.  The Concordat replaced a clause in the Colombian Constitution of 1886—a clause that had established the Catholic Church as the official religion of the nation—with a new clause stating that "Roman Catholicism is the religion of the great majority of Colombians." 

The Concordat of 1973 also changed the church's stance on three major issues in Colombia: the mission territories, education, and marriage. First, the mission territories—lands on which the Indian populations resided—ceased to be enclaves where Catholic missionaries had greater jurisdiction than the government over schools, health, and other services; by agreement the vast network of schools and social services was eventually to be transferred to the government.

With regard to education, the Concordant ordered that the church had to surrender its right to censor public university texts and enforce the use of the Catholic catechism in public schools. Under the new concordat, the church retained the right to run only its own schools and universities, and even these had to follow government guidelines.

As for marriage, the Concordant stated that Colombians were allowed to contract civil marriages without abjuring the Catholic faith. The civil validity of church weddings was also recognized, although all marriages were also to be recorded on the civil registry. Catholic marriages, however, could only be dissolved through arbitration in a church court.

Despite the changes brought forth by the Concordant of 1973, the persistence of custom and the church's traditional position as a moral and social arbiter ensured its continued strong presence in the lives of Colombians. The parish church continued to be recognized as the hub of nearly every neighborhood and community, and the local priest was often the major figure of authority and leadership. Additionally, most priests were native Colombians, in sharp contrast to the dependence on foreign clergy generally prevalent in Latin America and the United States.  Approximately 95 percent of the diocesan priests in Colombia, as well as 65 percent of priests belonging to religious orders, were native Colombians.  Since the country’s independence, all but four bishops in the country have been Colombian.

The influence of today’s Colombian Catholic Church varies in different regions of the country and among different social groups, but it is generally felt everywhere and is seldom questioned. The population in general continues to attach great importance to observance of the formal acts of Catholicism. The rate of attendance at mass, although shrinking, remains fairly high, particularly among women, who generally take the practice of religion more seriously than men. Church attendance in Colombia also attests to a woman's general virtue.

In some urban parishes, more than 85 percent of the Catholics continue to attend mass, and several cities and regions are noted throughout the country for their religious observance. The people of the Antioquia Department, for example, are reputed to be particularly devout Catholics, and the Indians of the southern highlands and residents of Popayán are recognized for their regular attendance at mass and traditional observance of holy days, especially during Holy Week.

To the typical Colombian, the primary rites of the church, such as baptism, first communion, marriage, and extreme unction, mark the key turning points in the life cycle and identifies him or her as a social being. The Catholic faith is felt to be a part of a person's cultural heritage passed on like language and becomes an integral part of a person's being.

Members of Colombia’s upper class and the upper middle class frequently have close personal relations with members of the religious hierarchy.  Most of the clergy and nearly all prelates are of upper-class or middle-class origin and therefore share the interests and attitudes of these groups and feel the closest affinity with them. The upper social levels also support Catholic charities with time and money and provide most of the membership of lay religious associations.

Religious beliefs and practices in Colombia’s rural peasant communities reflect centuries of geographic remoteness and a lack of formal religious training. People in these areas are known to be more devout than those in the cities, but their Catholicism was often very different from that of the urban upper and middle classes. Fusion of Catholic practices and beliefs with indigenous, African, and sixteenth-century Spanish ones are widespread in the countryside. Traces of the rural folk religions are also found in urban lower-class communities, particularly those with many rural migrants.

Most people in rural villages are careful to fulfill what they consider to be their religious obligations to protect them from supernatural punishment or to secure blessings from one of the saints. The Virgin Mary and the saints are deeply revered by most people. The saints, especially one's patron saint, are considered to be more accessible than God and sometimes willing to intervene in the individual's earthly affairs.

The Catholic mass, the sacraments, religious processions, and objects of religious veneration are shared by nearly all Colombians. Holy day celebrations, particularly the fiestas honoring a community's patron saint, are events of great significance in the country, not only in the religious life of the people but also as elements of social cohesion that unite members of the community in a common bond.

A minority of critics within the church contend, however, that this emphasis on the ritual aspects of the faith masks serious deficiencies in the exercise of that faith. In their view, Catholicism has a limited impact on the personal lives of the laity. Many couples have chosen alternatives to a Catholic wedding, such as consensual union or a civil ceremony. In addition, many Catholics lack even an elementary grounding in church doctrine. Critics also argue that Colombia's ratio of priests to inhabitants—about 1 to 4,000, one of the best in Latin America—is highly misleading. Like most elites, clerics gravitate toward urban areas. In contrast, many rural churches lack priests for unmitigated periods of time.

Despite these deficiencies, the Catholic Church continues to exercise substantial influence in a number of areas, including education, social welfare, and union organization. Catholic control over education in Colombia is arguably the strongest in Latin America and even greater than its official powers suggest. The church has its own Secretariat of Education, which maintains two research organizations, a literacy program reaching thousands of rural Colombians, and more than 3,500 schools and universities.

The church-operated research institutes in Colombia, which were founded in the 1960s, conduct socioeconomic studies and act as advisers to the hierarchy. The Center for Research and Social Action (Centro de Investigación y Acción Social, or CIAS), subsequently renamed the Center for Research and Popular Education (Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular--Cinep), is run by Jesuits, and the Colombian Institute of Social Development (Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Social--Icodes) is staffed by diocesan priests. Both have performed studies on housing and population problems, church-sponsored development programs, and land reform, and both are well respected for the quality and reliability of their studies.

Although education is still the most important area of Catholic activity, mission programs and social welfare are also major efforts within the church. As of today, about 1,100 charitable institutions are run by the church, including orphanages and hospitals. Other welfare institutions are staffed by nuns whose orders are reimbursed by the government. Because of its involvement with the mission territories, the church is also represented in the National Indian Institute. Although the government is slowly taking over the functions of the church in the Indian territories, the church continues to play an important role there.

Two of the most important social welfare programs in Colombia are the Colombian Charity (Caritas Colombiana) and Communal Action (Acción Comunal). Colombiana Charity was set up to coordinate the welfare work of various Catholic institutions. To most Colombians, it is identified with the distribution of agricultural surpluses, shoes, and clothing to the poor. Communal Action, a community development program established by the government in 1958, has significant input from the church at the local level. Priests serve as key organizers in Communal Action groups, trying to educate rural Colombians in self-help methods.

Minority Religions in Colombia

The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá, SourceIn comparison with Catholicism, other religions in Colombia continued to play a small role in the 1980s. The Protestant population numbered roughly 200,000; Jews were far less numerous, having only a few small congregations in larger cities.

In the past, restrictive immigration policy kept most non-Catholics from entering the country. Although Protestant missionaries had been officially allowed to proselytize since the 1930s, they often met with opposition from members of the Catholic clergy and laity. Non-Catholics are guaranteed freedom of worship under the Constitution, however.

Many indigenous religions were practiced in Colombia prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the 16 century; however only a few have survived.  In the latter half of the 20 century, the Amerindian populations were at least ostensibly Catholic, and only a few tribes in the most isolated regions continued in their traditional beliefs. The nation's black population—descendants of slaves who were brought to the country by the Spanish—also were nominally Catholic, although remnants of African religion and beliefs did survive in some communities. Blacks on the Isla de San Andrés and Isla de Providencia are largely Protestant, however, having originally been colonized by Britain.

Protestantism in Colombia

Although several minority religions exist in Colombia (see introduction), the only faith with a measurable percentage of adherents is Protestantism.

Currently, approximately 1.5 million people in Colombia (3.5% of the population) are Protestants.  Some of the Protestant denominations present in the country include, but are not limited to, Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite, Nazarene and Pentecostal denominations. Below is a look at some of the other Protestant and Christian faiths with Colombian membership:

  • Alianza Christian and Missionary
  • Assemblies of God
  • Asociación of Iglesias Hermanos Menonitas de Colombia)
  • Church of the Nazarene
  • Brothers in Christ
  • Church of Evangelical Crusade
  • Church of God
  • Evangelical Lutheran Church
  • Evangelical Mission
  • Indigenous Mission
  • Mission of Native Tribes
  • Presbyterian Church of Columbia
  • Gospel Missionary Union
  • Seventh-day Adventist Church  (241,029 members)