The “No Religion” in Government Censuses of Population in Brazil
Over the period of governmental censuses of the population carried out in Brazil, in the question about citizens’ religion, a growth of what has been called “no religion” has been noted. From 0.5% in 1960, 0.8% in 1970, 1.6% in 1980, 4.8% in 1990, 7.4% in 2000, the figure reached 8% in 2010. This corresponds to 15.3 million of the population of Brazil. “No religion” is a category created by census makers to allocate responses that did not express religious adherence, but which, since the 1990 Census, has become a theme that mirrors the existence of a relevant social segment (Nicolini 2017). Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to contend that this means a growth of atheism in the country (Rodrigues 2012). Of these 15.3 million, only 615,000 declared themselves atheists (0.32%) and 124,000 agnostics (0.07%) (Novaes 2013).
They are mostly young people with an average age of 26. And although the number of “no religion” was 8%...
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References
Camurça M (2013) O Brasil religioso que emerge do Censo de 2010: consolidações, tendências e perplexidades. In: Teixeira F, Menezes R (eds) Religiões em Movimento: o Censo de 2010. Vozes, Petrópolis, pp 63–87
Nicolini M (2017) Religião e Poder Civil, arranjos e resistências. CRV, Curitiba
Novaes R (2013) Jovens sem religião: sinais de outros tempos. In: Teixeira F, Menezes R (eds) Religiões em Movimento: o Censo de 2010. Vozes, Petrópolis, pp 175–190
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Camurça, M. (2019). Agnosticism and People Without Religion in Brazil. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Religions of the World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27078-4_388
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