(RNS) — The number of Latin Americans who say they are not affiliated with a religion has long been steadily increasing. And over the past decade, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, the percentage of those known as “nones” roughly doubled in Argentina (to 24% in 2024), Brazil (15%) and Chile (33%); tripled in Mexico (20%) and Peru (12%); and almost quadrupled in Colombia (23%).
But for many, that label doesn’t mean a rejection of faith. Across Brazil, Colombia and beyond, people continue to pray, meditate and participate in rituals drawing from Christian, Indigenous, African and Eastern traditions in deeply personal ways, so-called nones told RNS. Their beliefs and practices may reveal a blind spot of such surveys in how they rely on Christian and Western frameworks to define what counts as religion.
For Camile Coutinho, a 28-year-old dietitian who lives near Rio de Janeiro, a typical week involves attending a Sunday service at a Baptist church, taking part in ritual baths and cowrie-shell divination with a Umbanda priestess, and going to Deeksha meditation gatherings. She recites the Hail Mary and Our Father Catholic prayers and uses Japamala prayer beads. She keeps incense and crystals in her home to attempt to cleanse negative energy. However, she identifies as religiously unaffiliated.
“I believe in the Bible, in Christianity,” she said, “but today I also believe in spiritism and in Umbanda. I’ve been studying these traditions a lot.”
Coutinho grew up in a typical Catholic Latin American religious environment. Her parents were Catholic — “though not very practicing,” she said. But when she fell ill, her mother would often take her to see a traditional folk healer who prayed over people, known in Brazil as a rezadeira.
In her teenage years, Coutinho converted to evangelical Christianity, and her family followed. In more recent years, however, she began to distance herself from her church as political polarization intensified in the country. The church’s support for right-wing politics — especially its alignment with former President Jair Bolsonaro — along with witnessing increasingly homophobic discourse there pushed her away, even as her parents chose to stay, she said.
RELATED: Survey: Catholicism continues sharp decline in Latin America
Coutinho fits into a category of nones that encompasses far more than only atheists or agnostics, and which is especially prevalent in Latin America. Her experiences also echo a broader pattern in many traditional cultures, including Latin American Indigenous ones, where spiritual beliefs are inseparable from everyday life, social organization and community practices, said Gustavo Morello, a sociologist of religion at Boston College in Massachusetts.
After Catholicism was introduced to Latin America by European colonizers, many regions did not have enough priests to sustain it on an institutional level. While colonial-era cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City and Lima had a regular clerical presence, vast rural areas did not, and religious life was maintained by the communities, Morello said.