According to research by the Center for Metropolis Studies, Europe took about 500 years to carry out the same religious transition
According to one search carried out by CEM (Centro de Estudos da Metrópole) of USP (University of São Paulo), evangelical churches opened an average of 17 new temples per day in Brazil in 2019. The report analyzes the expansion of these establishments in the period from 1920 to 2019, together with the location of the states with the greatest evangelical predominance. Victor Araújo, a political scientist at the University of Zurich and a researcher associated with CEM, comments that the progress of these institutions has different origins.
The researcher explains that, in order to understand the new report, it is interesting to understand how data on religions are usually distributed to the population. Every 10 years, demographic censuses are carried out by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) and, among the different information on the national population, the number of evangelicals in the country is published.
Public opinion polls are also used to analyze the number of individuals who belong to this group, especially during election periods. “What I am proposing is a new method to measure the continuous growth of this religious segment in the country using data from the Federal Revenue”said Araujo.
This is possible because, in Brazil, churches are like companies, with a large number of them presenting CNPJ. With this data, it is possible to analyze the date of creation, where they were founded and the panorama of maintenance of these institutions.
In addition, Araújo comments that the study not only evaluates the quantitative growth of these places, but also takes into account the characteristics and specificities of each one. The project moves on to a 2nd stage in which the extent of this information is evaluated up to the year 2023; in this way, it will be possible to accompany the growth of the evangelical churches each year.
The study also assesses which types of evangelical churches are growing; for this, a division is made between 4 large groups: missionaries – within it are Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist churches, among others; Pentecostals — such as the Assemblies of God, God is Love and Foursquare Church; Neo-Pentecostals —which present a more recent tradition of Pentecostalism; and, finally, the fastest growing category in Brazil, which are churches of undetermined classification.
With information from USP Journal.
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