Folks Religious Information

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.