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Less schools and more churches: Northern region is the leader in religious buildings

Religious cult (Thiago Gomes/Folhapress)

February 5, 2024

10:02

Ricardo Chaves – From Cenarium Agency

MANAUS (AM) – In the Northern Region there are more religious temples than schools or hospitals. The information is contained in data released in the 2022 Demographic Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) released on Friday, 2. It is the first time that the agency has captured this data for households in the country.

Pará leads the ranking in the region with 37,758 religious establishments, while the number of schools stands at 14,150 and health facilities at 1,927. If you add up the number of schools and health centers (16,077), you can see that the number of churches is 134% higher.

In second place in the IBGE survey is Amazonas, with 19,134 churches, as well as 7,052 schools and 2,738 hospital centers. The number of temples of religious practice is 95% higher than the total.

Completing the ranking are the states of Rondônia (7,670), Tocantins (5,151), Acre (4,600), Amapá (3,187) and Roraima (2,150).

Ranking of educational, health and religious establishments in the Northern Region (Composition Paulo Dutra/Agência Cenarium)

Influence on politics

For Israel Pinheiro, PhD in Society and Culture in the Amazon and sociologist, the figures express how groups influenced by religion have been defining political agendas over the last decade, together with the agribusiness sector.

“It is precisely these groups that have been defining political agendas for the last 10-15 years. It’s an indication that the tendency is to have more and more structures to ensure that this policy works in this way”, says the researcher.

Israel Pinheiro is a researcher and PhD in Society and Culture in Amazon from the Federal University of Amazonas (Ufam) (Reproduction/Personal archive)

The PhD in Society and Culture refers to the last few years in which these sectors have moved to make possible an agenda against individual rights, such as the issue of sexual diversity and gender identification, which also attack social rights such as the environmental issue.

“It’s no coincidence that we’re struggling to meet targets for carbon emissions and for protecting and conserving the Amazon. All of this also has to do with this set of forces in society mobilizing in one direction. We’re going to have a lot of trouble with this in the future”, says the sociologist.

Ostentatious growth

In January this year, CENARIUM AGENCY showed the growth of mainly Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal groups and how they have been gaining followers throughout the country. One movement has attracted attention: the use of references historically linked to religions of African origin in their services.

A technical note entitled “Crescimento dos Estabelecimentos Evangélicos no Brasil nas Últimas Décadas” (Growth of Evangelical Establishments in Brazil in Recent Decades), published at the end of last year by the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), reveals a significant growth in this group over the last 20 years.

Among the 124,529 establishments in the country in 2021, 52% are Pentecostal or Neo-Pentecostal evangelicals, leading the results, followed by 19% traditional evangelicals and 11% Catholics. Among Pentecostal evangelicals, the Assembly of God has the largest number of establishments, at 14%.