Religious beliefs and practices in Argentina: An approach from quantitative data

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the scientific production of Argentine social sciences of religion has focused its analyses on the transformations undergone by the religious field: the pluralization processes within Catholicism, the proliferation of groups in the Evangelical world and in other religious minorities, the shifts and paths taken by believers who have transcended institutional borders, the redefinition of public and private as a result of the presence of religious actors and discourses in the public sphere. Most of these studies have taken a qualitative approach.From a quantitative point of view, the last national record dated back to 1960, when the National Population Census asked the inhabitants about their religion. Since then, no question about this topic was ever asked again, making it impossible to draw an Argentine religiosity map.In that context, as part of the Society, Culture and Religion Program of the Argentine National Council for Technical and Scientific Research, we conducted an extensive research effort to provide a statistical measure of religious beliefs, practices and attitudes in Argentine society, considering the different regions of the country, city size, as well as the educational level, sex, age, political affiliation and occupational situation of its inhabitants.