Religion
Christians form 80.3% of the population, while 9.6% of the population maintain Indigenous beliefs. Islam is practiced by 10.1% of the country's population (2003 census). There are many missionary groups operating in the country, including Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, Grace Brethren, and Jehovah's Witnesses. While these missionaries are predominantly from the United States, France, Italy, and Spain, many are also from Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other African countries. Many missionaries left the country due to fighting between rebel and government forces in 2002 and 2003. Many have now returned to the country.
Read more about this topic: Central African Republic
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“There is more religion in men’s science than there is science in their religion.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is not a greater paradox in nature,—than that so good a religion [as Christianity] should be no better recommended by its professors.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made—no matter how indirectly—to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)