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:
“I told him that Goldsmith had said,... “As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the taylor, so I take my religion from the priest.” I regretted this loose way of talking. JOHNSON. Sir, he knows nothing; he has made up his mind about nothing.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Both Socrates and Jesus were outstanding teachers; both of them urged and practiced great simplicity of life; both were regarded as traitors to the religion of their community; neither of them wrote anything; both of them were executed; and both have become the subject of traditions that are difficult or impossible to harmonize.”
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“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)