Religions
- Roman Catholic 43.9%, Protestant 24.8%, Other Christian 23.7%, Muslim 1.6%, Non-religious 0.6%, Hindu 0.1% other syncretic sects and indigenous beliefs 5.3%
With more than 10 million people, Kinshasa, the largest and capital city accounts for a number of charismatic or evangelical churches known as églises de reveil (awakening churches), whose members come primarily from the Roman Catholic Church, and in number may rival the Roman Catholic. Mega churches are all over the country. These charismatic churches also have a strong number of young followers in Kinshasa, Mbuji Mayi, and Lubumbashi. Roman Catholic percentage maybe a little less than 45%, mainstream Protestant 25%, and Kimbanguist 10%. The Islamic religion is not practiced as much anymore and is mostly concentrated in the eastern provinces and may be a little more than 1%. Catholics and mainstream Protestants call evangelical churches "sects", a derogatory term in the Congo for non-denominational churches. Evangelicals (or non-denominational churches) may therefore account for a little over 15% and indigenous beliefs the remaining of the population. In the diaspora, most Congolese belong to evangelical churches.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of The Democratic Republic Of The Congo
Famous quotes containing the word religions:
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Deism is good sense not yet instructed by revelation, and other religions are good sense perverted by superstition. All sects differ, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“Those who believe in their truth—the only ones whose imprint is retained by the memory of men—leave the earth behind them strewn with corpses. Religions number in their ledgers more murders than the bloodiest tyrannies account for, and those whom humanity has called divine far surpass the most conscientious murderers in their thirst for slaughter.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)