Christianity is the predominant religion in Angola, with Catholicism being its largest denomination.See Fátima Viegas, Panorama das Religiões em Angola Independente (1975-2008), Luanda: Ministério da Cultura/Instituto Nacional para os Assuntos Religiosos, 2008
Angola is a secular state and its constitution guarantees freedom of religion.
Religion and government The attitude of the Angolan regime toward religion has been inconsistent. The MPLA's commitment to Marxism-Leninism, 1977–1991, meant that its attitude toward religion, at least officially, corresponded during that period to that of the traditional Soviet Marxist–Leninist dogma, which generally characterized religion as antiquated and irrelevant to the construction of a new society. The government also viewed religion as an instrument of colonialism because of the Catholic Church's close association with the Portuguese. Furthermore, because membership in the party was the road to influence, party leaders and many of the cadres were likely to have no formal religious commitment, or at any rate to deny having one (even though most of Angola's leaders in the 1980s were educated at Catholic, Baptist, Methodist or Congregational mission schools). Nonetheless, the government acknowledged the prevalence of religion in Angolan societies and officially recognized the equality of all religions, tolerating religious practices as long as the churches restricted themselves to spiritual matters. The state, however, did institute certain specific controls over religious organizations, and was prepared to act quickly when it felt that it was challenged by the acts of a specific group. Thus, in early 1978 the MPLA Political Bureau ordered the registration of "legitimate" churches and religious organizations at the "National Institute for Religious Matters", created in the framework of the Ministry of Culture. Although foreign priests and missionaries were permitted to stay in the country, and although religious groups or churches could receive goods from abroad, further construction of new churches without a permit was forbidden.
A conflict developed in the late 1970s between the government and the Catholic Church. In December 1977, the bishops of Angola's three archdioceses, meeting in Lubango, drafted a pastoral letter subsequently read to all churches that claimed frequent violations of religious freedom. Their most specific complaint was that the establishment of a single system of education ignored the rights of parents. They also objected to the government's systematic atheistic propaganda and its silencing of the church's radio station in 1976. In response to charges of government meddling in religious affairs, President Neto issued a decree in January 1978 stating that there was complete separation between church and religious institutions. In addition, Jornal de Angola printed an attack on the bishops, accusing them of questioning the integrity of the Angolan revolutionary process.
The outcome of the conflict had repercussions for Protestant churches as well as for the Catholic Church. In essence, the government made it clear that religious institutions were to adhere to government and party rulings regarding non-religious issues.
In the late 1980s, there was a slight change in the government's policy toward religion. The president and others in the government and party elites, recognizing that political opposition had not coalesced around religious leaders, became less fearful of religious opposition and therefore more tolerant of religious groups in general. One exception was the “Igreja de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo no Mundo” (Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the World), an independent Christian sect founded in 1949 by Simão Toko (also spelled Simão Toco). Toko, a Protestant from Uíge Province, fashioned the sect after the Kimbanguist movement (not to be confused with traditional kimbanda practices, which had arisen in the Belgian Congo in the 1920s). The government had been especially suspicious of the Tokoists because of their strong support in Benguela Province, most of whose residents were Ovimbundu, the principal supporters of UNITA. Tokoists also were involved in riots in the Catete region of Bengo Province and in Luanda at the end of 1986, and they attacked a prison in Luanda in 1987 in an attempt to free fellow believers who had been arrested in the 1986 riots. As a result, the government banned the sect, claiming that its members had used religion to attack the state and had therefore lost their legitimacy. Subsequently, however, as part of the general relaxation of its policy on religion, the government softened its position on the sect and in March 1988 declared it a legal religion. The issue had in the meantime become less relevant, because religious communities - mostly Pentecostal (such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) - had mushroomed throughout the country, mostly in Luanda and other important towns, often under Brazilian influence.
The situation changed substantially when the MPLA abandoned Marxism-Leninism in 1991 and adopted a constitution that provided for multiparty democracy (albeit in a highly presidentialist version). Restrictions on the liberty of religion were all but abolished, as was the obligation to abide by the directives issued by the MPLA. However, the government - still dominated by the MPLA, especially after the parliamentary elections of 2008 - maintains a certain monitoring of the religious communities, through the Instituto Nacional das Religiões. This institute, at present headed by a former Catholic priest, holds a register of all religious communities - well over 1000 in 2011 - pronounces selectively an official recognitions which imply a certain measure of recognition and support, and maintains a permanent dialogue with the more important communities.
Religions +Religious population in Angola (2024 census)ReligionPopulation%Catholic15.261.34744.2Protestant12.024.48134.9Unaffiliated3.962.72311.5Islam138.5620.4Animism44.8510.1Judaism35.2770.1Refused to answer825.6442.4Other religious affiliation2.200.0036.4Total population34.492.888100.0
Christianity
Religious affiliation in Angola was difficult to define because many who claimed membership in a specific Christian denomination also shared perceptions of the natural and supernatural order characteristic of indigenous religious systems. Sometimes the Christian sphere of the life of a community was institutionally separate from the indigenous sphere. In other cases, the local meaning and practice of Christianity were modified by indigenous patterns of belief and practice.
Although Catholic missions were largely staffed by non-Portuguese during the colonial era, the relevant statutes and accords provided that foreign missionaries could be admitted only with the approval of the Portuguese government and the Vatican and on condition that they be integrated with the Portuguese missionary organization. Foreign Catholic missionaries were required to renounce the laws of their own country, submit to Portuguese law, and furnish proof of their ability to speak and write the Portuguese language correctly. Missionary activity was placed under the authority of Portuguese priests. All of this was consistent with the Colonial Act of 1930, which advanced the view that Portuguese Catholic missions overseas were "instruments of civilization and national influence". In 1940 the education of Africans was declared the exclusive responsibility of missionary personnel. All church activities, education included, were to be subsidized by the state. In reality, Protestant missions were permitted to engage in educational activity, but without subsidy and on condition that Portuguese be the language of instruction.
The important Protestant missions in place in the 1960s (or their predecessors) had arrived in Angola in the late nineteenth century and therefore had been at work before the Portuguese managed to establish control over the entire territory. Their early years, therefore, were little affected by Portuguese policy and practice. Before the establishment of the New State (Estado Novo) in Portugal in 1926, the authorities kept an eye on the Protestant missions but were not particularly hostile to them. Settlers and local administrators often were hostile, however, because Protestant missionaries tended to be protective of what they considered their charges. In those early years and later, Protestant missionaries were not only evangelists but also teachers, healers, and counselors - all perhaps in a paternal fashion but in ways that involved contact with Africans in a more sustained fashion than was characteristic of Catholic missionaries and local administrators.
Protestant missionaries worked at learning the local languages, in part to communicate better with those in their mission field, but above all in order to translate the Old Testament and the New Testament into African tongues. Protestant missionaries were much more likely than administrators and settlers to know a local language. Catholic missionaries did not similarly emphasize the translation of the Bible and, with some exceptions, did not make a point of learning a Bantu language.
Because specific Protestant denominations were associated with particular ethnic communities, the structure of religious organization was linked to the structure of these communities. This connection was brought about in part by the tendency of entire communities to turn to the variety of Protestantism offered locally. The conversion of isolated individuals was rare. Those individuals who did not become Christians remained to a greater or lesser extent adherents of the indigenous system; unless they migrated to one of the larger towns, persons of a specific locality did not have the option of another kind of Christianity. Those members of a community who had not yet become Christians were tied by kinship and propinquity to those individuals who had. On the one hand, indigenous patterns of social relations affected church organization; on the other hand, the presence of Christians in the community affected the local culture to varying degrees. Christians who could quote Scripture in the local tongue contributed phrases to it that others picked up, and the attributes of the Christian God as interpreted by the specific denomination sometimes became attached to the high god of the indigenous religious system and typically made that deity more prominent than previously.
The involvement of the Protestant churches in the languages of their mission areas, their medical and other welfare activity, and their ability to adapt to local structures or (in the case of the Methodists among the Mbundu) to be fortuitously consistent with them gave Protestants much more influence than their numbers would suggest. For example, the leaders of the three major nationalist movements in the 1970s - the MPLA, UNITA, and the FNLA - had been raised as Protestants, and many others in these movements were also Protestants, even if their commitment may have diminished over time.