Guyana

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Guyana is the only English-speaking country on the South American mainland, and its religious makeup reflects the indentured labor and slave-plantation history that shaped its population: Christians of many denominations, Pentecostal, Anglican, Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist among the largest, make up around six in ten people, descendants of the enslaved Africans and later European settlers brought to work the colony's sugar estates. Hindus, descended largely from indentured laborers brought from India after slavery's abolition, form roughly a quarter of the population, concentrated along the coastal sugar belt, and Muslims, also mostly of Indian descent, add another substantial minority.

Guyana's three largest faiths sit in rough proportion to the three main waves of migration that built the colony, and ethnic and religious identity have long tracked closely with the country's two dominant political coalitions, one drawing support mainly from Guyanese of African descent and the other from those of Indian descent, a pattern the newly discovered offshore oil reserves driving rapid economic change since the late 2010s have not yet disturbed.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The constitution guarantees freedom of religion and separates religious institutions from the state, with no established church, a pattern shared across most of the former British Caribbean. The law prescribes a prison term of up to one year for a conviction of blasphemous libel, but exempts religious opinion expressed in good faith and decent language, and the provision goes unenforced, a carryover from British colonial statute that Guyana has kept on the books without applying.

Religious groups face no legal requirement to register with the government, though most register as nonprofit organizations to gain legal standing and tax-exempt status for property and operations. Guyana holds no concordat with the Holy See, and nearly three decades of diplomatic relations through the Apostolic Nunciature, established in 1997 but sharing its nuncio with Trinidad and Tobago rather than keeping one resident in Georgetown, have produced no bilateral treaty, a light institutional footprint consistent with a country whose religious law is mostly a matter of guarantee rather than active regulation.