Uruguay

Uruguay is the most secular country in the Americas and it arrived there deliberately, early, and by legislation rather than by drift.

The architect was Jose Batlle y Ordonez, president in the first two decades of the twentieth century, whose programme built a welfare state and a secular one together. The constitution of 1917, in force from 1919, separated church and state completely: religious instruction was removed from public schools, the church lost its tax exemptions, and public institutions were required to be non confessional. Divorce had already been introduced, including on the wife's sole request, which was among the earliest such provisions anywhere.

The state also renamed the calendar. Christmas became the Day of the Family, Holy Week became Tourism Week, Epiphany became Children's Day, and the feast of the Immaculate Conception became Beach Day. Those are the official names still, and Uruguayans use them without evident irony.

The result is a population of which around half reports no religion or describes belief without affiliation, a proportion unmatched in Latin America. Catholic practice is low even among those who identify as Catholic, and evangelical growth, while real, is smaller here than in neighbouring countries.

The clearest religious growth of recent decades has been in Afro Uruguayan traditions of Brazilian origin, Umbanda and Batuque, whose temples now number in the hundreds and are concentrated in Montevideo and the border towns. Each 2 February, offerings to Yemanja are carried into the sea from the beaches of Montevideo by very large crowds, in what has become the most visible public religious event in the country.

The standard account of Uruguayan religion, that a state secularised itself thoroughly and a population followed, is accurate about the churches and misses what grew in the space.

Afro Brazilian religions crossed the border from Rio Grande do Sul from around the middle of the twentieth century, and their Uruguayan following is now substantial. Two strands are distinguished locally. Umbanda combines Kardecist spiritism, Catholic imagery and Afro Brazilian orisha material, and works through possession by spirit types such as the preto velho, the old African, and the caboclo, an indigenous figure. Batuque, also called Africanismo, is the older and more strictly initiatory form, closer to the Yoruba derived practice of Bahia and Porto Alegre, with a priesthood, animal offering and a longer training.

The temples, the terreiros, are counted in the hundreds. Their following is drawn substantially from working class Montevideo and from people whose formal affiliation, if asked in a census, would be none.

The most visible expression is the night of 2 February, when tens of thousands gather on Playa Ramirez and other Montevideo beaches with candles, flowers, small boats and offerings for Yemanja, the orisha of the sea, and carry them into the water at midnight. It is now large enough to be managed by the municipality as a public event.

Two things follow that are worth stating. Secularisation in Uruguay reduced the authority of the churches without producing a population uninterested in religious practice. And the fastest growing tradition in the most secular country in the Americas is an African derived one, which is not what most theories of secularisation would have predicted.