El Salvador Perspectives

Recent polling by Francisco Gavidia University in San Salvador released this week offers insights into two areas -- how Salvadorans view religious faith and how they view Nayib Bukele's recent decision to promote gold mining in El Salvador. Salvadorans continue to be religious by nature and believers in the Christian god: 17.39% of those polled considered themselves "very religious" 78.12% consider themselves believers 2.86% agnostic 1.63% atheist However the make-up of church affiliation continues to evolve, as the Roman Catholic church continues to lose adherents: 47.02% declared belonging to protestant/evangelical churches 36.82% to the Catholic church 12.98% do not belong to any denomination 1.55% are in a non-Christian religion.  Review the full poll results to see a wide variety of polling questions about how religious faith influences beliefs about knowledge, science and morality.  The poll did not, however, test Salvadorans' acceptance of the regular asserti...

The US State Department issued its 2022 country report on International Religious Freedom for El Salvador last week.   The annual reports are issued for countries around the world and describe the ability of residents in a country to freely practice their religious faith.   This year's report notes the varied impacts of the State of Exception on churches throughout El Salvador, particularly on those church leaders who worked in gang-controlled communities or sought to rehabilitate and extract persons from the gangs. The State Department report mentions some positive impacts of the State of Exception on religious freedom. In the second half of 2022, persons in formerly gang controlled communities felt freer to travel to religious services and activities, including those that involved crossing gang boundaries.  Extortion of religious bodies by gangs has declined with the breakup of gangs by security forces. However, the report also notes that the Salvadoran gover...

This week is Semana Santa (Holy Week) in El Salvador.   A week of religious celebrations commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and of vacations and time spent with family.  Although recent polling shows that fewer than 40% of Salvadorans now describe themselves as members of the Roman Catholic church, the cultural flavor of Semana Santa is deeply rooted in centuries of Roman Catholicism.  Here is a collection of videos to share some of the week's events in different parts of the country.  Palm Sunday procession in San Salvador: El #CentroHistóricoSS es la ruta de la fe. La procesión recorre: la iglesia El Rosario, Catedral y puntos emblemáticos. El corazón de El Salvador recibe a miles de feligreses en la primera actividad de la Semana Santa. ✝️⛪️ ¡Sin duda alguna, un día histórico!🌿 pic.twitter.com/xw1QcXwqGo — Alcaldía de San Salvador (@alcaldia_ss) April 2, 2023 Monday of Semana Santa in Sonsonate:   In Texistepeque, los Talcigui...

Reading recent articles about current events in El Salvador, I was struck by how many include religion as a theme.  Remarks by the Archbishop of San Salvador, Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas, recently caught the attention of the Associated Press, generating the headline  Salvadoran Archbishop praises government crackdown on gangs . The archbishop said in a press conference “People don't want the violence to return,.... They not only want these things maintained, they want them to advance, to end the violence" and the prelate urged the president to avoid "margins of error."      In making those remarks, the archbishop may have turned a blind eye to just how gross those "margins of error" have been producing thousands of complaints of arbitrary detentions.  In a report today titled  State of Exception Files: Hundreds Arrested for Prior Convictions or “Looking Nervous”  reporters from El Faro described their conclusions after obtaining hundreds of...

LDM church San Salvador Throughout El Salvador one will find churches of Luz del Mundo ("LDM" -- Light of the World). That faith group, which has its origins in Mexico has started to build a major religious campus and residential development in El Salvador. It is a church which has made a practice of being close to persons in power throughout the world. In El Salvador, that has meant being close to Nayib Bukele, the FMLN, Nuevas Ideas and other political figures. But the high leader of LDM has now been sentenced to 16 years in prison in the US for sexual assaults on minor girls, and whether LDM's plans in El Salvador will come to fruition is yet to be seen. Luz Del Mundo is an unaffiliated Christian church, centered around the figure of a single man, the “Apostle of Jesus Christ”. The first Apostle in LDM was its founder Aarón Joaquín, and he was succeeded by his son Samuel Joaquín Flores, and then by grandson Naasón Joaquín García, the current Apostle. The he...

69 Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical Christian leaders in El Salvador published an open letter to the Salvadoran public on Ash Wednesday, February 17.   My English translation follows: “I have seen the affliction of my people” Exodus 3:7 We, pastors and priests of various Christian denominations, with deep concern about the situation of sin that permeates Salvadoran politics and society in general, wish to express the truth in love to churches, and people in general, to warn them against temptations, false doctrines and political idolatries. We express our deep unease at a dangerous time when the churches are exposed to the temptations and bribes of power that seek to silence their prophetic voice when, rather, they should be attentive to Paul's exhortation: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed through the renewing of your mind, to be able to discern the will of God: what is good, acceptable, and perfect" (Romans 12: 2). We express our deep regret over...

El Salvador is a country with a population professing to hold religious faith, 80% of them Christian. In that context, political candidates face questions about their own faith, and their campaigns seek the support of religious groups.    That has certainly been the case in this presidential election. Nayib Bukele has probably been required to speak the most about religion, because his father was Imam to the country's small Islamic community.   Although his family's roots are in Palestine, his father actually converted to Islam in El Salvador.  Nayib's mother is Roman Catholic.  Bukele asserts that he is a believer in Jesus Christ, but does not belong to any specific religious denomination. Bukele has been the subject of a smear campaign seeking to label him as an adherent to Islam and anti-Christian.  Readers in the US will recognize similarities to the campaigns to label Barack Obama a Muslim.  Someone calling themselves "Christians Unit...

On  this blog I have written several times about the complicated relationship between evangelical churches and El Salvador's gangs, including the fact that religious conversion is one of the only ways that gangs may permit a pandillero to leave active participation in the gang. (My posts included  God and the Gangs ,  Leaving gang life for church , and   Gang member conversions ).  Important insights into the role of religion in the gangs was provided by the 2017 report  The New Face of Street Gangs in Central America , led by José Miguel Cruz, Ph.D of Florida International University.  Two new articles in The New Republic and The Intercept offer additional insights into the complicated intersection of evangelical Christianity and the life of a gang member. In her article in The New Republic titled  Can Megachurches Save El Salvador? , Molly O'Toole takes a broad look at gangs in El Salvador and whether churches have, or can have...

As the Roman Catholic church in El Salvador prepares for one of its largest celebrations ever with the canonization of martyred archbishop Oscar Romero on October 14, membership in the Roman church continues to decline in the country. Source: La Prensa Grafica, Sept. 28, 2018 According to polling data from La Prensa Grafica shown above, the percentage of Salvadorans professing to be Roman Catholics has dropped to 41.5% in 2018 from 55.1% in 2004.  Meanwhile the number of Salvadorans identifying with evangelical Christianity has climbed from 28.7% to 38.1% of the population, and the percentage professing no religion has now grown to 17.7%.

While this is not a new story, NPR did a nice job reporting yesterday on the complicated relationship between the gangs of El Salvador and evangelical churches in the country.   Gang members may identify themselves with the churches, and religious conversion can be one of the only ways to withdraw from life in the gangs. From the NPR report : During the service, a pastor talks about the gangs, known in El Salvador as pandillas. He tells the congregation that in prison, God leaves one naked and opens the doors for new beginnings. He says God is always faithful, even when others aren't. He prays for gang members to leave behind a life of violence and join the church.  "The God we preach is one of opportunity," another pastor, the Rev. Nelson Moz, who has led Eben-ezer for 21 years, says after the service. "Our message is that [the gang members] should understand there is a life outside of the gang. That they can make it, with the help of God."  It is this...

Here are some of the news stories coming out of El Salvador this week. Edgar López Bertran  died this week.    Popularly known as "Brother Toby," he was the founder of one of El Salvador's largest evangelical mega-churches, the Baptist Biblical Tabernacle Friends of Israel.   The reins of the church now fall to his son, Toby, Jr. Testimony resumed in El Mozote massacre trial.   Additional witnesses are taking the stand in the trial of El Salvador's military command for its role in the 1981 massacre in El Mozote and surrounding communities. Former Salvadoran Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano was finally extradited by the US to Spain, where he has already been brought in front of a judge in connection with his role in the 1989 Jesuit murders case.   With one of the defendants finally physically present in Spain, the case can now proceed. Meanwhile in El Salvador, Jesuits from the UCA went to court to ask that those who gave the orders ...

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article up on its website about the phenomenon of gang members leaving the gangs based on conversion in evangelical churches.  Others have reported on this happening as well.  The CSM article is titled God vs. gang? For some ex-gangsters in El Salvador, rehab happens at church .   Here is an excerpt: More than 400 ex-members say that evangelical groups have helped them leave the gangs – a drop in the bucket here, where as many as 60,000 gang members control large parts of the country. But in a society where gangs are so deeply entrenched and government attempts to curb the violence have often failed, some churches’ experiences suggest that addressing the basic needs that many young people hope to find in gang life – acceptance, belonging, stability – can also be key to getting them out....  A lack of institutional support for, and even suspicion of, groups trying to engage with gang members and help set them up on a diffe...

This is our annual year-in-review guest post from Carlos Colorado, author of the Super Martyrio blog , and expert on all things related to Oscar Romero. Here is a roundup of what I consider the top ten religious stories in El Salvador for 2015. As always, more than purely religious stories, I sought to canvass the year’s news for stories that show how El Salvador’s soul was tested and (sometimes) soothed last year. 1. Oscar Romero beatified . The beatification of the archbishop martyred for defending the poor is more than doing justice by a good man. It was a moral declaration of right and wrong that will dictate historical analysis of the Salvadoran Civil War. [ More over at my blog .] 2. Officialdom balks at bold IPAZ peace initiative . The carnage caused by the Salvadoran gang problem is the worst since the Civil War, but the idea of negotiating with the gangs has proven to be too much of a bitter pill for society and elected officials to accept. 3. Catholic child ab...

The eruption of the volcano in San Miguel postponed the normal year end stories in the blog.   I'll keep updating the situation with the volcano,  but want to share with everyone this guest post from our good friend Carlos Colorado: Top 10 Religious Stories for 2013 A new CID-Gallup poll out at the end of the year confirmed—yet again—what has been the consistent story in El Salvador, in Latin America, and throughout the world, about the growing encroachment of secularism and the waning influence of religion generally and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. In El Salvador, other Christian denominations—especially Evangelicals—have benefitted directly from the Catholic Church’s decline. Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar was candid in recognizing his Church’s situation: “Twenty five years ago,” he acknowledged, “the percentage of Catholics was very high, above 90%. Now it borders on maybe 60 or 70%.” That said, 60 or 70% is still a majority and, in politics, 60 or 70% coun...

In an article this week , The Economist magazine writes about the growth of evangelical Christianity at the expense of the Catholic church in El Salvador: More recently, the Catholic church’s conservatism has shrunk its flock. Edgar López Bertrand , the founder of the Friends of Israel , says he could not become a Catholic priest because his parents were divorced. Now, the crowd outside his church includes teenage couples and not a few miniskirts. (Should relationship problems arise, the church offers a book called “Help! I’m married”.) The gospel of prosperity, recklessly preached by some evangelical outfits, goes down well in poor countries: Costa Rica and Panama, twice as rich as their neighbours, remain strongly Catholic. Proximity to America has spurred the churches’ growth. “Everything we know comes from the United States,” says Edgar López Bertrand Jr, who runs Friends of Israel with his father. Media savvy is one useful import: his church broadcasts on television and radi...

The Public Opinion Institute at the University of Central America (IUDOP) has just released a poll on the religious practices of Salvadorans . The wide-ranging poll taken during June of this year asked 1260 Salvadorans 100 questions about the role of religion in their lives. Almost 90% of Salvadorans identify themselves as Catholic or Protestant Christians: Catholic 50.4% Protestant 38.2% Other 2.5% None 8.9% This poll continues a steady decline in those identifying themselves as Roman Catholics and an increase in Protestant denominations. In the past 11 years the percentage of Catholics has fallen from 64.1% to 50.4% and the number of Protestants has increased from 16.4% to 38.2%: Among the Protestant denominations, the percentages of affiliation were: Assemblies of God 21.3% Baptist Friends of Israel (Brother Toby) 11.5% Elim 9.0% Church of God 7.0% Baptist 7.0% Prophetic 6.1% Pentecostal 4.5% Apostles and Prophets 3.9% Light of the World 3.7% Jehova's Witnesses 3.1% Adven...

Semana Santa -- Holy Week -- in El Salvador is filled with religious festivities and family vacations. A collection of videos from La Prensa Grafica show activities throughout the country: Video collection .

One aspect of the campaigns of El Salvador's presidential candidates is their interaction with the country's churches, particularly the evangelical churches which are the fastest growing segment of churches in the country. Rodrigo Avila meeting with evangelicals in Santa Ana. Funes meets with 600 evangelical pastors. From what I can observe, the FMLN appears to be more intentional in its outreach. This may reflect the fact that at least some observers felt the evangelical vote in El Salvador went primarily to Tony Saca and ARENA in the 2004 elections. I recently received a copy of an FMLN document distributed to the country's churches. The document is titled "Moral Rescue Plan" with a subtitle "God as the center and engine of the change that is coming. Without morality, there is no hope." The objective of the plan is described as joining hands with the moral forces in the country to confront the evils that afflict the society. The plan describes ...

Guest post by Carlos X. Colorado The new Archbishop of San Salvador, Msgr. Jose Luis Escobar Alas took possession of his archdiocese in a solemn ceremony at the San Salvador Metropolitan Cathedral, attended by cardinals and government officials, including the outgoing ARENA President of El Salvador and the outgoing FMLN mayor of San Salvador, who took turns reading from Scripture at the ceremony. The 49 year-old new archbishop offered a striking contrast both in style and in substance to the man he is replacing, the 75 year-old Msgr. Fernando Saenz Lacalle. Where Saenz’ homilies were typically light fare, Escobar’s inaugural homily was methodical and thoughtful, striking many notes that should be music to the ears of San Salvador clergy and lay activists, many of whom have grown weary of Saenz. Most dramatically, Escobar reiterated off the bat that he remains opposed to gold mining in El Salvador for the foreseeable future. Appearing to close off any possibility of reconsidering or ...