Atheism, Agnosticism, and People Without Religion in Chile

Definition

Two periods in the secularization process in Chile must be distinguished: in the first one, secularization only reaches the wise elite, generally adult men with higher education and political influence, who completely abandon religious beliefs in the form of atheism and agnosticism. In the second, much more recent, secularization increases in number and social dispersion, and it is positioned especially among young people and eventually reaches low schooling groups. The secularization standard also differs in other decisive aspects, to the extent that conventional religious beliefs are maintained and anticlerical hostility disappears, although a widespread disaffection regarding institutionalized religion prevails.

Introduction

As in other parts of the world, the secularization process in Chile has followed the two stages which have commonly been evidenced on research about religious matters (Martin 2005; Taylor 2014). In the first one, which covers approximately a century...