Abstract

SANABRIA MADERO, Sandra Patricia. Persecuted by faith. An overview in the Colombian context on non-Catholic Christianity (2004-2018). Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2022, vol.45, n.1, pp.219-242.  Epub Dec 28, 2023. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v45n1.90267.

Nowadays, the persecution towards Christianity is associated with countries under totalitarian dictatorships or Islamic regimes. It is assumed that where the Catholism is the predominant, non-catholic christianism should be accepted given the similarity of believes between them. Nonetheless, persecution to Christianity is present in countries as Mexico and Colombia. For instance, in Open Doors ranking in 2019 Colombia was ranked 47 out of 50 countries where most Christian-persecution incidents were present.

In Colombia, the persecution dates back to xxi century by means of the instauration and expansion of the various ways of believing and practicing Christianity by their fellow Roman Catholics. For an accurate analysis of this persecution in Colombia, the data collected by Vision Agape foundation between 2004 and 2018 was taken, the organization investigates and accompanies the persecuted for Christianity. With this information, categories were created to systematize the information and perform a quantitative analysis.

This methodology showed that the greatest persecutors of non-Catholic Christians during this time frame were illegal armed groups and ethnic leaders for considering the believer's habitus, in Bourdieu's terms, as a threat to their interests. Therefore, persecution is a violent action occurring because the believers' practices affect the power that some stakeholders exercise over a given population and territory. Lastly, this article is essential given the scarce bibliography on this subject in Colombia, since this phenomenon existence is unknown, even among the believers.

Keywords : Christianity; guerrilla(s); illegal armed groups; indigenous people; paramilitaries and religious violence; religious persecution.

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