The professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico Samuel Silva Gotay said this past July 9 that currently, despite the absence of official data yet, on the Caribbean island Protestantism accounts for about 40 percent of those defined as believers.

Silva Gotay, author of "Protestantism and Politics in Puerto Rico," he said in that 40 percent have included those who belong to churches of Protestant theology, with particular regard to the basis of being characterized by taking the Bible as a reliable source and final authority for faith and practice over the traditions or the Magisterium of the Church (the case of Catholicism).

The university expert believes that the loss of Catholic followers in a country of Latin American culture is explained by the U.S. presence on the island since the late nineteenth century past. "The Catholic Church, not having control of education, the legislative apparatus and certain cultural segments, saw facilitated the rise of Protestantism," said Silva Gotay.

The university professor is an expert on this subject, which has previously analyzed the case in works such as "Catholicism and Politics in Puerto Rico under Spain and the United States, nineteenth and twentieth centuries." One of the conclusions is that the loss of followers was of concern to the Catholic Church to the point of founding a political party. In this sense Silva Gotay recalled that the Puerto Rican Catholic Church, who saw in the political scene at the root of secularism, founded in 1960, the Christian Action Party, who attended the elections of that year, earning a meager six percent of the vote.

Pentecostalism
Within the overall increase in Protestant growing in parallel with the decrease of followers of the Catholic faith, without a doubt the most prominent religious phenomenon in Puerto Rico in recent years has been the emergence of evangelical branch of Christianity known as Pentecostalism.

Silva Gotay said Pentecostalism, as a Protestant denomination that takes the Bible as the ultimate source of authority and doctrine, has penetrated deeply in recent years in Puerto Rican society, especially among workers and marginal sectors.

"Pentecostalism has a simple and clear doctrine that is sympathetic to these sectors," he said, after explaining that this religious movement has left behind in Puerto Rico to Catholics and Protestants "classics" in the adoption of new believers.

Qualified that one of the reasons for the surprising rise is the use of media such as radio and television to attract believers, something that no other Protestant denominations have resorted to the same extent.

Silva Gotay stressed that the economic crisis in the coming Puerto Rico in the seventies of last century, which intensified last four, was a circumstance that evangelicals favored because they offer a wide social work is very appreciated by various sectors of the Island society.

OTHER BELIEFS
As for other faiths, Jehovah's Witnesses say add a total of 26,000 faithful on the island, while the Islamic Center of Puerto Rico claims to have 4,000 supporters, mostly people of Arab origin.

Another popular trend in Puerto Rico is the Yoruba religion and Santeria - in which there is religious syncretism with Catholicism, "brought to the island by Africans who were brought in as slaves, with some 25,000 followers.

Puerto Rico is declared a secular state, which guarantees and protects all religious faiths in the country.