Religion

According to the 2020 census, almost 88% of the population is Christian; about 79% belong to the Catholic Church while about 9% belong to Protestantism and other denominations such as Philippine Independent Church, Iglesia ni Cristo, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventist Church, Apostolic Catholic Church, United Church of Christ in the Philippines, Members Church of God International (MCGI) and Pentecostals.

Indigenous Philippine folk religions (collectively referred to as Anitism or Bathalism), the traditional religion of Filipinos which predates Philippine Christianity and Islam, is practiced by an estimated 2% of the population, made up of many indigenous peoples, tribal groups, and people who have reverted into traditional religions from Catholic/Christian or Islamic religions. These religions are often syncretized with Christianity and Islam. Buddhism is practiced by 0.04% of the Philippine population by the Japanese-Filipino community,[5][3] and, together with Taoism and Chinese folk religion, is also dominant in Chinese communities. There are also smaller number of followers of Sikhism, Hinduism as well. Irreligion in the Philippines is very low, with 0.04% of the Philippine population self-reporting in 2020 as having no religion.

According to the 2015 census, Evangelicals comprised 2% of the population. It is particularly strong among American and Korean communities, Northern Luzon especially in Cordillera Administrative Region, Southern Mindanao and many other tribal groups in the Philippines. Protestants both mainline and evangelical have gained significant annual growth rate up to 10% since 1910 to 2015.

Source Text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines

Source Pic By Pulsaris - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129672629

Christianity arrived in the Philippines with the landing of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain, who was then Prince of Girona and of Asturias under his father, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor who, as Charles I, was also King of Spain. Missionary activity during the country's colonial rule by Spain and the United States led the transformation of the Philippines into the first and then, along with East Timor, one of two predominantly Catholic nations in East Asia, with approximately 88.66% of the population belonging to the Christian faith.

Source Text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines

Source Pic, own work, Manila Cathedrale

Catholicism is the predominant religion and the largest Christian denomination in the Philippines comprising 78.8% of the population (or 85,645,362 million adherents) in 2020.[4] Spanish efforts to convert many on the islands were aided by the lack of a significant central authority, and by friars who learnt local languages to preach. Some traditional animistic practices blended with the new faith.

Source Text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines

Source Pic, own work , Calbayog City Cathedrale, Sts Peter & Paul

The Catholic Church has great influence on Philippine society and politics. It was instrumental in rallying public support for the bloodless People Power Revolution of 1986. Then-Archbishop of Manila and de facto Primate of the Philippines, Cardinal Jaime Sin appealed to the public via radio to congregate along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in support of rebel forces against the dictatorship of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Some seven million people responded to the call between February 22–25, and the non-violent protests successfully forced Marcos and his family out of power and into exile in Hawaii.

Source Text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines

Source Pic, own work, Manila, Quiapo Church

Several Catholic holidays are culturally important as family occasions and are observed in the civil calendar. Chief among these are Christmas, which includes celebrations of the civil New Year, and the more solemn Holy Week, which may occur in March or April. Every November, Filipino families celebrate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day as a single holiday in honour of the saints and the dead, visiting and cleaning ancestral graves, offering prayers, and feasting. As of 2018, Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8 was added as a special non-working holiday.

Source Text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines

Source Pic, own work, Cebu Church

Islam reached the Philippines in the 14th century with the arrival of Muslim traders from the Persian Gulf, Southern India, and their followers from several sultanate governments in Maritime Southeast Asia. Islam's predominance reached all the way to the shores of Manila Bay, home to several Muslim kingdoms. During the Spanish conquest, Islam had a rapid decline as the predominant monotheistic faith in the Philippines because of the introduction of Roman Catholicism by Spanish missionaries and via the Spanish Inquisition. The southern Filipino tribes were among the few indigenous Filipino communities that resisted Spanish rule and conversions to Roman Catholicism. The vast majority of Muslims in Philippines follow Sunni Islam of Shafi and Ash'ari school of jurisprudence and Theology, with small Shia and Ahmadiyya minorities. Islam is the oldest recorded monotheistic religion in the Philippines.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the Muslim population of the Philippines in 2020 was 6.98 million (6.4%). However, a 2012 estimate by the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF) stated that there were 10.7 million Muslims, or approximately 11 percent of the total population. Some Muslim scholars have observed that difficulties in getting accurate numbers have been compounded in some Muslim areas by the hostility of the inhabitants to government personnel, leading to difficulty in getting accurate data for the Muslim population in the country. Most Muslims live in Mindanao and nearby islands

Source Text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines

Quelle Bild: Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Masjid, By Patrickroque01 - Taken using my own camera, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74724123