Berkley Center

Part I: The Religious Landscape

Brief Historical Overview

In pre-Columbian times, Mayan, Lencan, and Pipil people lived in what is now El Salvador. Religious rituals and interactions with deities were central to all their cultures. The Pipil cosmology, for example, included the Wind God, the God of the Rising Sun, the Old Fire God, and Quetzalcoatl, or Feathered Serpent—all of which are Aztecan in origin. Descendants of these groups remain part of contemporary El Salvador.

Catholic orders arrived in the region in the sixteenth century. The Franciscans arrived soon after Pedro Alvarado conquered the area in 1524. The Dominicans and Augustinians followed, as did the Jesuits a few decades later. Indigenous populations often synthesized Christian teachings with existing beliefs and practices. 

Spain’s eighteenth century Bourbon Reforms impacted Salvadoran Catholic life. The Bourbons expelled the Jesuits from the Americas in 1767 after they had become the region’s most important religious order, doing much to shape education, politics, and society. 

El Salvador gained its independence from Spain in 1821. The trajectory of the new nation was in part decided by the outcome of an ideological battle waged throughout nineteenth century Latin America. Traditionalists prioritized a privileged place for the Catholic Church, a close church-state relationship and active engagement in helping the poor. Proponents of classical liberalism sought to relax commercial restrictions and nurture the emergence of elective and representative offices. In El Salvador, liberalism won out, even as the country remained highly religious. Such dynamics created a Catholic Church that was traditional and controllable by social elites and the military. This remained the case until well into the twentieth century.

Liberation theology changed these dynamics. The 1968 Medellin Conference of Latin American Bishops spurred on a rise in progressive Catholic thought in Latin America. As part of this larger movement, El Salvador’s archbishop and more than 100 priests held a “national pastoral week” in which they trained others in the doctrine of liberation theology and how to form base communities, or groups that worship and/or engage in political action.

Some Catholic leaders involved in this work came under threat. Archbishop Oscar Romero, El Salvador’s most important religious figure, was assassinated during a public mass in 1980. Rutilio Grande, a priest serving in a rural area, was assassinated in 1977. Both have since been beatified by the Catholic Church. 

Spirit-filled Christianity—a form of Christianity often characterized by speaking in tongues, healing miracles and exuberant worship—expanded rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. Charismatic Catholicism and Pentecostalism are its two primary expressions. The Catholic Church initially resisted but now incorporates the Catholic charismatic movement. Pentecostal denominations grew as itinerant pastors, often themselves poor, traveled from village to village to share their evangelical message. Larger churches, which also consisted primarily of the poor, began to grow in the urban areas. Similar dynamics have occurred throughout Central America.

El Salvador’s contemporary religious context is shaped by the history just outlined. A Catholic Church that has a rich Iberian heritage—but which also has diverse expressions and doctrinal teachings—remains prominent, especially in the upper classes. A Pentecostal evangelicalism energizes parts of the middle and lower classes, both urban and rural. Indigenous beliefs and practices bubble up from the grassroots. This religious pluralism has countervailing political implications.

Religious Demographics

El Salvador’s population of 6.5 million people is roughly 42 percent Catholic, 36 percent evangelical, and 17 percent not identifying with a religious affiliation. About one percent of the population identifies as agnostic or atheist, a group that had ties to El Salvador’s twentieth century communist movement. The remaining five percent of the population is made up by small Muslim, Baha’i, Jewish, and Buddhist communities, among other minorities.

Catholicism remains prominent in El Salvador’s upper classes. Catholic churches are situated across from municipal buildings in town squares across the country. These churches draw government, commercial, and civic leaders. Such public prominence helps El Salvador’s Catholic Church enjoy something resembling religious hegemony in the midst of growing religious pluralism.

A small but influential Palestinian merchant community also exists among El Salvador’s upper classes. Shafik Handal, for example, led the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during and after El Salvador’s civil war. Handal ran for president of El Salvador in 2004, but was defeated by Antonio Saca, also of Palestinian descent. Saca represented the conservative ARENA political party. Nayib Bukele, the current president, was born into a Palestinian family and members of his immediate and extended family fill strategic posts in his administration and in the New Ideas party that he founded.

Like many Salvadoran Palestinians, Nayib Bukele’s forebears were Palestinian Christians from Jerusalem and Bethlehem. However, Bukele’s father, Armando Bukele, converted to Islam later in life. Armando founded several mosques in El Salvador and served as imam of the Salvadoran Islamic Community. Nayib Bukele’s wife is reported to be a Sephardic Jew. Bukele claims he is not very religious but that he believes in God, in Jesus Christ, and in the Bible. Bukele often uses religious language in public discourse and nurtures relationships with Salvadoran religious leaders. Much of the Salvadoran population believes he is a Christian.

El Salvador maintains diplomatic relations with Palestine but is also careful to maintain a positive relationship with Israel. During his presidency, Saca visited Bethlehem and met with the Palestinian prime minister. He stated that Palestine must exist but acknowledged the need for Israel to have secure borders. More recently, Bukele decried Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel while affirming his Palestinian ancestry. It is likely that the Palestinian community in El Salvador will try to continue this balanced approach.

Evangelicals are more prominently represented in the lower classes. The movement grew most strongly as El Salvador’s traditional religious and political order frayed in the second half of the 20th century. Local churches served as a haven for the poor in unsettled times. Discussion of a loving God, exuberant worship and feelings of belonging in unsettled times helped to drive growth. Evangelicals now exceed 70 percent of the population in some poor communities. Megachurches have multiplied. Elim, an independent Pentecostal church near El Salvador’s capital, has over 100,000 members. Many poor evangelicals also attend small house or storefront churches. El Salvador’s affluent communities now include a few evangelical churches, though the majority of the movement remains poor.

Salvadoran Catholics and evangelical churches tend to have active memberships. The percentage of practicing versus nominal Catholics is high relative to other Latin American countries. Evangelicals often attend church three or four times a week. 

Many who do not identify with a religious tradition are likely nominal Catholics who stopped calling themselves Catholics along with some disaffected evangelicals. Most in this group still have a religious worldview, in that they believe in God, angels, and demons.

Traditional Protestant denominations that have their historical roots in Europe make up a third religious category in El Salvador, but it is quite small even when compared with other Latin American countries. A Lutheran denomination is the largest traditional Protestant group, followed by a smaller Reformed denomination. These traditions tend to be more progressive politically and are often at the higher end of the educational spectrum.

Overview of Constitutional Status of Religion

The El Salvador Constitution provides for freedom of religion but does not treat all religions equally. The Catholic Church is afforded automatic official recognition, which exempts it from registration requirements and financial oversight by the government. Other religious groups are treated as if they are part of the NGO sector. That is, they can register with the government to receive tax-exempt status through the Office of the Director General for Nonprofit Associations and Foundations. The differing legal status of religious groups does not, however, have much effect on everyday religious life or congregational activities.

State of Religious Freedom

Threats to freedom of religion can come from two sources: criminal gangs and the government. Gangs once controlled marginalized urban neighborhoods. But their power has diminished—if not disappeared—under President Bukele’s tough anti-gang strategy. 

Before the Bukele crackdown, gangs restricted religious freedom in poor communities. In 2018, according to the Pew Research Center, El Salvador experienced the sharpest increase in social hostilities against religious groups in Latin America. This included the murder of a priest on his way to Mass during holy week and the murder of an evangelical pastor for reportedly persuading six members to leave the gang and join his church. Further, gangs also extorted money from some congregations in exchange for letting them operate, and made others divert donations to gang members’ families.

Mass incarceration has moved the dynamics between gangs and religious groups away from communities and into prisons. Religious communities formed in prisons before mass incarceration in spite of heavy pressure for most youths to enter a gang in prison, if they are not already in one. Religious leaders that have had occasional access to prisons during the state of exception confirm that these de facto congregations continue to exist and, in some prisons, to grow. But it has been the case in El Salvador and throughout Latin America that when Christian beliefs and behaviors challenge the gangs, people of faith have become victims of violence. Often this is because Christian prisoners are asked to be complicit in illicit activities. If they object, violence is used to coerce them.

The defining policy of Bukele’s regime stems from March 2022, when a rumored secret deal with gang leaders fell apart and gangs went on a killing spree. In response, Bukele decreed a “state of exception” (SoE). This decree gave increased powers to police and suspended basic rights such as freedom of association and the right to private communications. Citizens were also allowed to be arrested and detained without a trial. 

Almost 80,000 people were arrested between March 2022 and December 2024, including “hundreds of people with no apparent connections to gangs’ abusive activity,” according to Human Rights Watch. The state of exception, originally designed to last a month, has been extended for 30 additional days more than 30 times. The government has accompanied these security measures with policies to centralize power within the executive branch and within Bukele’s New Idea’s party, which has asserted control over most government entities. Such dynamics threaten political pluralism and basic human rights of all types, including freedom of religion. 

The decline of human rights has also affected religious actors. Those who speak out against Bukele’s centralization of power, mass incarceration policies, or corruption face repercussions. At the community level, authorities have incarcerated and/or intimidated religious leaders and lay people who allegedly have gang ties. 

The Bukele administration is also acting to regulate international involvement in Salvadoran civil society. In May 2025, Congress passed a law that requires all NGOs or individuals who receive international support to register as foreign agents, which prevents them from engaging in any activities deemed political. It also imposes a 30 percent tax on donations to these “foreign agents,” with limited exemptions. Religious organizations, many of which receive international donations, are among those subject to the new restrictions.

The Bukele government is also implementing new anti-money laundering (AML) regulations, which force both nonprofits and businesses operating in El Salvador to develop compliance manuals and hire two reporting officers (a proprietary and an alternate) to ensure that the entity’s financial transactions comply with AML regulations. Non-profit leaders note that they are essentially being forced to add government reporters to their payrolls. Although the government has been flexible with the timeline for compliance, organizations, including religious groups, that engage in political advocacy feel vulnerable. 

In addition, the government is curtailing NGO access to work in public spaces. This includes schools and prisons, where many faith-based organizations provide services. 

Despite these restrictions, Bukele remains popular among many people of faith, cultivating their support by using religious language to explain his policies. He refers to gangs as “satanic” and describes the liberation of communities from gang control as a “miracle.” Bukele also makes public appearances with religious leaders, and senior Catholic and evangelical leaders have made public statements in support of his government. 

Many gang members are highly influenced by religion. They have a cosmology that is populated by the Judeo-Christian God, angels and demons. Gangs largely understand themselves to be siding with darker forces. There are some logical inconsistencies in their practices, as they pray to God and they call on the “Beast,” which can mean Satan or death, for help when they commit violent crimes. Some gang members are involved in explicit Satan worship, which has included human sacrifice. In spite of this, gangs tend to have respect for churches, especially those they perceive to be helping the community.

Key Religious Actors

The most important religious figure in El Salvador remains the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero. Romero became the first saint born in Central America when Pope Francis canonized him in 2018. Roughly 250,000 people, including heads of state and other dignitaries, attended his beatification in 2015. El Salvador’s main airport bears his name and his statue graces city plazas around the country. Tourists can buy trinkets with his image in souvenir shops. 

In the strongholds of liberation theology, which include parts of Northern El Salvador and the Jesuit university where the military murdered four priests in 1989, Romero is an icon, a symbol of sacrifice who denounced repression and defended the poor. The mass production of Romero’s name and likeness may have diluted his message of empowerment, but it underscores the continued importance of the Catholic Church in El Salvador.

The three most prominent evangelical denominations are the Assemblies of God (AG) denomination, Elim, and the Baptist Tabernacle. The AG has an estimated 300,000 members in its congregations. Elim, mentioned above, is one of the 10 largest churches in the world. The Baptist Tabernacle: Friends of Israel is another locally founded congregation of about 15,000 that has spawned over 350 daughter churches. The heads of the AG, the Baptist Tabernacle, and Elim are arguably the three most influential people in the evangelical movement.

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) are leading agents of social change in El Salvador. Catholic Relief Services/Caritas, World Vision, and Compassion International have thousands of beneficiaries and collectively work in hundreds of communities around the country. A faith-based human rights advocacy group, Cristosal, is frequently quoted by international media. FBOs can also wield influence with gangs and other community stakeholders.

Religious institutions are prominent in the education sector. There are 497 Christian primary and/or secondary schools registered with El Salvador’s Ministry of Education. Three hundred and six of these are Catholic schools and 40 are part of the Liceo Juan Bueno school system, which is connected to the AG denomination. Religious institutions are even more prominent at the university level. Leaders in this sector include a Jesuit university (Central American University, or UCA), a Salesian university (University of Don Bosco), and an evangelical university (Evangelical University of El Salvador).

Salvadoran religious media is also ubiquitous. The largest churches and denominations have television stations and/or radio stations, and actively curate multiple social media platforms. These include Channel 17, owned by The Baptist Tabernacle: Friends of Israel, and Radio Maria, owned by the Catholic Church. Some companies, such as Agape TV, run independent religious television or radio stations. Religious bookstores are also common.

Religion and Public Life

A strong majority of every major religious group supports Bukele. This is due in part to Bukele’s overtures to religious communities. He has established a new holiday—a National Day of Prayer (November 17)—and proposed another: a National Day of the Salvadoran Evangelical Pastor (December 5). 

Bukele’s wide popularity has blurred the traditional political categories of conservative and liberal. His New Ideas party is currently the only political movement with significant power. Bukele began his political career with the FMLN and has fostered relationships with both conservative and liberal leaders abroad. But El Salvador today leans conservative; no left-leaning parties currently hold power, even at the municipal level.

The Salvadoran Catholic Church is among the more traditional in Latin America on moral and social issues. Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic lay order, has influence among Salvadoran businesspeople. The last archbishop, Fernando Saenz Lacalle, and current archbishop, Jose Luis Escobar Alas, have moved the Salvadoran Church away from the liberation theology that Romero and his immediate successor Arturo Rivera y Damas articulated. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Catholic Church engaged in social and political activism; today it seldom mobilizes for overt political activity.

There is nonetheless a strong liberationist minority (perhaps about a fifth of Catholics) in the Salvadoran Catholic Church. Progressive strongholds exist in El Salvador’s northern departments and in university settings. In recent times, liberationists have voiced opposition to free trade agreements and privatization of public services. Anti-Bukele sentiment can be found within their ranks.

Evangelicalism is most prevalent on the margins of society even as evangelical churches now exist in affluent neighborhoods. Evangelicals’ sheer numbers make them a potential force at the ballot box, and some politicians have attempted to create patron-client relationships with evangelical groups with varying degrees of success. Bukele has gained favor among many evangelical leaders and has attempted to sideline others who speak out against his policies. Like Salvadoran Catholics, many Salvadoran evangelicals hold traditional moral and social views.

In local-level public life, pastors are often trusted and respected. They take on informal leadership roles, as community members come to them for various types of assistance and advice. Before Bukele declared the state of exception, pastors and gang leaders often collaborated on an informal, ad hoc basis, to prevent violence and settle disputes.

Pastors (and gang leaders) approach leadership as caciques, carrying on a form of social organization that dates to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, when tribal units were governed by a cacique or paramount chief chosen by, and from within, their communities. Just as the early caciques were trained to intercede with the deities and provide local governance, contemporary pastors provide religious direction, but their authority extends into other parts of life and community. Pastoral selection and leadership strategies are thus consistent with centuries-old community practices.

Transnational and Diasporic Religious Factors

Transnational religious people, communication, goods, and services flow through religious life in El Salvador. An affluent business class—made up of actors who are bilingual, have studied overseas, and who often lead international faith-based organizations—import and export religious products and services. Inward flows are intended to reduce human need, support religious education, and/or build cross-national relationships. Outward flows include short-and long-term missionaries, radio and television programming, and churches established to serve the Salvadoran diaspora across the globe.

Poor Salvadoran congregations also have transnational exposure. Many have family living outside El Salvador. Some impoverished congregants are emigrants to El Salvador from neighboring countries. Salvadoran churches receive short-term mission teams from the United States, then stay in touch with their visitors via social media platforms and other modes of communication long after the trip has ended. Despite their poverty, members of Salvadoran congregations are invited to participate in short-term mission teams that go to neighboring countries as well as Africa and Asia. El Salvador’s religious sector across the socio-economic spectrum is thus embedded in transnational civil society through migration and other types of religious networks.

Interreligious Affairs

There is not a great deal of interreligious activity in El Salvador. Catholics and evangelicals compete in the religious marketplace. Neither group is greatly interested in developing formal relationships. Exceptions include Pentecostals and Catholic Charismatics, who view one another as part of the same Spirit-filled community. Professional networks and community projects linked to faith-based organizations also cut across Catholic-Protestant lines. Lutherans, El Salvador’s largest mainline Protestant denomination, have deeper ecumenical relationships than others. Other religious minorities (Jews, Muslims and eastern religions) are too small to leave much of a footprint on interreligious activity.

Part II: Religion and Conflict

The primary conflicts in El Salvador are between gangs and the government and between rival gangs. To understand the religious dimension of these conflicts, it is necessary to outline relevant dynamics before and after the policy of mass incarceration that began in March 2022.

Before Mass Incarceration

Gang violence became a serious problem in El Salvador in the 2000s. By the 2010s, El Salvador regularly appeared near the top of global indices of murders per capita as gangs took control of impoverished urban neighborhoods. Multilateral organizations, United States and European governments, and humanitarian organizations collectively poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the country to address the causes and consequences of gang violence, investing in programs to improve policing and to provide at-risk young people with employment opportunities. Such efforts may have had some impact—homicides trended downward after 2016—but the gangs continued to use violence to control marginalized communities.

In 2012, the Catholic Church helped broker a controversial truce between MS-13 and the 18th Street gang. Dialogue continued between the two groups over the next several years, reducing the murder rate dramatically. But the secretly negotiated truce proved deeply unpopular when it failed to curb the gangs’ power to run extortion rackets. Violence spiked again in 2015. Amidst widespread criticism, the Salvadoran Conference of Bishops distanced itself from the process.

Evangelicals played a more prominent role at the grassroots level. If a young person enters a gang, he (or sometimes she) is expected to be part of the gang until death. But many gangs had a “morgue rule exception,” meaning members could only leave the gang alive if they had an authentic conversion and joined an evangelical church. Their new lifestyle included submission to God through active church attendance, an ascetic lifestyle, and a renunciation of violence. Gang leaders monitored but also respected these behavior changes.

However, the broader evangelical-gang relationship was characterized by competition, conflict, and collaboration. Gangs used hard power (violence, surveillance, the invasion of churches and homes, etc.) against evangelicals and others to gain political and economic control. Evangelicals used soft power (advocacy, persuasion, pastoral care, and other forms of ministry) against gangs to reduce the likelihood of violence against community members, provide pastoral care for gang victims, and channel young people away from gangs and into churches.

Some evangelicals and gangs also collaborated, usually in ad hoc ways, to provide a (albeit distorted) form of local governance. This occurred in the presence of, and often in competition with, dysfunctional state institutions. 

The governance responsibilities that gangs and evangelicals provided included protection and security: Gangs protected neighborhoods from non-gang crime and violence, while evangelicals protected people from gang violence and occasionally gang members from police violence. Gangs and evangelicals also established and enforced rules: Gangs dictated where people could go and prohibited certain activities while evangelicals promoted ascetic lifestyles.

Finally, gangs and evangelicals provided quasi-judicial services: Gang leaders sentenced and punished (often severely) those who violated gang rules while evangelicals were able to reason with gang leaders in ways that often resulted in lighter punishments. 

Prior to March 2022, police presence was scant in most poor communities. Evangelicals distrusted the police and had little direct interaction with them. When police came into communities on anti-gang sweeps, evangelicals sometimes hid youths from the police. Evangelicals often sided with gangs as they battled police in part because of close family and other ties to members. Police, on the other hand, were almost always community outsiders.

After Mass Incarceration

The lynchpin of Bukele’s state of exception strategy is mass incarceration. Under the emergency, the government is empowered to suspend due process, incarcerating some 85,000 people from March 2022 to March 2025, most of whom have little or no access to lawyers or family members. The gang leaders who confronted or collaborated with evangelical pastors are now mostly in prison. Communities are much safer. 

The evangelical-gang dynamics that once affected community life are now playing out in the prison systems. Evangelical presence in prisons is strong, as the majority of gang members grew up in evangelical homes and consider themselves wayward Christians. Numerous local pastors and church members are also among those arrested for real or perceived gang ties. Other pastors—along with Catholic priests and other religious figures—continue to minister to minister to the families of prisoners. Under the SoE most ministries no longer have access to prisons and so have had to suspend prison ministries. 

Mass incarceration has high social costs, particularly for children. U.S.-based studies show that children of incarcerated parents are more likely to be impoverished and to experience episodic homelessness. They are also more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, and outward exhibitions aggression and hostility. Mass incarceration seems to be one factor driving an uptick in poverty rates: In the past three years, an additional 210,000 people have fallen into extreme poverty and are unable to eat three meals a day.

Religious actors and institutions remain embedded in communities that are adjusting to the realities of mass incarceration. Like much of the Salvadoran public, many religious leaders, both Catholic and evangelical, support the State of Exception, arguing that it was the only way to defeat the gangs. Some well-placed leaders advocate for the restoration of due process, liberty for those unfairly incarcerated, and an end to police or prison guard brutality. 

Churches and faith-based organizations provide relief supplies for families who lost their primary income through incarceration. 

The transnational dynamics between religious actors and gangs remain significant. Salvadorans in the United States remain deeply embedded in Salvadoran affairs, and religion continues to be key to their transnational lifestyles. 

The MS-13 and the 18th Street gangs remain active throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond, including in Salvadoran immigrant communities. Many Salvadorans living abroad, including people of faith, strongly support Bukele’s policies, although there are dissenters, especially within the international NGO sector. But, in part because of Bukele’s image as a model for Latin American countries dealing with issues of violence, the transnational Salvadoran community is proud of the country’s recent changes.

Looking Ahead

It is not yet clear whether and when religion’s role in society and peacebuilding will look different in the Bukele era, but some constants include:

• People of faith—mostly Catholic, but also evangelical—will participate in all the various spheres of power in society. 
• The key religious leaders will remain the heads of the Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God, Elim, and the Baptist Tabernacle.
• Leaders of faith-based NGOs such as Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and Compassion International will influence multilateral, technocratic, and policy-related spaces. Their focus will continue to attract and leverage financial and human resources, though their focus will be on implementation rather than political advocacy. 
• Religious actors will remain central to gang-related policy and solutions, and the “gang question” will remain near the forefront of the national agenda—if only because Bukele derives legitimacy from his defeat of the gangs. Religious institutions remain among the more trusted civil institutions in society, and religious actors are unique in the intimate grassroots relationships that they maintain with gang members and their families. 
• Religious actors are well positioned to ameliorate the social and economic costs of mass incarceration. Faith-based NGOs and ministries partner with local congregations in many communities. Although most are currently denied access to the prisons, they maintain their relationships with gang members’ families and understand how to create positive change in the relevant contexts.
• Religious actors will also be central to prisoner re-integration, an issue of rising importance in the country. Catholic and evangelical churches are especially well-placed to provide alternatives that include some kind of “restorative justice” that provides reparation for individuals or communities victimized by the gangs.
• Transnational religious connections will remain important. If Bukele clamps down on international influence in civil society, these connections could become a point of conflict. 
• As the country crystallizes its approach to democratic institutions, threats to religious freedoms may become more pressing. More religious leaders may feel the need to make public statements endorsing the Bukele administration.

This primer was written by Stephen Offutt, non-resident scholar at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion and the author of "Blood Entanglements: Evangelicals and Gangs in El Salvador." The report was originally commissioned by the U.S. Institute of Peace.