AHC: Country with a Christian Minority in the Americas

spendabuck

Banned
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to have a country in the Americas have only ~25% of its population adhere to Christianity with a POD of 1700 or later. The country must survive to the present day and be of some importance to global politics.
 
Ehh... pretty much nigh-impossible without some reformation of an indigenous faith, or introduction of a faith strong enough to resist Christianity, like Islam. Both paths are hard to achieve in itself, and I'm not well versed enough on the subject to craft out a scenario.
 
You don't necessarily need Christianity to be out-competed by another religion. Another option is for a country to develop high rates of irreligion, such that the percentage of practicing Christians falls within OP's parameters.
 
You don't necessarily need Christianity to be out-competed by another religion. Another option is for a country to develop high rates of irreligion, such that the percentage of practicing Christians falls within OP's parameters.

Could Uraguay kind of achieve that?
 
Morocco under Ahmad al-Mansur doesn't piss away its resources on a campaign in Songhay and saves up. He picks a single successor instead of having two and the Saadi succession war is avoided. Insert continuation of skillful diplomacy, borrowing tech from the Ottomans and Europeans, and who knows? Maybe the Franco-Moroccan treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Moroccan_Treaty_(1631)) can be less unequal, since the alt-Saadis have not just emerged from a succession war by that time.

At this point they offer to help the Iberian Union out with getting Dutch Brazil from the Netherlands and back in Portuguese hands, and are rewarded with a slice of territory that doesn't contains too many Europeans. When the Saadis end up failing to maintain control for the same reasons that they failed in West Africa, this slice then becomes a little, Uruguay-sized country that is majority Moroccan Muslim.

...Eh, maybe some countries just weren't meant to have colonies in the 1600s. Try having a pocket of Native Americans who retain an indigenous faith establish a small state. Or a state whose primary religions are native faiths and the Afro-American religions of the slave population. An Acre that actually stays independent. Or Marajo Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marajó
 

spendabuck

Banned
I was thinking that one of the following could work:

A) China or Japan decide to join Europe in the colonization of the New World and colonize much of the west coast, while at the same time introducing various religions from East Asia, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto.

B) During the Latin American Wars for Independence, a Quechua man gains support and crowns himself Sapa Inka, forming a new Inca Empire, with a neo-Intiist faith being the main religion of the Second Empire.

C) During the American Revolution, a religion similar to the Cult of Reason during the French Revolution becomes very popular, and replaces most Christianity.

D) A Jewish state is formed in the Americas instead of Israel.
 
28% of Guyana is Hindu, that could be nudged into one country if there was a split along religious lines, or it could be nudged higher if the policies that caused this migration were extended.
 

ben0628

Banned
The most likely chance of this happening is to have Islam do a better job at expanding in West/Central Africa.

By doing so, the entire slave population (future African American population) will be almost entirely Muslim.

Of course, a pod would also require more slaves to be imported than in otl and I don't know if the South back then would allow the slaves to maintain their religion so a non Christian US would be hard.

That being said, a Muslim majority Cuba, Haiti, Domincan Republic, or Jamaica could be easily achievable.
 
How about something Sanitaria, Voodoo, or Yoruba based in the Caribbean. Sanitaria has spread to white Cubans as a reaction to the Cuban Revolution.

Have Sanitaria be important to a counter-revolution. Then have it be unofficially encouraged by the new government.
 
If you discount syncretic form of Catholicism practiced by most Indigenous Mexicans, Peruvians, Brazilians, etc. as not Christian, then a few countries could approach this in OTL, such as Guatemala and Bolivia.

Otherwise, I'd say your best bet would be a Caribbean island nation where the majority practice an African-derived faith like Santeria, or a country like Trinidad and Tobago with a large Hindu minority flips to a majority.
 

Deleted member 67076

That being said, a Muslim majority Cuba, Haiti, Domincan Republic, or Jamaica could be easily achievable.
A Muslim majority Dominican Republic? I'd be very interested to see how this would come up given slaves never made up more than 20% of the population after the early 1600s.
 

ben0628

Banned
A Muslim majority Dominican Republic? I'd be very interested to see how this would come up given slaves never made up more than 20% of the population after the early 1600s.

It's possible to make slavery more popular in the Dominican Republic. Or have it so Haiti remains in control of the Eastern half of the island (this occurred for 22 years in otl before the Dominicans achieved independence).
 

Deleted member 67076

It's possible to make slavery more popular in the Dominican Republic. Or have it so Haiti remains in control of the Eastern half of the island (this occurred for 22 years in otl before the Dominicans achieved independence).
Well, the former is unlikely unless Spain loses Cuba given that was their main sugar island. But even past that there are still problems getting the ball rolling as ranching barons owned most of the land in the south (where sugar is best grown and settlement clustered until the Bourbon reforms).

The latter is highly improbable given the economic deterioration and political instability undergoing in Haiti during their occupation of eastern Hispaniola and the methods of governance Haiti used which isolated and enraged the eastern populations. But by the POD of the occupation most of the islands people were solidly Christian so I dunno how Islamization would have come by then.
 
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