Christianity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

According to the 2020 Report on International Religious Freedom, an estimated 48.1% of the population are Protestant (including evangelical Christians and the Church of Jesus Christ on Earth) and 47.3% are Catholic.

The earliest evidence for the adoption of Christian religious practices in the area of the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo dates to the late 15th century.

In 1491, King Nzinga of the Kongo Kingdom[a] converted to Roman Catholicism, taking the Christian name João, after coming into contact with Portuguese colonial explorers.

The conversion facilitated trade with the Portuguese and increased the status of the Kongo Kingdom in the eyes of European states.

The Kongo Kingdom adopted a form of Catholicism and was recognised by the Papacy, preserving the beliefs for nearly 200 years.

[4] In the post-independence period, distrust between the Churches and the state grew, exacerbated in the early 1970s by attempts by the new Zairean government to secularise education.

[7] In 2016, the CIA World Factbook estimated that 50 percent of the Congo's total population were Roman Catholic.