Religion and History in the Central African Republic

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Central African Republic is a majority Christian country, roughly 61 per cent Protestant and 28 per cent Roman Catholic, with a Muslim minority concentrated in the north and east, about 9 per cent, and small communities holding traditional or animist beliefs throughout. Religious identity became a fault line rather than a private matter during the civil war that began in 2013, when the mostly Muslim Seleka coalition seized power and was answered by mostly Christian anti-balaka militias, producing sectarian killing on both sides that displaced hundreds of thousands and left mosques destroyed across large stretches of the country.

Reconciliation between Christian and Muslim communities remains unfinished a decade after the worst of the fighting. The United States placed the Central African Republic on its Special Watch List for religious freedom in December 2023, a formal finding that the government has tolerated severe violations even as it has not directly perpetrated them, a distinction between toleration and perpetration that captures how much of the country's religious tension now runs through weak state authority rather than official policy.