If it’s not broken, don’t fix it: review of religious policy in Costa Rica

Abstract

Costa Rica is world-renowned for being the oldest and most stable democracy in Latin America, the abolition of its standing army and its progressive environmental protection policies. Costa Rica is also the only remaining Catholic state in Latin America. In recent years, more and more voices demand that the country should become a secular state. In this study, I take an in-depth look at Costa Rica’s religious policy from a political science perspective using data from the Religion and State Project which I complement by primary and secondary sources such as interviews, newspapers reports, jurisprudence and legal data. Using this data, I compare Costa Rica’s religious policy with that of other regions, including democracies and non-democracies. I argue that there are only minor forms of favoritism of Catholicism and only a few instances in which minority religions are being discriminated. I conclude that the confessional nature of the Costa Rican state is merely symbolic. Because symbols matter, the confessional nature of the Costa Rican state could be reformed, but I posit that other reforms should be prioritized in order to guarantee full religious freedom for all religious and non-religious groups.