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Evangelical TikTokers Are Winning the War for Hearts and Minds

Millions are watching up-and-coming Christian TikTokers in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, who have made the social media site the go-to place for a religious dose.
Estefi Bermúdez, a Mexican teenager, is part of a wave of evangelical TikTokers who have popped up over the past two years throughout Latin America.
Estefi Bermúdez, a Mexican teenager, is part of a wave of evangelical TikTokers who have popped up over the past two years throughout Latin America. Photos from Bermúdez

MEXICO CITY – “Hey! Wait! Would you let me quickly pray for you? Yes? Ok,” says Estefi Bermúdez, a Mexican teenage girl who has gone viral on TikTok with her Christian content, including intimate prayers and empathetic counseling. 

Estefi is one of a wave of evangelical TikTokers who have popped up over the past two years throughout Latin America. Catholicism is still the dominant religion in Latin America but an array of evangelical churches are quickly winning over believers. 

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Estefi has 12.8 million likes and 677,400 followers – and that prayer video alone has 4 million views and over 840,000 likes. “Papá, thank you for the life of the person who is watching this video, thank you,” she prays to the camera, eyes closed, to a background of heartfelt ambient music. From her bedroom, she promises that if you are watching her, you are special to God.

“Is it normal that this has gotten to me and that it’s made me cry?” commented Erika, one of her TikTok followers on the video. Estefi replied: “Very normal 💗.” Another follower, Mexican influencer Brandon Vargas, who has 2.8 million followers, wrote: “Thank you so much! 🙌🏻❤️.”

Estefi has translated and adapted a video of 18-year-old American Christian TikToker Henrik Hoeldtke, who has 17.5 million likes and nearly 463,000 followers. The video lays out an emotional dialogue between a non-Christian and a Christian. The Christian persuades the non-believer that Jesus Christ is pure love after the non-believer confesses to all the “bad things” he’s done. One of Estefi’s followers was deeply moved. “My little eyes filled up with water,” commented Ana Osuna.

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Mexico is an example of how evangelicals are winning the war with Catholics for hearts and minds. Over the past decade, the country’s evangelical population has grown to more than 11 percent of the population -- a share that is up by two percent since 2010. The percentage of Catholic believers has dropped at the same rate, according to national statistics data compiled and analyzed by VICE World News. Some 72 percent of Mexicans currently identify as Catholics in a country where until recently the religion was omnipresent. In 2010, it was 74 percent.

The rise of evangelicals and the decline of Catholicism in Mexico, the second largest country in Latin America, is similar to other countries in the region. Today, nearly 20 percent of Latin Americans identify themselves as evangelicals or other Christian denominations versus about 59 percent who describe themselves as Catholics. In Brazil, evangelicals have grown to encompass 31 percent of the population. Brazilian evangelical influencer and TikToker Fabiola Melo’s fan base is huge: she has 2 million followers on YouTube, 1.7 million on TikTok, and 1 million on Instagram. She’s a pastor’s daughter and creates relatable videos showing everyday situations and infuses them with her evangelical beliefs. 

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Another popular evangelical TikToker is Pastor Ramon Nova, a preacher from the Dominican Republic who introduces his Bible verses with athletic sprints and jumps. He has an enormous reach, with 2.1 million followers and 32.8 likes on TikTok.

TikTok offers powerful digital evidence of the conversion despite Catholic leaders trying to keep up. Padre Cheke, a Catholic priest from the Mexican state of Puebla who cheerfully preaches the Bible, often to jokes and music, gets at most tens of thousands of likes on his joyous TikTok videos, compared to Estefi’s hundreds of thousands of likes. 

As a teenage believer, Estefi is aware of her advantages among her age group – and she makes sure to highlight how much fun she thinks her faith is. She recently praised a comment on her Instagram video showing her family dancing and having fun at a party. “Pastors are boring – The pastors: 😂😍🔥🙌” a follower commented. Estefi laughed and wrote that she loved it.

“The Catholic institution has been discredited because of the visibilization of sexual abuse by clerics,” said Vanessa Reséndiz, a sociologist who specializes in religion at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “We talk about this among sociologists and anthropologists as a process of de-institutionalization of the Catholic Church, associated with the clerics losing credibility. The dogmatic religious criteria have lost authority.”

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Catholic discourse doesn’t resonate as strongly among its own believers, said Reséndiz, leading Catholicism to lose its monopoly, both in the public and private spaces.

The empathetic messages that evangelicals emit are becoming more attractive to followers than those emanating from more standoffish Catholic priests. “They say: I know what you are feeling. I know exactly what you are going through. I was there but I am past that – I am on the other side. Do you want to come? Follow me,” Reséndiz explained. “At this point, they not only become respected figures, but also sacred ones that can be venerated and idolized.”

Estefi’s star continues to rise and she’s quick to engage her followers on topics other than religion, such as Mexico’s pervasive machismo. Recently, she pushed back against a user who said he thought she was baring too much skin while on the beach in Acapulco even though she was wearing a full top and pants.

“Calm down, bro,” she commented on one of her Instagram photos. 

“I don’t know what you wear when you go to the beach, but I’m only wearing pants and a bathing suit.”