This article presents a panoramic view of the formation of the Brazilian religious field from the colonial times to the current days. It begins with a historic view of the Catholicism types that thrived in the colonial and imperial times in Brazil and of their characteristics influencing Brazilian religiosity to the present. It goes through the changes caused by the proclamation of the Republic: constitutional separation of the Catholic Church from the State and religious freedom guaranteed by the State. It follows the transformations occurring along the twentieth century with the establishment of a pluralist religious field in which Catholicism slowly loses its members to other religious groups, mainly the Pentecostal Protestants, without losing its hegemony. Nowadays, even though these trends persist, the dynamics of the religious field changes substantially as religious institutions lose their influence as a consequence of beliefs and practices becoming subjective. From this standpoint, the article analyzes the individual religious paths that are enabled by the increasing pluralism and progressive adhesion to religious duplicities/multiplicities that add new ways of expression to the traditional ones. Such processes reach almost all of the religious mutants - except for the Protestants -, including the Catholics who had gone after other religious experiences, and involve beliefs and practices from Eastern traditional and recent as well as esoteric sources.
formation of the Brazilian religious field; Catholicism types; religious mutants