Abstract: In recent decades, Chile has experienced a phenomenon of disaffiliation from the Catholic Church and an increase in the population of those who identify themselves as non-religious, while the percentage of evangelicals remains stable. This article, through 24 interviews, brings together the life stories of 12 university students who leave the Catholic Church and declared themselves as “without religion” and another 12 other young people who went through the opposite process. This enables us to see the influence of two contrasting factors that play a role in these decisions: the dilemma of the need (or lack of it) for God and the dilemma of (dis)trust in the Church, where individuation and the decline of institutions bring people to confront these dilemmas.
Keywords:
Catholic Church; Religious mobility; Disaffiliation, Reaffiliation; University students