Only one-in-ten Chinese adults formally identify with a religion, but surveys indicate that religion plays a much bigger role in China when the definition is widened to include questions on spirituality, customs and traditional beliefs.
People who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier and more civically engaged than either religiously unaffiliated adults or inactive members of religious groups, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the United States and more than two dozen other countries.
Islam is the most common state religion, but many governments give privileges to Christianity.
There has been a modest drop in overall rates of belief in God and participation in religious practices. But religiously affiliated Americans are as observant as before.
George Mason University Professor Peter Mandaville, Dilwar Hussain of the Islamic Foundation, and Maha Azzam of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House discussed key findings of a Pew Forum study containing profiles of some of the oldest, largest and most influential Muslim groups – from the Muslim Brotherhood to mystical Sufi orders and networks of religious scholars.
Religion played a much more significant role in the media coverage of President-elect Barack Obama than it did in the press treatment of Republican nominee John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign, but much of the coverage related to false yet persistent rumors that Obama is a Muslim. Meanwhile, there was little attempt by the […]
Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December, 2008, for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Vali Nasr, author of the 2006 book, The Shia Revival, surveyed the geo-political landscape of today’s Middle East, arguing that the 2003 invasion of Iraq has fundamentally […]
Washington, D.C. In a noon conference call for journalists, Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, together with fellows John Green and Greg Smith, released the second report of the Forum’s path-breaking U.S. Religious Landscape Survey – along with new data added to the interactive website accompanying the project – […]
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