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 […]
May 6, 2008 Before the pope’s plane – dubbed “Shepherd One” – touched down at Andrews Air Force Base on April 15, the news media portrayed Pope Benedict XVI as a largely unknown religious figure about to introduce himself to American Catholics still recovering from the clergy sex abuse scandal. By the time he left, […]
Growing Democratic Party ID Advantage The Democratic Party’s advantage in party identification among voters nationwide has continued to grow in the first half of 2008. Among all the registered voters interviewed by the Pew Research Center from January through June of this year, 37% identify themselves as Democrats, the highest annual average in 20 years. […]
U.S. Catholics Occupy Something of a Middle Ground in the Catholic Faith
This chapter examines the diverse religious beliefs and practices of American adults. It looks first at the various degrees of importance Americans assign to religion in their lives and explores their views of God, Scripture, miracles and other religious beliefs. It then moves into a discussion of worship and other congregational activities, followed by a […]
Relatively few Americans say they look to religion as the primary source of their views on social and political issues. Nevertheless, the Landscape Survey confirms the strong links that exist between Americans’ religious affiliation, their beliefs and practices, and their basic social and political attitudes. Religion may, in fact, be playing a more powerful, albeit […]
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 – […]
Pope Benedict XVI Sept. 18, 2006, in an address to an international congress sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations: The destruction of human embryos to harvest stem cells is “not only devoid of the light of God but is also devoid of humanity” and “does not […]