Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
About four-in-ten U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass weekly. Few cultural Catholics (4%) say the same, but nearly half report attending Mass at least occasionally. Meanwhile, a strong majority of ex-Catholics (82%) say they never attend Mass at a Catholic church. A similar pattern is seen on some other measures of observance of Catholic rituals, […]
Pope Francis has generated goodwill toward the Catholic Church among many Americans across the political spectrum. But Democrats and liberals are especially likely to say they have a more positive view of the Church because of Francis.
There is strong public support for government investment in science. Overall, 71% of adults say government investment in basic science research “pays off in the long run,” while 24% say such investments are not worth it. Similarly, most see positive benefits from government investment in engineering and technology; 72% say investments in this area pay […]
Religious factors are at play in public views about some, though by no means all, biomedical topics. For example, there are differences between those who attend worship services regularly and those who do not when it comes to views about the appropriateness of changing a baby’s genetic makeup. But there are no such divides when […]
While religion remains important in the lives of most Americans, the 2014 Religious Landscape Study finds that Americans as a whole have become somewhat less religious in recent years by certain traditional measures of religious commitment. For instance, fewer U.S. adults now say religion is very important in their lives than did so seven years […]
Overall, more Americans now identify as politically liberal than did so when the Religious Landscape Study was first conducted, while fewer U.S. adults identify themselves as political moderates. Religious “nones” are more likely than those in many Christian traditions to describe themselves as politically liberal; indeed, 39% of religious “nones” now describe themselves as liberals. […]