Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Views on Science and Scientists The United States is the most religious industrial democracy in the world. At the same time, the U.S. is a science superpower, leading the world in many key areas of scientific research and in most fields of technological development. While this combination of widespread religious commitment and leadership in science […]
“Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks” In 2006 sociologists Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and Matthew Brashears delivered grim research findings: Americans’ core discussion networks, the network of people with whom people can discuss important matters, have shrunk and become less diverse over the past twenty years. They found that people depend more […]
Overview The general public and members of the Council on Foreign Relations are apprehensive and uncertain about America’s place in the world. Growing numbers in both groups see the United States playing a less important role globally, while acknowledging the increasing stature of China. And the general public, which is in a decidedly inward-looking frame […]
More than half a century ago, the United Nations affirmed the principle of religious freedom in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, defining it as “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” For just as long, journalists and human rights groups have reported on persecution of minority faiths, outbreaks of sectarian violence […]
About the Authors Key Lehman Schlozman — Kay Lehman Schlozman serves as J.Joseph Moakley Endowed Professor of Political Science at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is co-author of Injury to Insult: Unemployment, Class and Political Response […]
Conceptual Framework A great deal of scholarship has been devoted to the study of religious freedom and the extent of restrictions on religion. Much of this research relies upon case studies, assessments by observers within countries and reviews of news reports. This research has yielded valuable insights and has helped to call attention to places […]
The evangelical Christian movement historically has been defined by its members’ distinctive doctrinal standards and practices. Yet in recent years many Americans have come to understand evangelicals more by their political, rather than religious, identity. The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life invited Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, […]
If the press corps in Washington aimed at the American public in general is shrinking, and the one aimed at self-defined specialized groups is growing, what does that mean about the kind of monitoring of government the press engages in? And how might that change how public opinion is formed and shaped, and does that […]