China’s Christian population appears to have stopped growing after rising rapidly in the 1980s and ’90s
Between 2010 and 2018, the share of Chinese adults who identify with Christianity remained stable at about 2%.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Between 2010 and 2018, the share of Chinese adults who identify with Christianity remained stable at about 2%.
Religiously unaffiliated people were harassed by governments, private groups or both in 27 countries in 2020.
Countries with the most extensive government restrictions All 198 countries and territories in the study had at least some government restrictions on religious activity in 2020, such as policies favoring certain groups over others or bans on particular religious practices. But the severity of the restrictions and the means used to enforce them varied from […]
Government restrictions on religion, by region The global median score on the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) rose from 2.8 in 2020 to 3.0 in 2021, the highest it’s been since Pew Research Center created the index in 2007. Both Europe and the Americas saw increases in their regional GRI scores, though their median scores remained […]
The number of people ages 5 and older who speak Arabic at home in the U.S. has risen from 215,000 in 1980 to 1.4 million in 2021.
One way to examine the reach of religious restrictions is to look just at the world’s 25 most populous countries. Of course, religious restrictions do not affect everyone within a country equally, but looking at government restrictions and social hostilities in these 25 countries – which claim three-quarters of the global population, or more than […]
The Global Religious Futures (GRF) project is jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The John Templeton Foundation. Here are some big-picture findings from the GRF, together with context from other Pew Research Center studies.
Social hostilities around the world involving religion declined in 2019 to the lowest level in five years.
Government restrictions by region In 2019, the median Government Restrictions Index (GRI) score of the 198 countries and territories in this study remained stable at 2.9, staying at its highest level since Pew Research Center began tracking these measures in 2007 (see Overview). The median score on the index decreased in three of the five […]
Nearly a quarter of countries used force to prevent religious gatherings during the pandemic; other government restrictions and social hostilities related to religion remained fairly stable.
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