Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Search results for: “global islam”

Refine Your Results

  • feature

    In their own words, how Americans explain why bad things happen

    Why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? This question can be particularly confounding for those who believe in a good and all-powerful God, as is often described in the Abrahamic religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For centuries, philosophers and theologians have grappled with this “problem of evil.”

  • report

    3. Median index scores for government restrictions, social hostilities involving religion declined or remained stable in most regions in 2019

    CORRECTION (Dec. 19, 2025): Two charts and some of the text in this chapter have been revised to correct the SHI median scores for the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and the Middle East-North Africa region, and to revise Norway’s SHI category. The median scores changed by 0.1 point for each of these three regions. Refer to the errata […]

  • report

    Modeling the Future of Religion in America

    Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of U.S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” If recent trends in religious switching continue, Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades.

  • report

    Few Americans Blame God or Say Faith Has Been Shaken Amid Pandemic, Other Tragedies

    In the new survey, the Center attempted for the first time to pose some of these philosophical questions to a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, finding that Americans largely blame random chance – along with people’s own actions and the way society is structured – for human suffering, while relatively few believers blame God or voice doubts about the existence of God for this reason.

  • report

    2. Causes of religious change

    The religious composition of the global population is always in flux. For example, the share of Buddhists worldwide is shrinking because of their low average fertility rate, and Christians are declining in the U.S. and Western Europe as more people leave organized religion. Demographers attribute changes in the size of religious populations to three main […]

  • report

    1. Population growth and religious composition

    India’s population has more than tripled in the six decades following Partition, from 361 million (36.1 crore) people in the 1951 census to more than 1.2 billion (120 crore) in 2011. As of 2020, India gains roughly 1 million (10 lakh) inhabitants each month, putting it on course to surpass China as the world’s most […]

  • report

    10. A brief overview of Black religious history in the U.S.

    Two-thirds of Black Americans are Protestant, like about four-in-ten Americans overall. The relationship between Black Americans and Protestantism is unusual due to the history of slavery and segregation, which spawned the creation of several Black-led denominations that allowed Black Americans to worship freely. Mostly founded prior to 1900, these historically Black Protestant denominations also supported […]

REfine Your Selection

Years
Formats
Regions & Countries
Topics
Research Teams
Authors