Alexis de Tocqueville, the well-known, early 19th-century French chronicler of democracy in America, recognized the vital role religion plays in shaping American life. “This civilization is the result … of two quite distinct ingredients, which anywhere else have often ended in war but which Americans have succeeded somehow to meld together in wondrous harmony; namely […]
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 – […]
Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2008 for the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life to look at the impact of religious voters in the 2008 election. John Green, a senior fellow in religion and […]
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 […]
Just 18% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country today, down from 22% in March and 27% at the end of 2007. This represents a new low in 20 years of Pew Research Center polling. Previously, the lowest measure of satisfaction was in September 1993 when 20% […]
U.S. Catholics Occupy Something of a Middle Ground in the Catholic Faith
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, […]