In U.S., Far More Support Than Oppose Separation of Church and State
Some Americans clearly long for a more avowedly religious and explicitly Christian country, a March survey finds. However, a clear majority of Americans do not accept these views.
Some Americans clearly long for a more avowedly religious and explicitly Christian country, a March survey finds. However, a clear majority of Americans do not accept these views.
Since the establishment of the ATP, the Center has gradually migrated away from telephone polling and toward online survey administration, and since early 2019, the Center has conducted most of its U.S. polling on the ATP. This shift has major implications for the way the Center measures trends in American religion – including those from the Center’s flagship Religious Landscape Studies, which were conducted by phone in 2007 and 2014.
The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip, with both Protestantism and Catholicism experiencing losses of population share.
Religion in public schools has long been a controversial issue. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that teachers and administrators cannot lead prayers in public schools, and a decision in 2000 barred school districts from sponsoring student-led prayers at football games. At the same time, the court has held that students retain a First […]
The new, 116th Congress includes the first two Muslim women ever to serve in the House of Representatives, and is, overall, slightly more religiously diverse than the prior Congress.
More than 55 years after the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling striking down school-sponsored prayer, Americans continue to fight over the place of religion in public schools. Questions about religion in the classroom no longer make quite as many headlines as they once did, but the issue remains an important battleground in the broader […]
More than 15 years after U.S. bishops pledged “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, reports of previously unpublicized misconduct continue to receive wide media coverage.
Giving a share of one’s income to the church has been a part of European tradition for centuries. Today, several countries continue to collect a “church tax” on behalf of officially recognized religious organizations, in some cases levying the tax on all registered members.
Question 1: Measuring religious identity How does Pew Research Center measure the religious identity of survey respondents and the religious composition of the U.S.? Answer: Generally, we rely on respondents’ self-identification. A key question we ask in many surveys is: “What is your present religion, if any? Are you Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox such […]
A new analysis looks at beliefs and behaviors that cut across many religious denominations – important traits that unite people of different faiths, or that divide those of the same religious affiliation.
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