Washington, D.C. Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit Turkey on Nov. 28-30, a trip that has already attracted exceptionally close attention because of the pope’s remarks about Islam during a September speech in Regensburg, Germany. More than 50 Islamic nations have demanded an apology for the speech, which aroused anger in the Islamic world […]
Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists and distinguished scholars gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2006 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. To help journalists better understand the role religion played in the 2006 midterm election, Pew Forum Senior Fellow John Green and […]
Most Americans (78%) continue to view the Bible as the word of God, though there is disagreement over whether everything in the Bible is literally true; 35% say it is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, while 43% say the Bible is the word of God, but not everything in […]
Library of Congress Washington, D.C. With the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, the United States became one of the few countries in the world to make promotion of religious freedom an explicit foreign policy goal. The act, signed into law by President Clinton, established an Office of International Religious Freedom at […]
Bethesda, Maryland A native of Pakistan who served as his country’s high commissioner to Great Britain, Akbar Ahmed offers the unique perspective of an anthropologist who has lived in and studied both Islamic and Western cultures. The BBC has described him as “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam.” He is the principal investigator for […]
In Mid-East Conflicts, Americans Consistently Side with Israel
Pew Research Center Washington, D.C. In his recent article in Foreign Affairs, Walter Russell Mead argues that as U.S. evangelicals exert increasing political influence, they are becoming a powerful force in foreign affairs. In recent years, evangelicals have voted overwhelmingly Republican, helping to put conservatives at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, while focusing their […]
Introduction and Summary The relationship between religion and politics is a controversial one. While the public remains more supportive of religion’s role in public life than in the 1960s, Americans are uneasy with the approaches offered by both liberals and conservatives. Fully 69% of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion […]