Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Catholic civic engagement plays a central role in American politics, and the question of how Catholic convictions translate to the public square is a matter of frequent discussion. In his recent book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life (2008), the Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of […]
Who is Sarah Palin? The question has dominated campaign coverage in the weeks since her nomination as John McCain’s running mate. In the mainstream media at least, the answer has focused almost as much on her family life as on her public record. But despite that focus, and the debate over her beliefs, coverage of […]
GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is a self-described “Bible-believing Christian,” but statistics from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey show that compared with the nation as a whole, Alaska is home to a higher-than-average number of people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion. More than one-in-four Alaskans […]
Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters. For a decade, majorities of Americans had […]
Top Issues for 2008 The economy continues to lead the list of issues voters say will be very important to their candidate choice this fall. Fully 87% of voters say the economy will be very important to their vote this fall, which is virtually unchanged since May (88%) but greater than the proportion of voters […]
Public Views of Faith-Based Initiatives Since early 2001, when the Bush administration first established a White House office to expand the role of religious organizations in providing social services, there have been clear divisions in public attitudes toward faith-based initiatives. The public has continuously supported the principle of allowing houses of worship, along with other […]
School children utter the phrase “one nation under God” as part of the Pledge of Allegiance. The national motto, “In God We Trust,” appears on U.S. currency. Congress and many state legislatures start their sessions with prayers, and the U.S. Supreme Court opens oral arguments with the invocation “God save the United States and this […]
With less than two months before the presidential election in November, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life invited two senior researchers and a group of leading journalists to discuss recent findings on the role religion is playing in the presidential race. Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, said […]