Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Origins and Growth 1910s-1940s: In 1882, an anti-Catholic, liberal president, Justo Barrios, escorts an American Presbyterian minister to Guatemala to encourage Protestant growth. Other Protestant missionaries, with the Central American Mission, Quakers, Primitive Methodists, and Nazarenes, arrive in the late 1890s and early 1900s (Garrard-Burnett 2001: 2-3). Pentecostal missionaries with the United and Free Gospel […]
Despite recent controversies over issues at the intersection of religion and science, such as evolution and stem cell research, there is broad agreement that scientific advances help mankind. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) take a positive view of scientific advances; just 19% say they harm mankind. Solid majorities in every major religious group say that […]
Summary of Findings The public is paying a great deal of attention to major overseas events – the reported terrorist plot against U.S. trans-Atlantic jet liners, the war in Lebanon, as well as the ongoing violence in Iraq. However, there is little indication that these dramatic stories have materially changed public attitudes. Worries about another […]
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 […]
Summary of Findings Five years later, Americans’ views of the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have changed little, but opinions about how best to protect against future attacks have shifted substantially. In particular, far more Americans say reducing America’s overseas military presence, rather than expanding it, will have a greater effect in reducing […]
A narrow majority of Americans say they enjoy keeping up with the news “a lot,” and this attitude is one of the strongest predictors of how much news people actually seek out. Enjoyment of the news has been very stable over the past dozen years. About one-third (34%) say they enjoy keeping up with the […]
Americans overwhelmingly consider the U.S. a Christian nation: Two-in-three (67%) characterize the country this way, down just slightly from 71% in March 2005.[1. On the current survey, respondents were asked two versions of this question. The first, which has been asked in previous Pew polls, reads: “Do you consider the United States a Christian nation, […]