Choosing a New Church or House of Worship
About half of U.S. adults have looked for a new religious congregation at some point in their lives, most commonly because they have moved.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
About half of U.S. adults have looked for a new religious congregation at some point in their lives, most commonly because they have moved.
For the latest data on government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion, read our report “More Countries Had Elevated Levels of Social Hostilities Involving Religion in 2023” and visit the interactive “Religious restrictions around the world.” Worldwide, both government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion decreased modestly from 2013 to 2014 despite a rise in religion-related […]
Declining share says it is important for president to have strong religious beliefs The share of Americans who think it is important that a president have strong religious beliefs has been steadily declining over the past two election cycles and has reached a new low in Pew Research Center polling. In 2008, 72% said this […]
Another widely accepted indicator of religious commitment is daily prayer. Pew Research Center has collected data on frequency of prayer in 84 countries. In 40 of those countries, there is no significant difference in levels of daily prayer reported by men and women. But in 43 countries (just over 50% of the total), women report […]
Standard lists of history’s most influential religious leaders – among them Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) – tend to be predominantly, if not exclusively, male. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, allow only men to be clergy, while others, including some denominations in the evangelical Protestant tradition, have lifted that restriction only in recent decades. Yet it often appears that the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women.
Pew Research Center data on frequency of attendance at worship services are available in 81 countries, where an average of 48% of men and 42% of women report attending worship services at least once a week. However, the pattern of attendance varies considerably across these countries: This distinctive pattern at the country level is largely […]
Republican and Democratic registered voters remain far apart on key questions regarding perceptions of immigrants and immigration policy, views on the security treatment of U.S. Muslims and views on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. These gaps across parties are familiar. The gaps within parties by primary candidate support vary by issue. In general, […]
Another measure of religious commitment is how important people say religion is to them personally. In more than half of the 84 countries where data are available on this question (46), men and women are about equally likely to say religion is very important to them. In 36 other countries, or 43% of the total, […]
Pew Research Center surveys in 63 countries have asked Muslims and Christians about belief in heaven, hell and angels. These data are included in this report as an additional way to examine gender differences in religion. In 47 of the 63 countries (75%), men and women are about equally likely to profess a belief in […]