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The form of religious accommodation most clearly permitted by the Establishment Clause is one that exempts both religious organizations and their secular counterparts from a particular legal requirement. Throughout American history, all levels of government have enacted these religion-neutral accommodations, most notably tax exemptions for both secular and religious nonprofit organizations. The Supreme Court addressed […]
When a legislative body grants religious groups more liberty than the Supreme Court has interpreted the Free Exercise Clause to require, the government potentially violates the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from specially favoring religion or promoting religious belief. The Supreme Court has sought to reconcile this tension between the religion clauses by designing […]
The majority of the 16.1% of adults who describe themselves as unaffiliated, and 12.1% of the adult population overall, is made up of people who simply describe their religion as “nothing in particular.”
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has assembled a variety of resources on international religious freedom, including event transcripts, Q&As and news clips. Pew Forum Resources Q&A Ten Years of Promoting Religious Freedom Through U.S. Foreign Policy Oct. 16, 2008 Oct. 27, 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the signing of the International […]
On Aug. 7, 2008, the Third Church of Christ, Scientist filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the designation of its church building as a historic landmark. The church is a rare Washington, D.C., example of Brutalism, a modern architectural style popular in the mid-20th century. In December […]
Most religion-specific legislative accommodations, such as those discussed above, have focused on exempting religious individuals and organizations from particular laws. But in 1993, Congress departed from this more-focused approach by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which generally protects people of faith from all laws that unduly burden their religious practices. The impetus for […]
More tracking charts » Surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press show that white, non-Hispanic Catholic support for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has grown, taking him from a 13-percentage-point deficit in late September to an 8-point lead in late October. Pew Forum Senior Fellow John Green looks behind […]