Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Search results for: “religion”

  • fact sheet

    Burger Court

    Expansion and Contraction of Free Exercise Rights Early in the tenure of Chief Justice Warren Burger, who was appointed to lead the Supreme Court in 1969, the court issued a decision that dramatically reinforced the principles laid down in Sherbert. The case, Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), involved a challenge by members of the Old Order […]

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    Public Still Getting to Know Leading GOP Candidates

    Summary of Findings Even as the 2008 presidential campaign draws increasing news coverage, the public shows limited awareness of the personal backgrounds of some of the top GOP candidates. While 86% of the public is able to name Rudy Giuliani as the former mayor of New York City, only about half as many — 42% […]

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    An Impassioned Debate: An Overview of the Death Penalty in America

    (Updated June 26, 2008) In this article: The role of the courts Lethal injection and the Baze case Child rape and the Kennedy case The history of the death penalty The death penalty worldwide Few public policy issues have inflamed passions as consistently and as strongly as the debate over capital punishment. Religious communities have […]

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    A Nuclear Surprise Puts Iran in the News

    For most of the year, the American media have been far more preoccupied with the war in Iraq than with growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. But last week, a new intelligence report sparked a heated debate over policy toward the leadership in Tehran.

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    Election Topics

    From the start, the press has tended to produce stories about one candidate at a time, rather than ones that compare candidates or examine broad themes. Fully eight out of 10 stories in the first five months focused mostly on a single candidate. The other 20% of stories concerned comparisons of candidates, electoral issues, the […]

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    End-of-Life Issues

    The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has assembled a variety of resources on end-of-life issues, including reports, event transcripts, polling data and news clips. Pew Forum and Pew Research Center Resources | Recent News | Other Resources Pew Forum and Pew Research Center Resources Oregon’s ‘Death with Dignity’ Law: 10 Years Later The […]

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    Widespread Negativity: Muslims Distrust Westerners More than Vice Versa

    by Richard Wike, Pew Global Attitudes Project, and Brian J. Grim, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life News headlines bombard us almost daily with examples of conflict between the Muslim world and the West, whether the war in Iraq, the search for al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear […]

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    Public Expresses Mixed Views of Islam, Mormonism

    Summary of Findings The Muslim and Mormon religions have gained increasing national visibility in recent years. Yet most Americans say they know little or nothing about either religion’s practices, and large majorities say that their own religion is very different from Islam and the Mormon religion. A new national survey reveals some notable similarities, as […]