When Benedict XVI was elected pope in 2005, religious observance among Europeans had been in decline for decades, and he set out to stem the tide of secularization. How successful was he? Pew Research polls indicate that during his papacy, religious observance among Catholics in France, Germany, Spain and Italy remained low but fairly stable.
Scholars of religion in the United States have been using the term “nones” since the 1960s, despite some qualms about its connotations. The term refers to people who answer a survey question about their religion by saying they have no religion, no particular religion, no religious preference, or the like. As sociologist Glenn Vernon of […]
The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.
Download the Methodology as a PDF (180 KB, 17pages) This study provides comprehensive demographic estimates of the size and distribution of eight major religious groups in the 232 countries and territories for which the United Nations Population Division provides general population estimates as of 2010.16 It includes estimates for Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, […]
From its origin on the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century C.E., Islam has grown into a worldwide religion with more than 1.6 billion adherents – nearly a quarter of the world’s population.1 Today, Muslims live on all inhabited continents and embody a wide range of races, ethnicities and cultures. What beliefs and practices unite […]
Christians make up the largest single religious group within the Asian-American community, but the Christian share of U.S. Asians (42%) is far smaller than the Christian share of the U.S. general public (75%). Only two of the six largest country-of-origin groups are majority Christian: Filipino Americans (89% Christian) and Korean Americans (71% Christian). Among other […]
One of the core topics addressed in the study is the degree to which the internet and other digital technologies are shaping the way today’s middle and high school students “do research” and define what “research” is. Overall, survey and focus group findings suggest that teachers view the broad impact of the internet and digital technologies […]
Respondents’ thoughts One major sign of the sanctification of Big Data as a topic of interest with vast potential emerged in March this year when the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health joined forces “to develop new methods to derive knowledge from data; construct new infrastructure to manage, curate and serve data to […]