Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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A comprehensive demographic study finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world, representing nearly a third of the estimated 2010 global population of 6.9 billion. Christians are also geographically widespread, and no single region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity.
The Court’s Unanimous Decision On Jan. 11, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in a significant church employment dispute, giving religious organizations wide latitude in hiring and firing clergy and other employees who perform religious duties. In its unanimous decision, the high court explicitly recognized a legal doctrine known as the “ministerial exception.” Lower courts […]
Updated May 15, 2012 Navigate this page: Growth in the Early 20th Century World War II Through the 1960s Surge in Growth After 1970 Turnover and Churn Religious advocacy in early American history generally focused on state and local governments. But religious groups and organizations occasionally were drawn into national lobbying campaigns for issues in […]
This report divides the world into five regions to take a closer look at the geographic distribution of Christians. (To view all the countries in each region, see the Interactive Maps.) The five regions are presented in descending order of Christian population, with the region with the highest number of Christians (the Americas) appearing first […]
Who are evangelical Christians? What do they believe? And what do they see as the boundaries of their faith? The survey contains several questions that probe how participants in the Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization identify themselves religiously, in what faith they were raised and what spiritual experiences they have had. It finds broad […]
Cape Town Survey of Evangelical Leaders August-December 2010 Topline Report N=2196 Notes: For exact question wording and layout, please download the questionnaire in the right rail, or click here. “No answer” was not offered as a response option, but is used to indicate cases in which a respondent did not provide an answer to a […]
The Government Restrictions Index (GRI) measures limits imposed by governments on religious beliefs and practices. The 10-point index is based on 20 questions used by the Pew Forum to gauge the extent to which governments at any level – national, provincial or local – try to control religious groups or individuals, prohibit conversions from one […]
For more than 30 years, the Episcopal Church has been fighting in courts to enforce its claim over properties held by breakaway congregations and dioceses. The church has faced litigation in at least 20 states, as dozens of congregations have sought to withdraw from the church over doctrinal differences. The Episcopal Church is by no […]