Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Fifty-five countries had high or very high levels of social hostilities involving religion in 2023, up from 45 the previous year. Among the countries with very high scores on the Social Hostilities Index in 2023 were Nigeria, India, Israel, Syria, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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Embryonic stem cell research, which uses special cells found in three- to five-day-old human embryos to seek cures for a host of chronic diseases, has sparked a major moral and political debate in the United States. In the 10 years since University of Wisconsin scientists announced they had harvested potentially life-saving cells from surplus embryos […]
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has a smaller lead among white evangelical Protestants than Republican George W. Bush had at a similar point in the 2004 campaign, even though Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has made few inroads into this key constituency. Those who are unaffiliated with a particular religion, on the other hand, are […]
Over the past few years, there have been several controversies over religion’s role in the military. Most recently, students and staff at the U.S. Naval Academy and West Point have complained of pressure from their supervisors to engage in religious activities. Three years earlier, there were similar allegations at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Other […]
Washington, D.C. In a noon conference call for journalists, Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, together with fellows John Green and Greg Smith, released the second report of the Forum’s path-breaking U.S. Religious Landscape Survey – along with new data added to the interactive website accompanying the project – […]
Across 25 countries, Americans are the most likely to see the morality and ethics of people in their country as somewhat or very bad.
Singapore is the world’s most religiously diverse country overall as of 2020, while Yemen is the least diverse. But the U.S. ranks first among nations with very large populations, followed by Nigeria and Russia.
The Christian share of the population, after years of decline, has been relatively stable since 2019. And the religiously unaffiliated population, after rising rapidly for decades, has leveled off – at least temporarily.
The Global Religious Futures (GRF) project is jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The John Templeton Foundation. Here are some big-picture findings from the GRF, together with context from other Pew Research Center studies.
