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The following briefing by Brian J. Grim, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, was presented to the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight on the Pew Forum’s findings on restrictions on religion around the world. Good morning. I would like to begin by […]
Note: For a more recent overview of the Census Bureau’s history of asking about religion, read this April 2023 article. The U.S. Census Bureau has not asked questions about religion since the 1950s, but the federal government did gather some information about religion for about a century before that. Starting in 1850, census takers began […]
Members of the post-communist generation offer much more positive evaluations of the political and economic changes their countries have undergone over the past two decades than do those who were adults when communism collapsed.
Global Restrictions on Religion, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that 64 nations – about one-third of the countries in the world – have high or very high restrictions on religion.
With their distinctive appearance and religious practices, Sikh-Americans often find themselves at the center of workplace discrimination cases and other controversies involving their religious rights. And while Sikh groups have worked to carve out legal protections for the community’s religious practices, their efforts have not always met with success. In California, for example, Gov. Arnold […]
More than eight years after former President George W. Bush unveiled his faith-based initiative to make it easier for religious groups to receive government funding to provide social services, the policy continues to draw broad public support. But as was the case when Bush first announced the initiative, many Americans express concerns about blurring the […]
Publics of former Iron Curtain countries generally look back approvingly at the collapse of communism. Majorities in most former Soviet republics and Eastern European countries endorse the emergence of democracy and capitalism. However, the initial enthusiasm about these changes has dimmed in most of the countries surveyed.
On Oct. 7, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Salazar v. Buono, a case involving a constitutional challenge to the presence of an eight-foot-tall Christian cross in the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County, Calif. The case arose when Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent of the preserve, filed a […]
Two of government’s obligations – enforcing child welfare laws and protecting the constitutional right to freedom of religious expression and practice – can clash when a parent chooses to rely on prayer and other spiritual healing practices instead of standard medical care to treat a child’s illness. When such a decision results in harm to […]
