Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Religion & Social Values


  • report

    A Progressive Argument Against the Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide

    The debate over physician-assisted suicide is often portrayed as a battle between social or religious conservatives who oppose the practice and liberals or progressives who support it. But not everyone fits neatly into this paradigm. For instance, Dr. Robert P. Jones, who calls himself a progressive, has just written a book urging liberal supporters of […]

  • report

    Young White Evangelicals: Less Republican, Still Conservative

    by Dan Cox, Research Associate White evangelical Protestants have been one of the most faithful Republican constituencies in presidential elections in recent years, voting overwhelmingly for GOP candidates. In 2004, for example, 79% of white evangelicals supported President Bush, while just 21% supported his Democratic opponent, John Kerry. White evangelicals also accounted for a third […]

  • report

    How Muslims Compare With Other Religious Americans

    by Robert Ruby and Greg Smith, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, and their holy book and many of their religious rituals are distinctly their own, Muslim Americans are by no means “the other” when it comes to religious life or politics in the […]

  • report

    Capital Punishment’s Constant Constituency: An American Majority

    (For more recent public opinion data on the death penalty, see a 2011 analysis.) by Robert Ruby, Senior Editor, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life In the last 35 years, beginning with its temporary moratorium on the death penalty, the Supreme Court has changed its view of capital punishment and done so more than […]

  • transcript

    After Gonzales v. Carhart : The Future of Abortion Jurisprudence

    Washington, D.C. On April 18, 2007, the Supreme Court handed down a major ruling on abortion rights, upholding the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The 5-4 decision in the case, Gonzales v. Carhart, upheld for the first time a law that bans a specific abortion method, and it did so even though […]