Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The charts below highlight key findings from a Pew Forum report, “Faith on the Hill: The Religious Affiliations of Members of Congress.” The report shows that while Congress looks very much like the rest of the country, some religious minorities are underrepresented in the House and Senate, while others are overrepresented. For an in-depth examination […]
Historically, most of the top leaders in Congress have come from the larger Protestant denominational families, such as Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Although the leadership on Capitol Hill today is much more diverse than it once was, Protestants still fill a substantial number of the top jobs in the 111th Congress. Indeed, the returning […]
In this report: Who can go to heaven? How does one obtain eternal life? Trends in opinions about religious exclusivity About the survey A majority of all American Christians (52%) think that at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life. Indeed, among Christians who believe many religions can lead to eternal life, 80% […]
This holiday season, the American Humanist Association has launched a campaign featuring ads on Washington, D.C., buses that proclaim, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” But a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project found that a majority of Americans say it is necessary to believe in […]
Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December, 2008, for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Vali Nasr, author of the 2006 book, The Shia Revival, surveyed the geo-political landscape of today’s Middle East, arguing that the 2003 invasion of Iraq has fundamentally […]
Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2008 for the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life to look at the impact of religious voters in the 2008 election. John Green, a senior fellow in religion and […]
The Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, takes place in early December this year. Every able-bodied Muslim is expected to make the pilgrimage at least once in his or her lifetime, and the Hajj attracts millions of believers every year. The Pew Research Center’s 2007 Muslim American survey found […]
Religion played a much more significant role in the media coverage of President-elect Barack Obama than it did in the press treatment of Republican nominee John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign, but much of the coverage related to false yet persistent rumors that Obama is a Muslim. Meanwhile, there was little attempt by the […]
