Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Religion

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    Same-Sex Marriage: Redefining Legal Unions Around the World

    In many countries around the globe, gay and lesbian couples are seeking the right to marry or enter into other legally recognized forms of domestic partnerships. The legal definition of marriage is in flux, particularly in the developed world.

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    Looking for a Way Out: Rethinking the Arab-Israeli Conflict

    Few Palestinian families have deeper roots in Jerusalem than Sari Nusseibeh’s. In the 7th century, immediately after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph Omar the Great entrusted one of Nusseibeh’s ancestors with the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From childhood onward, Nusseibeh, who was educated as a philosopher at Oxford and […]

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    How Muslims Compare With Other Religious Americans

    Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, in many ways, they stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups, especially evangelicals.

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    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 […]

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    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 […]

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    From the Ten Commandments to Christmas Trees: Public Religious Displays and the Courts

    For most of the nation’s history, public religious displays were not controversial. But in recent decades, a growing number of citizens and civil liberties groups have sued towns, cities and states over religious symbols in the public square, arguing that these displays should be removed because they violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on government establishment […]

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    Religious Displays and the Courts

    In a new series of occasional reports, “Religion and the Courts: The Pillars of Church-State Law,” the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life explores the complex, fluid relationship between government and religion. Among the issues to be examined are religion in public schools, displays of religious symbols on public property, conflicts concerning the free […]

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    Religious Republicans: Hanging Tough with Bush

    by John C. Green The role of religious voters in the Republican Party has been highlighted by the sharp criticism of the Republican presidential front-runners – Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney – by conservative religious leaders. Are religious Republicans abandoning President Bush and perhaps the GOP as well? The latest national survey by […]

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    Potential Support for Presidential Candidates among Religious Groups

    Analysis of a June survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reveals how potential support for the presidential candidates varies among some religious groups. Hillary Clinton currently generates the most enthusiasm among Democrats in both religious groups for which sufficient data was available. Among Republicans, Rudy Giuliani garners the most […]