pew research center

Melissa Cedillo 6-08-2022

A sign hangs on a fence in front of the Supreme Court reading: “Safe And Legal.” Photo by Allison Bailey/NurPhoto, via Reuters. 

As the country awaits the Supreme Court decision on federal abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson — which many expect will overturn Roe v. Wade — politicians, activists, pollsters, and news outlets are highlighting polling on abortion.

the Web Editors 7-05-2018

A Rohingya refugee is seen in Balukhali refugee camp at dawn near Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh, March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne//File Photo

But in 2017, only 33,000 refugees resettled in the U.S., the country’s lowest total since the years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a sharp decline from 2016, when it resettled about 97,000.

Tom Heneghan 5-31-2018

Image via Alison Killilea/Creative Commons

Despite the region’s widespread secularization, 71 percent of the 24,599 adults Pew surveyed in 15 countries still identify as Christians, even if only 22 percent say they attend church at least once a month.

the Web Editors 5-24-2018

British United Nations Ambassador Karen Pierce consoles a twelve-year-old Rohingya refugee near Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Michelle Nichols

Of the 43 percent who do not believe the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees, polling showed that no group agrees less with that idea than white evangelical Protestants, at 68 percent.

Image via RNS/Pew Research Center

Do churches and religious organizations have a positive impact on the way things are going in the United States?

Americans are divided on that point, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on July 10 that shows they align along predictable party lines.

Image via RNS/REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

A week after a terrorist bomb killed more than 20 and left scores injured, the people of Manchester will make their way through the streets of their grief-stricken city in one of its most traditional and religious events: the Whit Walk.

This will be a moment where the old Manchester meets the new, when the Christian tradition of the walk, commemorating the Feast of Whitsun — or Holy Trinity — meets the secular rituals that have come to define public mourning since this increasingly irreligious nation said goodbye to Princess Diana, who died exactly 20 years ago.

Bobby Ross Jr. 5-03-2017

Image via RNS/Bobby Ross Jr.

“Many of the findings of the commission’s year-long investigation were disturbing, and led commission members to question whether the death penalty can be administered in a way that ensures no innocent person is put to death,” according to the in-depth report.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Fayaz Aziz

Within 20 years, the number of Muslim babies being born is expected to surpass Christian births — though there will still be more Christians in the world. Muslims currently account for about 24 percent of the world population, compared to 31 percent for Christians, according to the Pew Research Center.

Image via RNS/Lee Pellegrini/Boston College

For Catholics, the key to working collaboratively with Pope Francis, on issues from mass migration to climate change to Hispanic evangelization, may be found in a controversial movement that many left for dead long ago: liberation theology.

That message reverberated, from Feb. 6 to Feb. 10, through the halls of Boston College and a nearby retreat center, as nearly 40 theologians gathered from across the Spanish-speaking world to discuss the movement’s future with its founding figures.

Kimberly Winston 2-07-2017

Image via RNS

The day before President Trump used his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast to promise a repeal of the Johnson Amendment, a bill was introduced in Congress to effectively do that. It has not yet been scheduled for debate or a vote.

The Free Speech Fairness Act is being touted as a “fix” to the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law that prohibits nonprofits from engaging in politics. But how much of a fix would the act be? Would it offer a First Amendment right of free speech to clergy — or trample the same First Amendment’s guarantee of a separation between church and state?

Image via RNS/Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

The United States Congress is about as Christian today as it was in the early 1960s, according to a new analysis by Pew Research Center.

Nearly 91 percent of members of the 115th Congress convening on Jan. 3 describe themselves as Christian, compared to 95 percent of Congress members serving from 1961 to 1962, according to congressional data compiled by CQ Roll Call and analyzed by Pew.

Image via RNS/Sai Mokhtari/Gothamist

Melissa Grajek was subjected to all kinds of taunts for wearing the hijab, but an incident at San Marcos’ (Calif.) Discovery Lake sealed the deal.

Her 1-year-old son was playing with another boy when an irate father saw her and whisked his son away, telling Grajek: “I can’t wait until Trump is president, because he’ll send you back to where you came from.”

The man then scooped up a handful of wood chips and threw them at Grajek’s son.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Darren Ornitz

“The picture is mixed,” said Besheer Mohamed, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center who specializes in religion.

“On the one hand, its seems clear that Muslims are a pretty small part of the population. On the other hand, they are concentrated in some states and metro areas that might increase their voting powers in those specific areas.”

Image via RNS/Reuters/Ettore Ferrari/Pool

In an interview conducted on Nov. 7, on the eve of the election, and published Friday by an Italian daily, the Argentine pope declined to make any judgment about Trump.

“I do not judge people or politicians,” the pope told Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica when asked what he thought of Trump. “I only want to understand what suffering their behavior causes to the poor and the excluded.”

Kimberly Winston 10-27-2016

Image via RNS/Pew Research Center

The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center, also found that, of those raised this way, most had one Protestant, or Catholic parent, and one religiously unaffiliated — sometimes called a “none” — parent.

“To be sure, religiously mixed backgrounds remain the exception in America,” the report on the poll states. “But the number of Americans raised in interfaith homes appears to be growing.”

Image via RNS/Reuters/Brittany Greeson

Top-notch preaching most attracts people looking for a new place to pray.

That's the conclusion of a new Pew Research Center study, released Aug. 23, which asked 5,000 people about their search for a new church or other house of worship.

Ryan Hammill 7-18-2016

Image via  / Shutterstock.com

New research from Pew suggests that Americans have become less likely to believe that religious institutions can play an important role in confronting social problems.

And while some of the decline in trust in religious congregations likely originates in the “rise of the nones,” or the religiously unaffiliated, that alone does not explain this crisis of confidence. This is not really a story about secularization. After all, between 2008 and 2016, both Protestants and Catholics showed double digit declines in percentage of people who believe houses of worship contribute to social reform. The percentage decline was only slightly higher among the religiously unaffiliated.

the Web Editors 2-04-2016

Image via Pew Research Center

The good, the bad, and the ugly of this campaign season has exposed the depth of some of the United States’ racial and ethnic fault lines. But the fault lines themselves are moving. The 2016 electorate will be the most racially and ethnically diverse ever, due largely to U.S.-born Hispanic youth and naturalizations of Asian immigrants.

Photo via Gregory A. Shemitz / RNS

Photo via Gregory A. Shemitz / RNS

“Religion plays a less important role in American life.” Or maybe, “Religion declines as powerful source of American public authority.”

I doubt those headlines would have garnered the attention the Pew Center recently received with its subtitle “Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population.”

This is no criticism of Pew. It gets full credit for bringing religious demographics to the public’s attention. And the story of Christian decline is an obvious hook, as is the story of the rapidly growing number of “nones,” people with no particular religious affiliation.

But behind the story of Christian decline and the rise of “nones” is a long-standing debate about what religion theorists call “secularization,” the broad process by which religion gradually loses its social influence.

Photo via Karen Pulfer Focht / RNS

Phyllis Tickle looks out the window in her home in Lucy, Tenn., just outside Memphis. Photo via Karen Pulfer Focht / RNS

Her once boundless energy starts to fail by midday. She started radiation treatment on May 21, mainly in an effort to forestall the possible collapse of her spine, which would leave her helpless and in intractable pain.

“That sounds a little formidable to me,” she says.

“I was never much for suffering.”

She goes on, her words carefully chosen. “Am I grateful for this? Not exactly. But I’m not unhappy about it. And that’s very difficult for people to understand.”