Americans’ belief in God has dipped to a new low, according to Gallup poll results. While a large, 81 percent majority of Americans still say they believe in God, that number represents a six-point dip from the 87 percent rate of belief consistently reported from 2013 to 2017. Over 90 percent of Americans had said […]
Muslims are depicted more negatively in U.S. and Western media than members of other religions, a new study finds. Writing in the Conversation (May 29), political scientists Erik Bleich and A. Maurits van der Veen report that while newspapers tend to publish a balanced proportion of negative depictions of other minority religions, Muslims face negative […]
The American Bible Society’s annual State of the Bible report finds that approximately 26 million people have mostly or completely stopped reading the Bible in the last year. Christianity Today magazine (April 20) reports on the survey, which in 2021 had found about 50 percent of Americans saying they read the Bible on their own at least […]
The percentage of Americans returning to church since the lifting last year of public health restrictions addressing the pandemic may have plateaued, according to the latest statistics from the Pew Research Center. While people steadily returned to in-person services during the first half of 2021, the trend appears to have reached a plateau. Around two-thirds […]
A new study finds religious behavioral responses to the Covid pandemic, such as prayer, to be positively correlated with medically advised measures like mask-wearing and social distancing. The study, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (online February) and conducted by West Virginia University researchers Katie E. Corcoran, Bernard DiGregorio, and Chris […]
A new survey shows a large segment of Americans no longer adhering to the “Protestant” label the way older generations did. When the weekly survey Nationscape, which is conducted by the Democracy Fund, asked respondents about their religion, it found a noticeable downturn in the use of the “Protestant” label. The survey, which offers the […]
Affiliation with Christianity and other forms of organized religion continues to decline in the U.S., according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center. The survey found the religiously unaffiliated share of the public to be 6 percentage points higher than it was five years ago and 10 points higher than a decade ago. […]
Covid-19 has impacted both individual religious practice and belief and congregational life, according to new surveys. One recent survey, conducted in late 2020 by Brandon Vaidyanathan of Catholic University, included 1,609 respondents rom Virginia, Maryland, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Although not a random sample, these respondents reflected the demographic traits found in a 2019 survey […]
The new, recently released Faith Communities Today (FACT) study shows continuing declines in congregational attendance, although about one-third of congregations report growth. The survey, which was conducted right before the pandemic and is issued every five years, was based on questions about congregational life sent to 15,278 congregations and their leaders from 80 denominations. The […]
While young people are commonly viewed as less religious than older Americans, a new study by Springtide Research Institute finds that 78 percent of people between the ages of 13 and 25 consider themselves at least slightly spiritual, including 60 percent of unaffiliated young people (atheists, agnostics and nones). The institute’s new study, State of […]