Religious Commitment

Overall, U.S. adults with college degrees are less religious than others on some measures. However, Christians with higher levels of education appear to be just as religious as those with less schooling.

Many married adults point to several factors as bigger keys to a successful marriage than shared religious beliefs.

Israeli Muslims actually place less emphasis on religion and some of the key pillars of their faith than do Muslims in neighboring countries.

Women are more likely than men to say they attend worship services regularly. But this gap in church attendance has been narrowing in recent decades, as the share of women attending weekly has declined.

For the National Day of Prayer, we rounded up survey data on Americans’ prayer habits, as well as historical instances of prayer intersecting with the government.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Israel’s largest wave of Jewish immigrants arrived from Russia and other former Soviet republics. These Soviet Jews brought a secular mindset to Israel, and more than two decades later, Jews who were born in the former Soviet Union continue to be noticeably less religious than Israeli Jews overall.

While Christian women are on the whole more religious than Christian men, Muslim women and Muslim men have similar levels of religious commitment. And when it comes to attendance at worship services, Muslim men are more active than Muslim women.

A discussion with David Voas of the Department of Social Science at University College London on the gender gap in religion around the world.

Gender gap in weekly worship service attendance differs between Muslim-majority and Christian-majority countries.

Generally, women are more likely than men to be affiliated with a religious organization; women also pray more, and are more inclined to say religion is “very important” in their lives.