Religions

Ukraine is an overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian nation, and 46% of Orthodox Ukrainians look to the Ukrainian national church leaders as the highest Orthodoxy authority.

While Slovakia is majority Catholic, around seven-in-ten Czechs are religiously unaffiliated – the highest share of unaffiliated adults in 34 European countries surveyed.

The Catholic Church remains closely tied to Europe. Catholics are the largest religious group in many of the continent’s most populous countries.

Central and Eastern Europeans of different ages are about equally likely to say that Christianity, birthplace and ancestry are important to national identity.

White evangelical or born-again Christians backed GOP candidates for the House at about the same rate in 2014. Religious "nones" and Jewish voters again largely backed Democratic candidates.

In 2016, seven nations – Turkey, Brunei, Ethiopia, France, Hungary, Niger and Tunisia – directly used emergency laws to restrict religion, according to Pew Research Center’s latest annual religious restrictions study. While a number of different religious groups were targeted, these laws imposed restrictions on Muslims more than any other group.

Many more U.S. Muslims identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party than the GOP (66% vs. 13%), but the share who are Republican has held steady over the last 10 years, including after the election of President Donald Trump.

When it comes to public attitudes on religion, national identity and the place of religious minorities, Greeks, like their neighbors to the East, hold more nationalist and less accepting views than do Western Europeans.

Just three-in-ten American Catholics now say the pontiff is doing a good or excellent job of addressing the sex abuse scandal.

Just three-in-ten Catholic adults say Francis is doing an excellent or good job addressing the sex abuse scandal, down 14 points from this January and 24 points since 2015.