Not So Silent Nights
Fully 87% of Americans are not at all bothered by Christmas music in stores and public places.
How the News Media Covered Religion in the General Election
Religion played a much more significant role in the media coverage of President-elect Barack Obama than it did in the press treatment of Republican nominee John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign, but much of the coverage related to false yet persistent rumors that Obama is a Muslim. Meanwhile, there was little attempt by the […]
Will Obama Win the White Catholic Vote?
More tracking charts » Surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press show that white, non-Hispanic Catholic support for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has grown, taking him from a 13-percentage-point deficit in late September to an 8-point lead in late October. Pew Forum Senior Fellow John Green looks behind […]
How the Media Have Handled Palin’s Faith
Who is Sarah Palin? The question has dominated campaign coverage in the weeks since her nomination as John McCain’s running mate. In the mainstream media at least, the answer has focused almost as much on her family life as on her public record. But despite that focus, and the debate over her beliefs, coverage of […]
Palin V.P. Nomination Puts Pentecostalism in the Spotlight
From the time she was a teenager until 2002, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin attended a church affiliated with the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal Christian denomination in the U.S. Pentecostalism emphasizes such practices as speaking in tongues, prophesying, divine healing and other miraculous signs of the Holy Spirit, which it believes are […]
Analyzing the Fall Campaign: Religion and the Presidential Election
With less than two months before the presidential election in November, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life invited two senior researchers and a group of leading journalists to discuss recent findings on the role religion is playing in the presidential race. Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, said […]
McCain’s Lead Among Evangelicals Smaller than Bush’s in ’04
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has a smaller lead among white evangelical Protestants than Republican George W. Bush had at a similar point in the 2004 campaign, even though Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has made few inroads into this key constituency. Those who are unaffiliated with a particular religion, on the other hand, are […]
Global Anglicanism at a Crossroads
When leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion gather in Canterbury, England, in mid-July for their decennial Lambeth Conference, they will deliberate over the future of a church that is experiencing deep, and perhaps irreconcilable, internal conflicts. Already, about a third of the 38 Anglican primates, or regional leaders, have announced that they are boycotting the […]
Pope Benedict’s Image Improves Following U.S. Visit
Summary of Findings Following his first visit to the United States as spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI is viewed more favorably than he was a few weeks before his trip. Currently, 61% of Americans say they have a favorable impression of the pope, up from 52% in late March. Views of […]
American Evangelicalism: New Leaders, New Faces, New Issues
Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2008 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, described eight fallacies or misconceptions he held […]
