Religious Leaders & Institutions

Reflecting a time of growing partisan polarization, Republicans and Democrats hold very different views on the impact of many of the nation's institutions.

At least three-quarters of adults under 30 talked to a congregation member or friend during their search, compared with just over half of those 65 or older.

About half of U.S. adults have looked for a new religious congregation at some point in their lives, most commonly because they have moved.

A majority of U.S. adults still say religious institutions contribute either “a great deal” (19%) or “some” (38%) to solving important social problems, but the combined figure of 58% has fallen significantly in recent years.

Despite Pope Francis’ overwhelming popularity, few U.S. Catholics say they turn to the pope “a great deal” for guidance on difficult moral questions.

Six-in-ten Catholics say the church should allow those who are divorced and have remarried without obtaining an annulment to receive Communion, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center Survey.

Standard lists of history’s most influential religious leaders – among them Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) – tend to be predominantly, if not exclusively, male. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, allow only men to be clergy, while others, including some denominations in the evangelical Protestant tradition, have lifted that restriction only in recent decades. Yet it often appears that the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women.

We looked at nine major religious organizations in the U.S. that both ordain women and allow them to hold top leadership slots.

From 1965 to 2015, more than 16 million Mexicans migrated to the U.S. in one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. But Mexican migration to the U.S. has slowed in recent years. Today, Mexico also increasingly serves as a land bridge for Central American immigrants traveling to the U.S.

A historic event within global Christianity is set to take place Friday as Pope Francis meets Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in Cuba – the first-ever meeting between the leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches since the Orthodox tradition broke away from Catholicism nearly 1,000 years ago.