Michael Lipka is an associate director of research at Pew Research Center, where he studies Americans’ experiences with news and information. Over more than a decade at the Center, he has been a part of several major projects related to the information environment, including our survey of U.S. journalists and our studies of podcasts, Black Americans’ experiences with news, and alternative social media. Michael also spent several years writing about trends in religion in the U.S. and globally, contributing to dozens of reports and short reads on various topics. He has a degree in journalism from Boston University and started his career as a sportswriter for The Boston Globe and the Associated Press.
The face of Catholic America is changing. Today, immigrants make up a considerable share of Catholics, and many are Hispanic. At the same time, there has been a regional shift, from the Northeast (long home to a large percentage of the Catholic faithful) and Midwest to the Western and Southern parts of the U.S.
Pope Francis has announced major changes to the Roman Catholic Church’s procedures for marriage annulments. While the new changes are aimed at making annulments faster and less expensive, a recent Pew Research survey found that most divorced U.S. Catholics who did not seek annulments did not cite the complicated nature of the process as a reason.
The new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Catholics provides an opportunity to take stock of Americans’ Catholic identity – not just people who identify primarily as Catholics, but the entire spectrum of those whose lives have crossed paths with the Catholic Church in a meaningful way.
Pew Research Center asked American Catholics for their views about family structures, religious beliefs and practices and other topics. Here are 6 facts from the new survey.
It’s a fascinating time for conversations about faith in the United States, with Pope Francis set to visit, a presidential election on the horizon and major trends reshaping the country’s religious landscape.
The religious face of America is largely a Christian one, with roughly seven-in-ten Americans belonging to that faith. But some of the nation’s biggest metropolitan areas have a very different look.
The nation’s population is growing more racially and ethnically diverse – and so are many of its religious groups, both at the congregational level and among broader Christian traditions.
Many large religious groups have taken positions in opposition to the death penalty even though that stance is sometimes at odds with the opinions of their adherents.
While laws allowing same-sex marriage have become more common in European countries and in U.S. states, gay marriage advocates also have gained ground in some parts of Latin America. Most recently, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a ruling making it much easier for gay and lesbian couples to wed.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a newly declared Republican candidate for president, is hoping to attract support from conservative evangelical Christian voters. Jindal himself is a Catholic, and, as the son of immigrants from Hindu-majority India, was raised in the Hindu faith.
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