Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project

The Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, is an effort by Pew Research Center to understand religious change and its impact on societies around the world. It includes three main lines of research: a series of international surveys on religion in various regions; an ongoing demographic study of religion around the world; and an annual coding project that examines restrictions on religion in 198 countries and territories.


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    Religion and Education Around the World

    Jews are more highly educated than any other major religious group around the world, while Muslims and Hindus tend to have the fewest years of formal schooling. But all religious groups are making gains, particularly among women.

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    Trends in Global Restrictions on Religion

    Worldwide, both government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion decreased modestly from 2013 to 2014 despite a rise in religion-related terrorism, according to Pew Research Center’s latest annual study on global restrictions on religion.[1. This is the fourth time Pew Research Center has analyzed restrictions on religion in a calendar year. Earlier reports […]

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    The Gender Gap in Religion Around the World

    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.

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    Russians Return to Religion, But Not to Church

    Between 1991 and 2008, the share of Russian adults identifying as Orthodox Christian rose from 31% to 72%, according to data from the International Social Survey Programme. During the same period, the share of Russia’s population that does not identify with any religion dropped from 61% to 18%.

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    Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High

    A third of the 198 countries studied had a high or very high level of social hostilities involving religion in 2012. About three-in-ten countries had a high or very high level of government restrictions on religion, roughly the same as in 2011.

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    Brazil’s Changing Religious Landscape

    As young Catholics gather in Brazil, awaiting Pope Francis’ visit in celebration of World Youth Day, an analysis of census data finds that the share of Brazil’s population that identifies as Catholic has been dropping steadily in recent decades. Over the same period, the percentage of Brazilians who belong to Protestant churches has been rising.

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    Canada’s Changing Religious Landscape

    As Canadians prepare to celebrate Canada Day on July 1, a new Pew Research Center analysis of Canadian census and survey data finds that more Canadians belong to minority faiths than ever before. In addition, the number of Canadians with no religious affiliation has been rising, and attendance at religious services has been dropping.