Poll: Christians Most Numerous Worldwide; 'Nones' Majority in Six Countries

An international Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life poll has found that Christianity remains the religion with the most adherents worldwide, while roughly one-third of people around the globe have no religious affiliation.

 

The comprehensive poll examined more than 230 countries worldwide, and asked respondents to identify which religion, if any, they belong to. The results determined that 32 percent of the world's population, 2.2 billion people, are Christians, 23 percent or 1.6 billion are Muslim, 15 percent or 1 billion are Hindu, and that 7 percent or 500 million are Buddhists. African, Asian, Native American and other folk religions are still practiced by 6 percent or 400 million people. Close to 1 percent belong to other established groups like the Baha'i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, while Jewish people account for only 0.02 percent, or 14 million of the population.

The Pew poll found that almost half of the world's Christians are Catholic, while 37 percent identify as one of the Protestant traditions, which includes Anglicans. The Orthodox Communion numbers 12 percent, while minority denominations, sometimes referred to as "cults" like Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses only make up around 1 percent of the global Christian population.

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Pew Study: 2 Million Dead Americans On Active Voter Rolls

 Every 8 registrations in U.S. either invalid or has major inaccuracies

From The Hill

By Josh Lederman

Nearly 2 million dead Americans are still on active voter registries, and 1 in every 8 registrations in the United States is invalid or has major inaccuracies, according to a new study.

Research released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States shows that the country is spending more on voter registration while getting worse results than other nations such as Canada. The study points to antiquated systems that don’t reflect modern technology and fail to address the biggest obstacles to maintaining accurate, up-to-date voter-registry databases.

Almost 3 million Americans are actively registered to vote in multiple states, while about 12 million have old or error-ridden addresses listed on their registrations, likely preventing voting-related mail from reaching them. And 1 in 4 eligible citizens — 51 million in total — aren’t registered to vote.

USCCB Criticizes Pew Report on $26.7M Advocacy Effort; Pew Responds

The good news in the following story is that whether they spent 27 cents or $27 billion in advocacy efforts, this corrupt, staff-run, leftist organization has no influence on Capitol Hill or anywhere else in Washington.  Policy makers know this ACORN-supporting bureaucracy represents at best, a portiont of 300 old men, and certainly not the views of the vast majority of church-going Catholics.

The bad news is that there are many Catholic apostolates that are faithful to the Church's Magisterium, do promote Catholic doctrine and social teaching, are making a difference, live the Beatitudes, are changing the culture and building the Kingdom, and they could do a lot with the millions being wasted by the USCCB.

From Catholic World News

The director of media relations of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has criticized a report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that found that the USCCB devoted nearly $27 million to advocacy efforts. But the main researcher for the Pew effort defended the report.

Poll: 4 out of 5 Americans Don't Trust Washington

America's "Great Compromiser" Henry Clay called government "the great trust," but most Americans today have little faith in Washington's ability to deal with the nation's problems.

Public confidence in government is at one of the lowest points in a half century, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans say they don't trust the federal government and have little faith it can solve America's ills, the survey found.

The survey illustrates the ominous situation President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party face as they struggle to maintain their comfortable congressional majorities in this fall's elections. Midterm prospects are typically tough for the party in power. Add a toxic environment like this and lots of incumbent Democrats could be out of work.

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Religious Freedom Restricted for Nearly 70% of World's Population

From Catholic World News

Nearly 70% of the world’s people live in countries that restrict religious liberty, according to a study by the Pew Forum. The Pew survey found restraints on religious expression in 64 countries, including some of the world’s most populous nations. The Pew study reported:

The highest overall levels of restrictions are found in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, where both the government and society at large impose numerous limits on religious beliefs and practices. But government policies and social hostilities do not always move in tandem. Vietnam and China, for instance, have high government restrictions on religion but are in the moderate or low range when it comes to social hostilities. Nigeria and Bangladesh follow the opposite pattern: high in social hostilities but moderate in terms of government actions.

Northern Africa and the Middle East are the regions where religious freedom is most heavily circumscribed, the Pew study found; the Americas allow the greatest degree of religious liberty. The survey encountered high degrees of both government regulation and popular hostility to religious minorities in countries such as Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. The large countries with low levels of both regulation and public hostility were Brazil, Japan, the United States, Italy, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Global Restrictions on Religion (Pew Research Center)

Americans Becoming More Po-Life; 42% Don’t Know Obama’s ‘Pro-Choice’

A new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center has found declining support for legalized abortion and widespread ignorance of President Barack Obama’s position on the issue. 45% of Americans-- and 45% of Catholics-- believe that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, while 47% of Americans-- and 45% of Catholics-- believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases. In 2007-8, 41% of Americans and 42% of Catholics were pro-life, while 54% of Americans and 53% of Catholics said abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances.

Catholics who attend Mass weekly are now pro-life by a 67%-26% margin (compared to 57%-36% in 2007-8).

Remarkably, 42% of Americans-- and the majority of moderate and conservative Democrats-- do not know that President Barack Obama is “pro-choice.”

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Support for Abortion Slips (Pew Research Center)

Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low

Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009


From The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

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