The U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial count of America’s population will be underway soon. The Pew Forum has compiled a brief history of religion and the census, which explains why the census no longer includes questions on religion, even though it once did.

After peaking in mid-2008 during Obama’s presidential election campaign, the number of Americans describing the Democratic Party as friendly toward religion returned to levels similar to those seen in 2005 through 2007, according to a recent survey report. The Obama administration, however, is seen as friendly toward religion by more people (37%) than the Democratic Party as a whole (29%).

More than eight years after former President George W. Bush unveiled his faith-based initiative to make it easier for religious groups to receive government funding to provide social services, such as feeding the needy, the policy continues to draw broad public support. But as was the case when Bush first announced the initiative, many Americans express concerns about blurring the lines between church and state.

The evangelical Christian movement historically has been defined by its members' distinctive doctrinal standards and practices. Yet in recent years, many Americans have come to understand evangelicals more by their political, rather than religious, identity. The Pew Forum invited Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., to discuss how this political association has affected the evangelical movement.

Which of the 50 states has the most religious population? Since there are many ways to define "religious," there is no single answer to this question. But to give a sense of how the states stack up, the Pew Forum used polling data to rank them on four measures.

A new Pew Forum report gauges the level of religious restrictions in 198 countries due both to government actions and to acts of violence and intimidation by private individuals, organizations and social groups.

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Event transcript: Global Restrictions on Religion

The religious beliefs and practices of Americans
do not fit neatly into conventional categories.
A new poll by the Pew Forum finds that large numbers of Americans engage in multiple religious practices,
mixing elements
of diverse traditions.

With their distinctive appearance and religious practices, Sikh-Americans often find themselves at the center of workplace discrimination cases and other controversies involving their religious rights. To better understand religious liberty and accommodation issues involving Sikh-Americans, the Pew Forum turns to church-state scholar Robert W. Tuttle.

A new study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion. Read the report, which includes the most up-to-date and fully sourced estimates of the size and distribution of the worldwide Muslim population, including sectarian identity, and explore the interactive maps and tables.

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Interactive Map: Distribution of Muslim Population by Country and Territory