Polling and Analysis

This report is a special segment of A Year in the News, an analysis of the mainstream media in 2008 conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. This segment of the analysis was written in collaboration with the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The biggest single religion […]

Updated February 3, 2014 Almost 150 years after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Americans are still fighting over evolution. If anything, the controversy has grown in both size and intensity. In the last decade, debates over how evolution should be taught in schools have […]

Updated February 3, 2014 As with many social and political controversies in the United States, the battle over evolution has been largely fought in courtrooms. This has been particularly true in the last 50 years, as courts have been repeatedly asked to rule on efforts to restrict or change the way public schools teach about evolution […]

At first glance, Charles Darwin seems an unlikely revolutionary. Growing up a shy and unassuming member of a wealthy British family, he appeared, at least to his father, to be idle and directionless. But even as a child, Darwin expressed an interest in nature. Later, while studying botany at Cambridge University, he was offered a […]

Updated February 3, 2014 Buddhism Many Buddhists see no inherent conflict between their religious teachings and evolutionary theory. Indeed, according to some Buddhist thinkers, certain aspects of Darwin’s theory are consistent with some of the religion’s core teachings, such as the notion that all life is impermanent. Religion East and West, “Buddhism and Science: Probing […]

Updated February 3, 2014 The debate over whether and how to teach public school students about evolution may be an old one, but it shows no signs of abating. Indeed, in the last decade, questions about what students should learn about Darwin’s theory have been debated in more than half the states in the union […]

A Pew Forum research package gives an overview of the debate, examines its social and legal dimensions and reviews the life and ideas of Charles Darwin. ANALYSIS Updated February 3, 2014 Overview: The Conflict Between Religion and Evolution Almost 150 years after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species by Means […]

Overview I. Religious Affiliation and Demographics II. Religious Beliefs and Practices III. Social and Political Views Overview While the U.S. is generally considered a highly religious nation, African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole, including level of affiliation with a religion, attendance at religious services, […]