Photo by Eliecer Gallegos/Unsplash/Creative Commons September 13, 2022 By Bob Smietana (RNS) — America has long prided itself on being a country where people can choose whatever religion they like. The majority has long chosen Christianity. By 2070, that may no longer be the case. If current trends continue, Christians could make up less than
Photo by Mustafa Omar/Unsplash/Creative Commons September 8, 2022 By Ryan Burge (RNS) — According to Bloomberg News, South Korea’s fertility rate dropped from .84 babies per woman to .81 in 2021, the lowest figure on record. If current trends continue, the number of people in South Korea will be the same in 2100 as it was in
Politics, social justice and faith come together each week in many religious leaders’ sermons. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) August 3, 2022 By Ryan Burge (RNS) — One of the most important and difficult questions among those who study religion and politics is just how important a pastor, rabbi, imam or other religious leader is when it
Anti-abortion protesters celebrate following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the federally protected right to abortion, outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, June 24, 2022. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the
People arrive at the Anaheim Convention Center for the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, June 14, 2022, in Anaheim, California. Photo by Justin L. Stewart/Religion News Service June 16, 2022 By Ryan Burge (RNS) — On Tuesday (June 14), thousands of messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Anaheim, California, cast their ballots
People demonstrate outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on May 3, 2022, in Washington. A draft opinion suggests the U.S. Supreme Court could be poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide, according to a Politico report released Monday. Whatever the outcome, the Politico report represents an extremely rare
Photo by Florian Schmetz/Unsplash/Creative Commons April 13, 2022 By Ryan Burge (RNS) — Possibly the most oft-repeated statistic in American religion is the rise of the religiously unaffiliated from just 5% of the population in the early 1970s to about 30% of adults in 2022. In a field where shifts typically move at a glacial pace, that
Photo by Edward Cisneros/Unsplash/Creative Commons January 13, 2022 By Jack Jenkins WASHINGTON (RNS) — A religion scholar believes major trends in religion and politics can be traced back to the rise of the religious right in the 1990s, a sea change moment that set in motion an array of phenomena ranging from an uptick
Photo by Caniceus/Pixabay/Creative Commons September 17, 2021 By Bob Smietana (RNS) — Religion provided great comfort to evangelical Christians in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. But according to a study in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, their politics made them less likely to see the virus as a threat. Researchers Landon
Photo by Maria Oswalt/Unsplash/Creative Commons August 9, 2021 By Ryan Burge (RNS) — In May, the state of Texas passed a ban on abortions after six weeks of gestation, in practice making almost all abortion procedures illegal in the country’s second-largest state. Additionally, that same piece of legislation empowers private citizens to sue any individual who has aided in
