Following the release of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, commentators wondered what survey respondents - particularly Christians - had in mind when they agreed that "many religions can lead to eternal life." A new Pew Forum analysis finds that a majority of all American Christians (52%) think at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life.

A new study by the Pew Forum and the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that religion played a much more significant role in the media coverage of Barack Obama than it did in the press treatment of John McCain, but much of the Obama coverage related to false yet persistent rumors that he is a Muslim.

Among nearly every religious group, Barack Obama received equal or higher levels of support compared with the 2004 Democratic nominee, John Kerry. Still, a sizeable gap persists between Obama’s support among white evangelical Protestants and his support among the religiously unaffiliated.

A recent survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters.

Some of the nation's leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., earlier this month for the Pew Forum's biannual Faith Angle Conference. Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations argued that while American foreign policy has previously focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its neighbors, the most important conflicts of the Middle East now revolve around the Shia/Sunni divide. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic responded.

This holiday season, the American Humanist Association has launched a campaign featuring ads on Washington, D.C., buses that proclaim, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project found that a majority of Americans say it is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values, but most Canadians and Europeans disagreed.

See also:
Resource Page: The 'Christmas Wars'

Does the law empower a congregation to tear down its church even if the government has declared the structure a historic landmark?

On Wednesday, Nov. 12, same-sex couples exchanged marriage vows for the first time in Connecticut while protests continued in California over the passage of Proposition 8. A Pew Forum graphic shows that in the five years since Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay marriage, more than half the nation's states have amended their constitutions to ban the practice.