Pew Forum – Rising Tide of Global Restrictions on Religion
Little pushed for time so just laying this post down with links to a new Pew Forum study entitled: Rising Tide of Restrictions on Religion
A rising tide of restrictions on religion spread across the world between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Restrictions on religion rose in each of the five major regions of the world – including in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, the two regions where overall restrictions previously had been declining.
The share of countries with high or very high restrictions on religious beliefs and practices rose from 31% in the year ending in mid-2009 to 37% in the year ending in mid-2010. Because some of the most restrictive countries are very populous, three-quarters of the world’s approximately 7 billion people live in countries with high government restrictions on religion or high social hostilities involving religion, up from 70% a year earlier.
Restrictions on religion rose not only in countries that began the year with high or very high restrictions or hostilities, such as Indonesia and Nigeria, but also in many countries that began with low or moderate restrictions or hostilities, such as Switzerland and the United States.
Links to summary of findings:
Changes in Government Restrictions
Changes in Overall Restrictions
Patterns among Specific Types of Restrictions and Hostilities
Andrew Brown has picked up on this in the Guardian with a few interesting observations.
Let me know if you get a chance to read any of the report and please do feedback anything of interest.
I’ll add links here if any other folk blog on this.
Tags: Religion Society
September 23rd, 2012 at 8:45 pm
It’s interesting that there was a remarkable relaxing of such restrictions in 1989-90 in many countries, especially in Eastern Europe, but also here in southern Africa as well.
But in countries like the USA all sorts of freedoms have been diminished, and not just religious ones, so perhaps it’s the swing of the pendulum, and authoritarianism is on the upswing again.