The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life has just released a report entitled Religion and Politics: Contention and Consensus.

I have read a couple of articles about this survey, but being able to look at the raw questions is interesting.

The survey covers a large number of issues in a variety of different contexts. Here are some things I noticed in reading the survey results:

• In the question about "Overall opinion of religious groups", the survey showed that Evangelical Christians and Muslims are within the error rate of the survey of having the same amount of unfavorable opinions. Although, Muslims have fewer very favorable points.
• "Atheists" and "People who do not believe in God" are rated substantially lower than all religious groups.
• People in the US seem to have the most favorable opinion of Jews and Protestants.
• Although a small majority believes that the Clergy should express their views on day-to-day issues, the majority think that they should do so with their own views instead of restricting themselves to the views of their religious teachings.
• Although 60% say that religion plays an important role in their daily lives, only 39% claim to attend religious services at least once a week. 35% claim to go a few times a year or less.
• Non-Muslim's think that their religion has little in common with Islam (57%), while 27% think that it has a great deal in common with their religion. Interestingly, only 34% of those surveyed (including those who are Muslim) claim to have at least some knowledge of the religion's beliefs and practices.
• People claim to be more likely (41%) to vote against an atheist than a Muslim (31%), although they'd rather have a Jew or Catholic than an Evangelical Christian.

Interesting stuff. I'm not sure how meaningful, but certainly an interesting read.