Rising restrictions on religion

Rising Restrictions on Religion, a recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, has discovered that restrictions on religious beliefs and practices:

• rose between mid-2006 and mid-2009 in 23 of the world’s 198 countries (12%),
• decreased in 12 countries (6%),
• and remained essentially unchanged in 163 countries (82%).

Because several countries with increasing restrictions on religion are very populous, however, the increases affect a much larger share of people than of states.

More than 2.2 billion people – nearly a third (32%) of the world’s total population – live in countries where either government restrictions on religion or social hostilities involving religion rose substantially over the three-year period studied.

Which restricted country will you pray for today?

To see the full report from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public life, click here.