For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the decline in global religious hostilities reflected in recent research findings.
Violence and harassment against religious groups by private individuals declined in 2019, according to the Pew Research Center’s 12th annual survey of global restrictions on religion. Although international headlines of the year included several acts of extreme religious violence — including a series of Easter attacks on Sri Lankan churches left 250 dead and a shooting that killed killed 51 Muslim worshippers at Friday prayers in Christchurch, New Zealand — the total number of such events was lower.
Pew’s researchers used a fine-tuned methodology to rank religious restrictions in 198 countries and territories, finding that 43 countries had “high” or “very high” levels of social hostilities towards members of various religions — down from 53 countries in 2018 and 65 countries in 2012. Much of this movement is accounted for by a decrease in the number of countries experiencing religion-related terrorism. In 2019, 49 countries experienced at least one such terrorist act, down from a high of 82 countries in 2014.