Nearly one-in-five adults (18%) say they have seen or been in the presence of ghosts. Among Christians, the proportion is essentially identical (17%), a Pew Forum survey finds.

Even more among the U.S. public (29%), including an identical proportion of Christians, say they have felt in touch with someone who has already died.

A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.

The U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the developed world, especially compared to largely secular Western Europe, but faith leaders and educators have long lamented that Americans still know relatively little about religion.

The American public continues to express conflicted views of Islam.

Favorable opinions of Islam have declined since 2005, but there has been virtually no change over the past year in the proportion of Americans saying that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

Fifty-eight percent of evangelicals believe Jesus will return to earth by 2050, while only 27 percent of mainline Protestants share that belief, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press.

Thirty-two percent of Catholics think the Second Coming is just 40 years away.

Today’s numbers: Three out of four Christian households experienced stagnant or declining income levels during the past year, a press release says.

However, many of those households have managed to keep debt levels under control, according to results from the second annual View from the Pew, a constituency survey of 1,029 Christian households conducted during the first half of 2010 by Maximum Generosity and Christianity Today International.

From the Pew Global Attitudes Survey: While most Europeans and Japanese think Americans are too religious, people in the rest of the world – in 18 of 22 countries – think Americans are not religious enough. This includes the U.S., where 64% say their country should be more religious. Criticism of American secularism is particularly strong in the three Arab nations surveyed.

Americans are divided over whether Jesus Christ will return to earth by 2050. About four-in-ten (41%) expect Jesus Christ to return while slightly more (46%) say this will definitely or probably not happen. Opinions about the return of Jesus Christ are little changed from 1999 when 44% said it would definitely or probably happen.

Fully 58% of white evangelical Christians say Jesus Christ will definitely or probably return to earth in this period, by far the highest percentage in any religious group. Only about a third of Catholics (32%), and even fewer white mainline Protestants (27%) and the religiously unaffiliated (20%) predict Jesus Christ’s return to earth. The poll was conducted by the Pew Research Center For The People and The Press/Smithsonian Magazine.

In the space of a century, Africa has morphed from a continent dominated by traditional beliefs to one where the majority of people are Christian or Muslim, a US study showed Thursday.

The vast majority of people in sub-Saharan Africa are deeply committed to the world’s two largest religions, according to the study by the Pew Research Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Americans are more than twice as likely to express prejudice against Muslims than they are against Christians, Jews or Buddhists, a new survey found.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they have little or no knowledge of Islam. Still, a majority dislike the faith.

The Washington-based Pew Research Center’s global attitude survey found that 46 percent of Spanish, 36 percent of Poles and 34 percent of Russians viewed Jews unfavorably, while the same was true for 25 percent of Germans, and 20 percent of French.

Opinions of Muslims are also worsening compared with previous years, with 52 percent in Spain, 50 percent in Germany, 46 percent in Poland and 38 percent in France having negative attitudes toward them.

More Americans are religious than previously thought, though some of them just don’t know what religion they are.

AP, Aug. 30, 2002