In October 2006, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a 10-country survey on Pentecostals and charismatics (whom it together calls “renewalists”), covering issues of practice and belief. It found that one in four Christians are part of these movements. Read the executive summary, which links to the 233-page PDF report.

A 2002 poll indicated 86 percent of Pentecostals said religion was “very” important in their lives, and 88 percent said they believed religion could solve all or most of the major problems facing the country.

A 2006 Gallup Poll showed Pentecostals top the list of people who attend church on a weekly basis.

As Pentecostalism spreads into traditionally Catholic areas in Asia, Africa and especially Latin America, its popularity has created often fierce disputes with the Catholic Church, as this Dec. 15, 2005, Los Angeles Times story reports.

Denyse O’Leary is the faith and science columnist for ChristianWeek magazine and author of By Design or By Chance? The Growing Controversy On the Origins of Life in the Universe (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2004). She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Stephen Meyer is an associate professor of philosophy at Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash. He is co-author of Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook and director and senior fellow of the Center for the Renewal Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Contact Rob Crowther, director of media and public relations […]

John Calvert is managing director of Intelligent Design Network. He is a lawyer whose legal practice has focused on constitutional requirements for teaching origins science in public schools. He was actively involved in the science education debate in his home state of Kansas, as well as in Ohio, Georgia, California, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, West Virginia, […]

Michael J. Behe is a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in West Bethlehem, Pa., and author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. He is an advocate of intelligent design, believing that life forms share a common ancestor. He is a senior fellow at the Discovery Center for Science and Culture and […]

Richard Thompson is president and chief counsel of The Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which defended the Dover, Pa., district in a lawsuit that challenged its rules requiring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.