France, Germany, Greece, Romania and the UK have a high degree of social hostility towards religion, and the level of 
hostility is growing, according to a new survey.
The study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life [1] says that in 2010 there were 95 countries worldwide in which Christians suffered harassment by the government.
By comparison, in 2007, Christians suffered from government harassment in 79 countries.
According to the survey, the UK is among those showing an increasing level of Government restriction of religion.
It is the third Pew Forum survey on restrictions on religion around the globe. The new study scores 197 countries and territories and it used two indices used in the previous studies.
One is the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) which is comprised of 20 measures of restrictions, including efforts by governments to ban particular faiths, prohibit conversions, limit preaching or give preferential treatment to one or more religious groups.
The survey used the Social Hostilities Index (SHI) to measure acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations and social groups.
This includes mob or sectarian violence, harassment over attire for religious reasons and other religion-related intimidation or abuse. The SHI includes 13 measures of social hostilities.
According to these measures, government restrictions and/or social hostilities increased by one point or more in several European countries from mid-2009 to mid-2010, including Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.
The survey also showed that government restrictions on religions rose in 29 European countries and decreased in 14 between mid-2009 and mid-2010.
Russia went from being classified as having high social hostility to certain religions to having very high levels of social hostility.
France, Germany, the UK and Greece all showed increases in levels of social hostility towards religion.
The survey also showed that government restrictions on religions in general rose from 1.8 to 2.3 points on average in European countries.
Meanwhile the indices used by the survey also showe that social hostility to religion in general rose from 1,7 to 2,1 on average in European countries.