The Religion and State (RAS) project is a university-based project located at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. Its goal is to create a set of measures that systematically gauge the intersection between government and religion. Specifically, it examines government religion policy. The project's goals are threefold:

1. To provide an accurate description of government religion policies worldwide.
2. To create a tool which will lead to greater understanding of the factors which influence government religion policy.
3. To provide the means to examine how government religion policy influences other political, social, and economic factors as well as how those factors influence government religion policy.

Round 1 of the RAS dataset, which is currently the version available for download, measures the extent of government involvement in religion (GIR) or the lack thereof for 175 states on a yearly basis between 1990 and 2002. This constitutes all countries with populations of 250,000 or more as well as a sampling of smaller states. It includes demographic data and 62 GIR variables in the following categories:

• Official GIR measures the official relationship between religion and state. This includes whether the state has an official religion and if not, the exact nature of the government's relationship with the various religions that exist within its borders.
• Official restrictions measures whether the government treats different religions differently.
• Religious discrimination is defined as restrictions on the religious practices of religious minorities. The RAS data includes 16 types of religious discrimination.
• Religious regulation measures the extent of government regulation of the majority religion or all religions. The RAS data includes of 11 types of regulation.
• Religious legislation measures the extent to which the government legislates various aspects of religious law. The RAS data includes 33 types of legislation.