Religious Freedom Index Just Released by Becket Law Reveals 73% of Americans Agreed that “religious organizations that provide services to help in the community"


WASHINGTON – In celebration of Religious Freedom Day, Becket has released the fifth edition of the Religious Freedom Index, the nation’s only annual poll that tracks American opinion on religious freedom. The 2023 Index marked the highest overall score in the Index’s history, showing that Americans are increasingly unified in supporting religious liberty for people of all faiths. This year’s poll demonstrated strong support for parental rights, broad trust in people of faith, and insights into how Gen Z thinks about religious freedom.
This year’s Church and State dimension score, at 59, is the highest since the inception of the Index. 73% of Americans (slightly up from last year’s 72%) agreed that “religious organizations that provide services to help in the community (e.g., soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc.) should be just as eligible to receive government funds as non-religious organizations.” However, when asked if “the government should be able to use religious symbols or language in public displays (statues, murals, etc.), because religion has played an important role in our country’s history and culture” Americans were more evenly split, with 52% agreeing and 48% disagreeing. This is a higher level of agreement than last year’s 50-50 split, but lower than 54%, 53%, and 56% agreement in 2021, 2020, and 2019 respectively. Unsurprisingly, religious Americans are more comfortable with displays of a religious nature in government or in a public context and with equal government funding for religious groups. On this dimension, those who attend worship at least once per week score a 72, while nonreligious respondents score a 45. It seems clear even younger religious Americans are less comfortable with public displays of a religious nature on government property – however, this is not a purely linear trend. Although the youngest religious Americans display the least amount of comfort, the religious Americans 65 and up display almost the same amount of antipathy. Meanwhile, among Americans without religious affiliation, we see that Americans 45 – 54 are less open to public religious displays on government property than Americans 24 and below. It seems that less religious Americans share roughly the same attitude across generations, but among religious Americans, there may be subtle generational differences.
Acceptance as a Person of Faith
Those who attended services weekly, or said religion was extremely or very important to them, were 33 and 26 points more likely to be completely or a good amount appreciative of the contributions of people of faith. Those who worshipped weekly were 24 points more likely to say that religion is part of the solution rather than part of the problem, and 32 points more likely to say the same about people of faith. Among religiously affiliated Americans, the importance of religion is at the highest level in our five years of tracking the Index, with 83% of Americans who report religious affiliation saying that religion was at least somewhat important in their lives – up 4 points since last year. Respondents who were people of faith were also asked how accepted they felt in society. This year, there was a decline of 5 points in those who perceived complete or a good amount of acceptance, driven largely by a change in attitude among non-Catholic Christians. Although the greatest change in perceived feelings of acceptance is among Christians, religious non Christians report much lower levels of perceived acceptance, 8 points lower than people of faith as a whole and 12 points lower than non-Catholic Christians. Interestingly, women of faith between the ages of 18 – 24 are the group most likely to report feeling only a moderate or small amount accepted in society. Women of faith in this age bracket are more likely to be different from their peers; women ages 18 – 24 are less likely than women in other age groups to say that religion is at least somewhat important.
Support for religious freedom hit its highest score ever of 69 on a scale of 0 to 100. The 2023 results found that Americans strongly back the right of parents to raise their children consistent with their faith and believe that religion is part of the solution to America’s problems—up nine percentage points from last year. Polling showed a major shift in attitudes toward preferred pronoun policies in schools, with a 12-point swing since 2021.



“The American people sent a clear message in this year’s Index: parents don’t take a back seat to anyone when it comes to raising their children,” said Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket. “Parents want schools to teach their children math and science, not force them to embrace controversial gender ideology.”

The fifth edition of the Index asked a variety of questions about parental rights in education. Over two thirds of Americans (67%) believe that parents should be the primary educators of their children and should be able to opt them out of school curriculum if the parents believe the material is inappropriate or violates their religious beliefs. Americans also expressed disagreement over preferred pronounce policies in schools. Becket’s findings reveal that most Americans (58%) now disagree with school policies that require students and employees to use a person’s preferred pronouns. This data represents a 12-point swing since 2021, when less than half of Americans disagreed with pronoun mandates and 54% favored them.


The Index also asked about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a core piece of religious liberty legislation that turned 30 in 2023. Becket asked Americans about the RFRA standard, which says that the federal government cannot burden religious freedom unless they have a 1) a compelling reason or 2) have chosen the option least restrictive of religious freedom. An overwhelming 88% of Americans favored RFRA or an even stronger standard for religious freedom.

“Despite some efforts to turn religion into a scapegoat for our nation’s problems, most Americans believe that religion—and religious freedom—are key to solving them,” said Rienzi. “As we celebrate Religious Freedom Day, we should remember that religious liberty remains the cornerstone of our effort to form a more perfect union.”

The Religious Freedom Index is designed to give a broad overview of changes in American attitudes on religious freedom by surveying a nationally representative sample of 1,000 American adults each fall. The Index’s focus on core religious liberty principles, contextualized with questions on some of the year’s most pressing societal issues, provides a yearly cross section of public sentiment on the intersection of law, religion, and culture. The responses to these questions statistically group into six dimensions: 1) Religious Pluralism, 2) Religion and Policy, 3) Religious Sharing, 4) Religion in Society, 5) Church and State, and 6) Religion in Action.

Heart+Mind Strategies conducts surveying and scale construction for Becket’s Religious Freedom Index: American Perspectives on the First Amendment, using an online panel assembled by Dynata. Becket contributes its broad expertise representing people of all faiths in religious liberty cases to ensure that the polling instrument and analysis broadly reflect America’s many diverse religions and the full spectrum of religious liberty issues.

To learn more about Becket’s annual Religious Freedom Index, visit the link found here.

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