Americans are more supportive than ever of expressing religious beliefs in the public square, driven by enthusiasm from the pro-faith younger generation, according to the Becket Fund’s 2025 Religious Freedom Index.
The report released Friday saw the “religious sharing” score rise to 75, the highest score since the index began in 2019 and a 3-point jump from the last three years, suggesting that the increase represents “an authentic shift in American attitudes toward religious expression.”
“Faith in the public square is on the rise,” the index concluded.
The results based on data from an annual online poll of U.S. adults also showed that respondents from Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, were the most supportive generation when it came to religious sharing, scoring 78, or 3 points above the total average score.
“Religious freedom in America isn’t limited to only what happens in houses of worship. It’s about how people live their lives and build their communities,” said Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at Becket.
“Good news: this year Americans say that sharing one’s religious beliefs in the public square is an essential freedom, not an optional one. That’s good for people of faith and good for our country,” she said.
There were also significant developments on other fronts in the index, which tracks support for religion across six dimensions: religious pluralism; religion and policy; religious sharing; religion in society; church and state; and religion in action.
The overall index score on a scale of 0 to 100 increased to 71, an all-time high, spurred by increases in “religion and policy” and “church and state,” as well as “religious sharing,” which rose in both broad support as well as intensity.
The report found 87% of Americans agreed that “freedom to express or share religious beliefs with others” is an important aspect of religious freedom, up from 81% in 2021.
The freedom of individuals to preach their religious doctrine to others was less popular, but still saw an increase from 74% in 2024 to 77% in 2025.
Americans in the Generation Z age cohort were the most energized when it came to religious sharing, scoring 78, even though only 43% said that they completely support preaching religious doctrine to others.
“Gen Z’s aversion to ‘preaching’ as opposed to ‘expressing and sharing’ one’s faith makes for an interesting divergence in year-by-year data,” the report said.
“While Gen Z’s complete support for the freedom to share one’s faith has grown significantly since 2020, their complete support for the freedom to preach one’s faith to others has remained more idle around the 40% to 43% range since 2019,” it said.
Other findings show support for religion on major public-policy issues.
The report found 62% supported the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Mahmoud v. Taylor in favor of parents seeking an opt-out from LGBTQ curriculum in Montgomery County Public Schools.
Nearly half of those polled, or 47%, said they supported Christian counseling to help minors “become comfortable with their biological sex,” even though 23 states and the District of Columbia ban so-called “conversion therapy.” Another 26% said they support such state bans.
Fully 58% of respondents also backed the right of a Christian baker to decline creating cakes for same-sex weddings.
“Religious freedom unifies Americans: Although Americans are divided on the question of trust in institutions, this year’s Index findings show that they rally together in support of religious freedom, and especially in defense of religious individuals against the state,” the report said.
The poll of attitudes about religious freedom surveyed a nationally representative sample of about 1,000 U.S. adults on 21 annual questions. The poll has an error margin of 3.1 percentage points.
