2025 Becket Religious Freedom Index

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which describes itself as "a non-profit, public-interest legal and educational institute with a mission to protect the free expression of all faiths," just released its Religious Freedom Index for 2025, which is summarized at that link.

An index is a composite measure that takes a bunch of data and condenses it into a single number. Becket's Religious Freedom Index takes a variety of evidence on opinions about religious freedom in the U.S. to create a single measure of those opinions in the U.S. Indices like this one are useful in the study of religion because they help to identify general trends, and these trends become objects of study for social scientists.

Here's how Becket summarizes the main findings for its 2025 index:

The seventh edition of the Religious Freedom Index marks another milestone, with the Index overall reaching its highest cumulative score yet (71). It also shows rising scores in several dimensions, most notably Religious Sharing, which measures Americans’ acceptance of the right to express faith beliefs and preach religious doctrines to others.

1. Faith in the public square is on the rise: This year’s Index shows that Americans – and especially younger generations – increasingly share a vigorous vision of religious liberty, one that is not confined to churches and private homes but expressed openly in the public square.

2. Religious freedom unifies Americans: This year, religious freedom made several trips to the Supreme Court – and many more to newspaper headlines. Litigation and newsworthiness can create the perception that religious liberty is a flashpoint in American culture. But our findings suggest the opposite is true: religious liberty is something that Americans can rally around, despite their other disagreements.

3. Americans support religious parents’ right to faithfully educate their children:  2025 saw a landmark Supreme Court decision, Mahmoud v. Taylor, that protected the right of parents to opt their children out of age-inappropriate school material that violates their sincere religious beliefs. This year’s Index finds that not only do Americans support the Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud, they broadly support public funds following children to the school of their parent’s choice, even if that school is religious.

For reference, the Religious Freedom Index has increased over the time in which Becket has created it:

• 2025: 71
• 2024: 70
• 2023: 69
• 2022: 68
• 2021: 68
• 2020: 66
• 2019: 67

Read the Executive Summary at the top of this page, and then skim the rest to get a sense of the variety of survey results that factor into the Religious Freedom Index. See how closely your own opinions and the opinions of your friends compare with those of the American population.