Religious Freedom Across States in the U.S.

The Religious Liberty in the States website released their report on religious freedom within the United States. According to their methodology, the states with the highest religious liberty are, in order: Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Montana, and Illinois. California is near the bottom at 46 out of 50.

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The key to understanding their ranking is understanding their methodology. By exploring their website and browsing the report you can find out more details about their methodology, but you can get a birds-eye view of it on pp. 16-17 of the report. You will see that their ranking puts emphasis on specific exemptions granted to religious persons (e.g., refusing vaccinations for religious reasons), religious leaders (e.g., clergy privacy privileges), and religious organizations (e.g., protections against forced closures of churches).

Although some of these exemptions are supported by the wider American population, many of them are specific concerns of the Christian Right in the U.S. today. In other words, this ranking reflects the concerns of today's Christian Right. Of course, any ranking will be a reflection of the values of the people who constructed it because when researchers make rankings or indices, they must choose what to count and what not to count. That holds for other indices that will be considered in the class, such as those on the ARDA website. This is one reason why it is good to have indices and rankings from different scholars, each a reflection of the values and biases of its creators. Having many different measures gives us a broader picture of what is studied, but it does mean that we should make an effort to understand the methodology of the creators.

Another takeaway from this report is that, in practice, religious rights are always traded off against other rights and concerns, and this means that the protection of specific religious rights is continually negotiated in society, legislatures, and the courts. Although most basic religious rights like the freedom to join a religious group of one's choosing are pretty well protected all over the U.S., some specific privileges and exemptions will change over time as public opinion and circumstances change. Depending on your view, this is either a feature or a flaw of living in a democratic republic such as the U.S.