Earlier this month, at the International Religious Freedom Summit held in Washington, D.C., a leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said that protecting religious freedom will build communities and nations. That optimistic message is different from much of what we hear about religion in public discourse. It’s also necessary and grounded in strong evidence.
For years, public discussion of America’s religious decline has rested on a simple assumption: as religious affiliation falls, opposition to religion hardens. The rise of the religious “nones,” the story goes, reflects not just disengagement but an increasingly hostile posture toward religion’s role in public life.
That assumption is incomplete, and in important ways, it is wrong.
Research from Sutherland Institute suggests that secularization has produced far more ambivalence than antagonism. Many Americans who claim no religious identity are skeptical of religion in the abstract, yet are noticeably more open to its role in public life when they encounter concrete evidence of what religious institutions actually do. The distance between abstraction and experience turns out to matter a great deal.
Most surveys on religion, including the invaluable work of Pew over the years, are observational. They tell us what Americans believe at a given moment. The Sutherland study asked a different question: What happens when people learn something?
Using a nationally representative sample, respondents’ baseline views about religion’s role in society were measured first. They were then exposed to straightforward factual information about religion’s contributions to public life — disaster relief, homelessness services, health care provision and community support — and asked again how they viewed religion’s role.
The results were striking.
Among religious nones, positive views of religion increased by more than 20 percentage points. In public opinion research, that is a substantial shift. It suggests that secular skepticism is not fixed or ideological, but often contingent — shaped less by deep conviction than by distance, unfamiliarity and cultural narrative.
At baseline, roughly three-quarters of nones described religion as “part of the problem” in American society. That headline statistic fits neatly with prevailing cultural assumptions. But dig deeper, and a more complicated picture emerges. When asked about specific functions — sheltering the homeless, responding to disasters, providing health care — many of the same respondents already acknowledged religion’s positive role. Resistance was strongest when religion was discussed abstractly or politically. It weakened substantially when religion was described institutionally and concretely.
The demographic context sharpens this finding.
Religious nones now make up roughly 28% of U.S. adults — a larger share than either Catholics or evangelical Protestants — and their numbers continue to grow. Yet the category itself masks meaningful internal differences.
Atheists and agnostics are the most resistant to positive reassessment of religion, even after exposure to factual information, but they constitute a minority of nones. The largest segment consists of people who identify as “nothing in particular,” and this group proved far more responsive, with many revising their views when presented with evidence of religion’s civic contributions. Formerly religious Americans showed similar openness.
Nearly half of today’s nones report that religion was important in their childhood, suggesting disengagement rather than philosophical rejection — erosion rather than revolt. For many, religious disaffiliation reflects disappointment, drift or disconnection rather than settled opposition. What is often lost in the public conversation is the emotional dimension of this change: People who step away from religion frequently miss aspects of it as well — the sense of belonging, shared ritual, moral language and intergenerational connection that faith communities once provided. The survey data suggest that even when belief fades, appreciation for these human goods often remains.
People who step away from religion frequently miss aspects of it as well — the sense of belonging, shared ritual, moral language and intergenerational connection that faith communities once provided.
In practice, many Americans reject “religion” as a cultural symbol while continuing to rely on — and often quietly appreciate — religious institutions as neighbors, helpers and sources of stability within their communities. They may not attend services, but they notice who shows up after a flood, who staffs the food pantry, who checks on the elderly and who keeps the lights on when crises linger.
The implication is not that religious institutions should soften their beliefs or retreat from public life. It is that they should be attentive to how they are understood in a more secular and pluralistic society. In an age marked by distrust of institutions, legitimacy is earned less through assertion and more through witness — through service that is visible, credible and rooted in care for others. Institutions that foreground service, hospitality and partnership are more likely to be recognized, and even defended, by those who do not share their faith.
Why does this matter? Because religion matters not only for personal belief but also for the common good. Religious communities remain among the most durable sources of social capital in American life. They operate food banks, shelters, schools, hospitals and disaster-response networks at a scale the state often struggles to match. They also cultivate habits of service, responsibility and moral concern that bind people to one another across differences.
At their best, faith communities function less as ideological clubs than as covenantal networks: places where service, sacrifice and shared responsibility quietly bind people together. In many communities, they are among the last remaining institutions capable of mobilizing volunteers, sustaining long-term presence and offering meaning alongside material help.
Religious institutions earn trust by showing up consistently — serving neighbors, caring for families, responding to crisis and doing so without expectation of recognition or reward.
Looking ahead, the path forward is not complicated, even if it is demanding. Religious institutions earn trust by showing up consistently — serving neighbors, caring for families, responding to crisis and doing so without expectation of recognition or reward. Over time, those acts speak more clearly than arguments ever could.
If skepticism toward religion hardens into categorical exclusion from public life — driven by abstraction rather than experience — the loss is not merely theological. It is civic and human. But this research points toward a more hopeful conclusion: Secularization has not eliminated religion’s relevance; it has clarified what endures. In a pluralistic society, faith retains its public meaning when it is lived openly, practiced humbly and expressed through love of neighbor. That work, carried out patiently and faithfully, remains as necessary — and as powerful — as ever.