A blue state makes a big point

Today the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy makes public the results of our second annual Religious Liberty in the States (RLS) index. One of the most noteworthy changes from the first iteration of the index last year is that the state of Illinois has moved from the second position to the top spot. Last year’s leader, Mississippi, dropped into a tie for fourth.

One element that remains consistent through both years of the RLS is that states that are typically identified as either red or blue, conservative or progressive, do not dominate either the top or the bottom of the rankings. There are blue states at the top—even the very top—and there are red states at or near the bottom. Even so, Illinois seems like an outlier that warrants further exploration.

The last time a majority of voters in Illinois opted for a GOP presidential candidate was 35 years ago in 1988, when Republican George H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis. Only three of the 17 representatives currently in the U.S. House from Illinois are Republicans, and only two members of the GOP have been elected (for one term each) to the Senate from Illinois since 1985. At the level of state government, things are just as lopsided. Only one Republican has served as a governor in the last 20 years, and that was Bruce Rauner for a single term (2015-2019). Over that same period the Democratic party has held majorities in both chambers of Illinois’ General Assembly.

Nothing in the state law that RLS measures changed in Illinois from year one to year two. That wasn’t the case for a few other states where statutory changes impacted their scores. But for most states, the changes in their scores and rankings reflected a broadening of what the RLS measures. For 2022, the RLS project covered 11 safeguards consisting of 29 items. For 2023, the RLS project expanded to cover 14 safeguards made up of 34 items.

Most of the changes for the second year reflect this broadened scope. Illinois already had protections on the books for each of these new items, including provisions for religious ceremonial life and exemptions for school-aged children. So even though the scope of the items measured in the index grew, Illinois’ score improved from 81 percent to 85 percent, solidifying it as the state with the most extensive legal protections for religious exercise by a wide margin.

The next group of states (South Carolina, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Ohio), range in score from 67 percent to 64 percent, and by the time we round out the top 10, the scores are already down to 55 percent (Pennsylvania and Utah). Delaware, with a score of 50 percent, is ranked at 13, which means that the majority of states have enacted less than half of the feasible protections identified by the RLS project.

At the very least the results of the RLS project cut across simplistic narratives that conservative states are necessarily more friendly toward religious liberty and progressives are more hostile. Certainly there are elements of truth to this pattern, but Illinois is a prime example of how progressive politics and robust protections for religious liberty can coexist.

As American society becomes increasingly post-Christian and religious adherence becomes less culturally mainstream, one hopeful possibility is that generous protections for religious believers will continue to have legal prominence. Illinois in its current configuration might then be a model for those parts of America that are dominated by progressive politics but remain respectful of the convictions of adherents of all religions. This, of course, is what “liberal” used to mean, a kind of broad-mindedness that respected the diversity of beliefs and perspectives represented in the American people.

Part of what animates the RLS project is the classical vision of the states as “laboratories of democracy.” What works for one state in its context might not work in another state or in a different context. And we can certainly see real-life examples of progressive states that do not exhibit the same concern that we see in Illinois to protect religious exercise. But some experiments in policy making do have positive lessons to teach that have significance beyond their original setting.

The methodology of the RLS project is such that it takes as a baseline or as a frontier only the legal provisions that states themselves have already enacted. That means each item in the index has been enacted in at least one state—and often in many more than one. In this way, even the first-place state of Illinois has something it can learn from other states to improve its legal safeguards of religious liberty.

My hope is that all states, whether red, blue, or purple, will work to enhance the legal standing for those who face religious discrimination and restrictions because of their beliefs. Illinois shows us that this kind of robust legal protection is possible—even in a historically blue state.