U.S. adults with low levels of religious engagement are much more likely than highly religious Americans to say the government should provide more assistance to people in need (58% vs. 35%).
About one-third of highly religious Americans (36%) say the government should provide less assistance to people in need – twice the share of Americans with low levels of religious engagement who take the same position (18%).
Underlying these differences are patterns in political partisanship. Chapter 15 of this report shows that highly religious White Americans tend to be a solidly Republican constituency, while White adults with lower levels of religious engagement more often favor the Democratic Party, and Black Americans at all levels of religious commitment tend to identify as Democrats.
Moreover, Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP are far more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say the government should provide less assistance to people in need, while Democrats are far more inclined than Republicans to say the government should provide more help to people in need.
This chapter focuses on attitudes toward government among Americans with different religious affiliations and levels of religiousness.
Most Americans with low (65%), medium-low (57%) and medium-high (57%) levels of religious engagement say they would rather have a bigger government providing more services than a smaller government providing fewer services.75
But among highly religious Americans, 52% say they prefer a smaller government that provides fewer services, while 45% say they would prefer a bigger government that provides more services.
The scale of religiousness used for this analysis is based on how often respondents say they pray, how often they say they attend religious services, whether they believe in God and/or a universal spirit and how important they say religion is in their lives.76
Read on to see how different religious groups answer the survey’s questions about:
Government aid to people in need
Most religiously unaffiliated Americans (60%) say the government should provide more assistance to people in need.
U.S. adults who are affiliated with non-Christian religions are more likely than Christians, as a whole, to say the government should provide more assistance to the needy (57% vs. 38%).
But Christian subgroups differ substantially on this question.
A clear majority of members of the historically Black Protestant tradition (69%) favor the government providing more assistance to people in need.
Among mainline Protestants and Catholics, greater numbers say the government should provide more assistance than say it should provide less assistance. About three-in-ten adults in each group say the government is providing about the right amount of assistance.
Among evangelical Protestants and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (widely known as Mormons), greater numbers say the government should provide less assistance to those in need than say it should provide more assistance.
Preferences for government size
Members of the historically Black Protestant tradition (83%) are among the most likely of all U.S. religious groups to say they favor a bigger government providing more services.
Most Hindu (72%), Muslim (71%), Buddhist (68%), Jewish (63%) and religiously unaffiliated Americans (66%) also say they would rather have a bigger government providing more services.
On the other hand, majorities of Latter-day Saints (63%) and evangelical Protestants (60%) say they would rather have a smaller government providing fewer services.
A slim majority of Catholics (54%) favor a bigger government providing more services. Among Orthodox Christians, 52% say they would prefer a smaller government. And mainline Protestants are split right down the middle, with 48% expressing a preference for a bigger government and 48% saying they prefer a smaller government.
When this question was asked by telephone in our previous religious landscape surveys, conducted in 2007 and 2014, some participants volunteered the response “It depends,” which was not an option in the new study, conducted mostly online and on paper. This makes the new results difficult to compare with those of the earlier studies.77
Additionally, the broader finding that 55% of U.S. adults favor a bigger government providing more services, while 42% favor a smaller government providing fewer services, is somewhat different from what we have found on other recent surveys. Recent waves of our American Trends Panel find a roughly equal balance of opinion on the question of a bigger or smaller government.
The different results may be caused by asking the same question in differing contexts. In the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, the question about the size of government came immediately after the question about assistance to people in need, which may have influenced how some respondents thought about the size of government.
