Replication Data for Religious Freedom Backlash: Evidence from Public Opinion Experiments about Free Expression

Religious freedom conflicts are a prominent part of U.S. history, but over the past half century Americans have sought a pluralist approach to this conflict. However, over the past several decades the quest for religious pluralism has decayed into staunch conflict as it has become a part of the culture wars. While combatants over religious freedom fall along party lines, there is reason to believe that this does not tell the full story. Recent academic and journalistic accounts have linked support for religious freedom to ideological and psychological factors, though we are not fully sure how these mechanisms influence attitudes toward religious freedom. Implementing an experimental design, we examine how support for various types of religious freedom varies when respondents are exposed to egalitarian, social dominance, and religious nationalist messages. We find that egalitarian or exclusivist messages do not increase support for religious freedom, but they do spark backlash among Democrats regarding certain religious freedom claims.