Religion and Human Flourishing

In a collaborative event between Wheatley Institute and BYU's McKay School of Education, leading scholars and educators from across the country discussed the potential for religious faith to help bridge America's widening student learning opportunity gaps.

Today, 80% of Americans say religion is losing influence in American life. Sociologist Christian Smith’s book-length study Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Decline of Traditional Religion (2025) provides data that support this perception. One international study in the last decade that examined national levels of religiosity found that the United States ranked 14% lower in religiosity than formerly communist Russia. Many Americans have replaced religious commitments and identity with devotion to aspects of politics, popular culture, science, or all three.

The Church of Jesus Christ isn’t about the percentage of the U.S. population; it’s about a people doing their best to love and worship God. The data does its real work when it is in the service of that much loftier goal.

A recent op-ed by Betsy VanDenBerghe in the Deseret News highlighted the large volume of research by Wheatley Religion Fellow Loren Marks on religion and family life.

Wheatley Institute collaborated with the BYU Marriott School of Business to host the third annual Faith and Belief at Work Case Competition, connecting executives from major global corporations and students from around the world.

"Rather than use religion to indoctrinate, Scott’s research argues, faith-based groups represent ways public schools can tap into a deeper connection to the communities and people educators are attempting to serve."

"In the long run, especially the eternal long run, division serves no one. It is exhausting, debilitating and destructive. President Oaks, in the name of Christ, has again invited us to choose a better way — the way of a peacemaker who understands that through our actions now, each of us will make the most of this life and the one to come."

Are faith communities the key to closing opportunity gaps in public schools?