In the lead-up to the White House’s compromise on a new rule (now amended) that originally required religiously affiliated institutions to provide no-cost birth control to employees through their insurance plans, the debate over whether the rule violated these institutions’ religious freedom illuminated a number of competing interests. President Obama eventually shifted the rule so that the employees of religiously affiliated institutions can obtain contraception directly from their insurers, which mollified some but not all of the regulation’s opponents. In this week’s column for “Figuring Faith,” Dr. Robert P. Jones analyzes the data to show what the controversy, and eventual compromise, can teach us about religion in America:

Based on polling from the Public Religion Research Institute, which was widely cited last week in the media, I’ve compiled the four most important insights from the contraceptive debate, which shed light how conflicting interests hung in the balance and what implications the final compromise may have for the election.

1)Americans support the general principle behind the White House’s regulation. A majority (55 percent) of Americans agree that employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost. Predictably, however, some demographic groups are more enthusiastic about the mandate than others. Roughly 6-in-10 Catholics (58 percent) agree with the requirement, broadly writ, although support is lower among Catholic voters (52 percent) and white Catholics (50 percent). Religiously unaffiliated Americans strongly support requiring employers to provide no-cost birth control (61 percent), while white mainline Protestants (50 percent) are divided. Notably, white evangelical Protestants, not Catholics, are the religious group most opposed to the general principle. Fewer than four-in-ten (38 percent) white evangelicals agree with the principle that employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover birth control at no cost.

To check out the rest of the piece, go to Dr. Jones’ Washington Post blog, “Figuring Faith.”