Simply safeguarding free exercise by legal means is unlikely to be a person’s or community’s end or purpose. But if the protection of free exercise is necessary to the potential for robust or sincere religious exercise or an authentic search for religion, then the Index analyzes a contributing factor to these more ultimate ends. Moreover, religious pluralism—by many accounts a positive influence on communities and important even when imperfect in American history—is infeasible without the space for free exercise. Statistical studies of religious pluralism (as much as it is indicative of true and robust conscience within a population), sincerity of practice (or no practice, where likewise rooted in conviction), and religiosity among the religious could benefit from controlling for the “space” provided (or not) for any of these by a state’s safeguarding of free exercise. That “space” is the construct this Index measures.