A major new U.S. study found that audiences, including non-religious viewers, are drawn to authentic portrayals of faith in entertainment media.

This comes as validation to Brooke Zaugg, vice president for The Faith & Media Initiative (FAMI), an organization striving to inspire more truthful representations of faith in news and entertainment media.

“Ultimately, we want it better reflected in society so it's more comfortable for people with faith to talk about faith and for people who are seeking purpose and meaning to have an expanded view,” said Zaugg.

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The 2026 Faith & Entertainment Index, recently released by FAMI and the HarrisX polling firm, took a multi-method approach. First, the research team completed in-depth qualitative interviews with 32 avid entertainment consumers. Next, it tasked 12,723 respondents — 78 per cent identified as spiritual, religious or a person of faith — with evaluating more than 100 faith-related scenes pulled from 50 television series or motion pictures.

Participants were asked to judge each scene’s entertainment value, faith portrayal and engagement impact. The latter category asked survey contributors to ponder if the scene made them feel more positive or negative about faith or if it failed to make any impression.

The 32 qualitative discussions were conducted first because the standout storytelling features and thematic values — often called “totems” in the entertainment industry — emerging from them shaped the scene evaluation criteria. Key general totems included relatability, avoidance of clichés or overused tropes, layered characters, respectful use of humour, strong entertainment value and emotional impact. Faith-specific totems include accuracy, authenticity, showcasing different perspectives, placing faith in modern settings, challenging common stereotypes and avoiding excessive preachiness.

After watching clips that excel with these qualities, 58 per cent of respondents declared that content with faith themes is more appealing, and 61 per cent said it makes the content more relatable, up five and eight per cent respectively from before the study. The percentage rises were 15 and 13 among atheists and agnostics.

“When they watched the clips, they realized, ‘these are things I also encounter, and I believe,’ ” said Zaugg. “Maybe it looks a little different, but it’s part of the human experience where you're thinking ‘what's my purpose and meaning’ and ‘I'm in a relationship with someone that believes differently.’ I think maybe for them it was unexpectedly more in sync with the things that they care about than they thought.”

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Also encouragingly, 92 per cent said faith has a role to play in entertainment, and 77 per cent believe it can have broad appeal.

Several of the movies and television shows selected for the study especially struck a chord. Three of the top 10 performing scenes come from Mel Gibson’s 2016 war film Hacksaw Ridge, which chronicles frontline medic Desmond Doss, who refused to use a weapon during the Second World War because of his Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs, due to moments that ring true universally.

“One of the best performing scenes is him on the ridge when everybody's gone down, and there's bombs going everywhere, and he's trying to decide, ‘God, tell me what to do, tell me what to do, I can't hear you,’ ”  said Zaugg. “I've not been on a ridge trying to save people's lives, but that's a question that I guarantee many, many people have asked and are trying to seek answers, and it's those moments that are resonant to people that make those the top performing.”

The highest-scoring scene out of 100 is the aftermath of an emotional collapse and moment of grief for Dr. Michael Robinavitch, the central character of the reigning best drama Emmy winner,The Pitt. This scene sees Robinavitch emotionally explain how he turns to the Shema, a core prayer of Judaism, in moments of tribulation.

According to the study, this moment from The Pitt expressed vulnerability, emotion and reflection — traits very much distinguishable among all the leading scenes.

Per the study, the core suggestions Zaugg and her team will relay to any studios and storytellers interested in their data are to “integrate faith naturally and subtly,” lean into “authentic, complex characters” and "show faith as human and relatable with doubts, growth and compassion, not just rituals.”

Zaugg added that FAMI’s “goal is not to say ‘you must do these three things.’ We just want to say, ‘don't be afraid to do this. There are a lot of people this can touch; this can make your story better. It can widen the appeal.’ ”

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The team that developed the survey supplemented its findings with AI-assisted coding to detect the dominant tones in each scene, and also analyzed organic YouTube comments for each scene, grouping viewer commentary into thematic buckets and highlighting the most illustrative quotes.

To read the entire 2026 Faith & Entertainment Index, visit faithandmedia.com.