Freedom of Worship was published in the February 27, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post alongside an essay by philosopher Will Durant.

[5] For the essay accompanying Freedom of Worship, Post editor Ben Hibbs chose Durant, who was a best-selling author at the peak of his fame.

[6] Eventually, the series of paintings became widely distributed in poster form and became instrumental in the U.S. Government War Bond Drive.

[10] In 1966, Rockwell used Freedom of Worship to show his admiration for John F. Kennedy in a Look story illustration entitled JFK's Bold Legacy.

[11] The original version of the painting was set in a barbershop with patrons of a variety of religions and races all waiting their turn in the barber's chair.

[15] Rockwell's intended theme was religious tolerance, but he felt the original composition did not successfully make this point.

His Arlington, Vermont, neighbors served as his models: Three months pregnant with her hair upbraided, Rose Hoyt posed as a Catholic with a rosary,[19] even though she was actually Protestant of the Episcopal Church.

Rockwell said he made these ethnics palatable by "'furtively' painting the face of the black woman at the top; the man at the bottom, with his fez, was too obviously foreign to offend.

"[20] Post editor Ben Hibbs said of Speech and Worship, "To me they are great human documents in the form of paint and canvas.

"[20] In fact, Rockwell repeatedly asked colleagues about possible sources of the quote and was not told about Smith's writing until after the series was published.

[8] Claridge feels that the tight amalgam of faces ... and even the crepey skin on elderly hands, which have become the objects of worship, push the theme over the edge from idealistic tolerance into gooey sentiment, where human differences seem caught up in a magical moment of dispensation from the Light.

[14] Bruce Cole of The Wall Street Journal noted that Rockwell's "depiction of spectral close-up faces and hands raised in prayer is bland, without any real message about religious freedom—again, no wallop.