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Post editor Ben Hibbs said of Speech and Worship, "To me they are great human documents in the form of paint and canvas. A great picture, I think is one which moves and inspires millions of people. The Four Freedoms did – and do." Walt Disney wrote, "I thought [Rockwell's] Four Freedoms were great. I especially loved the Freedom of Worship and the composition and symbolism expressed in it." Rockwell believed that Freedom of Worship and Freedom of Speech were his better results in the series. Laura Claridge has written that the inspirational phrase "Each according to the dictates of his own conscience" is a "platitude that suggests the plurality of Rockwell's own thoughts on religion: its likely source was a phrase included in the Thirteen Articles of Faith by Joseph Smith." 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. The expression "according to the dictates of his conscience" (or a similar variation) was used in many United States state constitutions in the eighteenth century.
Critical review of the painting shows that some practitioners of particular faiths are disappointed by the acceptance of all faiths expressed in Freedom of Religion. 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. The restraint demanded by art that deals with heightened emotion is lacking. Claridge stated that the earlier version was "clean, impressively sparse, in counterpoise to a dense narrative content. Beautifully painted even at the preliminary oil sketch stage." Murray and McCabe note that the work is a divergence from the "storytelling style" that Rockwell is known for.Deborah Solomon considers the painting the least satisfactory of the series as she feels it is congested and somewhat "didactic".  Maureen Hart Hennessey, chief curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum, and curator Anne Knutson consider the scale of the picture that only shows heads and hands in prayer as disruptive. 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. This is because faith, like the absence of fear and the absence of want, is essentially private, something personal, intangible and unpicturable."
The Wall Street Journal Norman Rockwell Laura Claridge Walt Disney Four Freedoms Norman Rockwell Museum Joseph Smith Deborah Solomon Thirteen Articles of Faith Freedom of Speech