Support for Christian prayer in U.S. public schools varies widely by state

Renewed debates are happening across the United States about the place of religion – especially Christianity – in public schools. An evenly divided Supreme Court recently upheld a ban on what would have been the nation’s first religious public charter school, in Oklahoma. Texas lawmakers are considering requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, while a federal appeals court struck down a similar law in Louisiana earlier this month. And legal battles persist over prayer at school sporting events and making time for prayer during the school day.

How we did this

This Pew Research Center analysis explores Americans’ views by state on questions about teacher-led prayers in public schools. The data comes from the Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS), a nationally representative survey of 36,908 U.S. adults. It was conducted in English and Spanish from July 17, 2023, to March 4, 2024.

The RLS is the largest single survey that the Center conducts and was designed to be representative of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as 34 large metro areas. The data was weighted (using benchmarks from the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources) to be representative of the adult population of each state (and D.C.) and of the overall U.S. adult population by gender, age, race, ethnicity, education and other categories.

For more details, including a list of sample sizes and margins of error for each state, refer to the accompanying tables or the study’s methodology.

Today, Americans are deeply split on the question of whether to allow Christian prayer in school:

• Just over half of U.S. adults (52%) say they favor allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus: 27% say they strongly favor this, and 26% say they favor it.
• 46% of adults oppose allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus: 22% say they strongly oppose this, and 24% say they oppose it.

These findings come from Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS). The survey of nearly 37,000 U.S. adults was large enough to break out results in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, although the margins of error for the state-level estimates are much larger than for the survey’s national estimates.

Jump to:

• States where more adults favor than oppose allowing Christian prayer in schools
• States where more adults oppose than favor allowing Christian prayer in schools
• States where the public is divided over allowing Christian prayer in schools
• Christian prayer vs. generic prayer

States where more adults favor than oppose allowing Christian prayer in schools

In 22 states, more adults say they favor allowing teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus than say they oppose it.

Support for Christian prayer in schools is particularly high in parts of the South, including Mississippi (81%), Alabama (75%), Arkansas (75%), Louisiana (74%) and South Carolina (71%).

Other Southern states, such as Oklahoma, Kentucky and West Virginia, are also among the states with the most support of Christian prayer in schools (67% in each state favor it).

In eight Midwestern states, there is more support than opposition for allowing teacher-led Christian prayers: South Dakota (65%), North Dakota (61%), Indiana (58%), Kansas (58%), Missouri (57%), Nebraska (56%), Ohio (53%) and Michigan (53%).

States where more adults oppose than favor allowing Christian prayer in schools

In 12 states and the District of Columbia, more adults say they oppose allowing teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus than say they favor it.

Three of these states are on the West Coast: Oregon (65%), Washington (61%) and California (56%). Six are in the Northeast: Vermont (64%), Connecticut (60%), New Hampshire (60%), Massachusetts (58%), New York (53%) and New Jersey (53%).

There is also more opposition than support for allowing teacher-led Christian prayers in Minnesota (59%), Colorado (58%) and Illinois (54%). And the District of Columbia (69%) ranks among the parts of the country with the highest levels of opposition to allowing teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus.

States where the public is divided over allowing Christian prayer in schools

The 16 remaining states are divided, with no statistically significant differences in the shares who favor or oppose allowing teachers to lead their students in prayers that mention Jesus. For example, 56% of adults in Delaware and around half in Virginia (52%), Pennsylvania (51%) and Maryland (50%) favor allowing Christian prayer. Once the survey’s margins of error are accounted for, support for teacher-led Christian prayer in these states is not significantly different from opposition. The same is true for several other states, including Idaho (55%), Arizona (53%) and Iowa (51%).

Christian prayer vs. generic prayer

It’s important to note that teacher-led Christian prayers are just one way that religion can play a role in public schools. The 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study also asked a separate question about “allowing teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to God but not to any specific religion.”

Nationwide, a slightly larger share of Americans say they favor allowing teacher-led prayers referencing God (57%) than favor allowing teacher-led prayers specifically referencing Jesus (52%).

However, the state-level patterns are similar on both questions. For example, the same Southern states still top the list, with nearly identical levels of support for allowing teachers to lead students in prayers referring to God versus prayers referring to Jesus. This is the case in Mississippi (77% support for prayers to God vs. 81% for prayers to Jesus), Arkansas (76% vs. 75%), South Carolina (74% vs. 71%), Alabama (74% vs. 75%) and Louisiana (74% for both).