While most Americans support allowing teachers to lead students in prayer to Jesus in schools, views on the matter differ widely from state to state, according to new data from the Pew Research Center.
Pew released the data Monday documenting Americans’ views on Christian prayer in schools. The survey is based on responses collected from Pew’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, which sampled the opinions of 36,908 United States adults from July 17, 2023, to March 4, 2024.
Overall, 52% of Americans support allowing teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus, with 27% strongly in favor of this idea. On the other hand, 46% of those surveyed oppose letting teachers lead their classes in such prayers, with 22% strongly opposing the idea.
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“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,” Pew Research Associate Chip Rotolo wrote in an analysis. “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.”
“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,” the Pew report continues.
Support for explicitly Christian school prayer was highest in Mississippi (81%), followed by Alabama (75%), Arkansas (75%), Louisiana (74%), South Carolina (71%), Kentucky (67%), Oklahoma (67%), West Virginia (67%), Tennessee (66%), South Dakota (65%), Georgia (63%), North Carolina (61%), North Dakota (61%) and Texas (61%).
With the exception of North Carolina and Georgia, the states where support for explicitly Christian school prayer was the highest voted for Republican President Donald Trump by double digits in the 2024 presidential election.
Smaller majorities of adults in Indiana (58%), Kansas (58%), Missouri (57%), Florida (56%), Delaware (56%), Nebraska (56%), Wyoming (56%), Idaho (55%), New Mexico (54%), Arizona (53%), Michigan (53%) and Ohio (53%) expressed support for allowing explicitly Christian school prayers.
Most of the states with a majority support for Christian school prayer voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Two states, Delaware and New Mexico, backed Democrat Kamala Harris, while Arizona and Michigan only narrowly supported Trump.
Several states were almost evenly divided on the issue of explicitly Christian school prayer. In Virginia, which narrowly supported Harris in the 2024 election, 52% of those surveyed supported Christian school prayer, while 46% opposed it. In Iowa, which overwhelmingly backed Trump, and Pennsylvania, which narrowly supported Trump, 51% of adults expressed support for Christian school prayer, while 46% opposed it.
Fifty percent of adults in Maryland, a state that overwhelmingly backed Harris, supported Christian school prayer, while 48% took the opposite position. The same percentage of adults favored school prayer in the swing state of Nevada and the blue state of Rhode Island, while 49% in those states did not. Exactly one-half (50%) of respondents in the red state of Alaska opposed Christian school prayer, while 49% supported it.
The same share of adults (50%) opposed Christian school prayer in the blue state of Hawaii, while 46% supported it. In the red state of Montana and the purple state of Wisconsin, opposition to Christian school prayer was measured at 51%, while support was pegged at 47%.
Opposition to explicitly Christian school prayer was strongest in Washington, D.C. (69%), followed by Oregon (65%), Vermont (64%), Washington (61%), Connecticut (60%), New Hampshire (60%), Minnesota (59%), Massachusetts (58%), Colorado (58%), California (56%), Maine (55%), Utah (54%), Illinois (54%), New Jersey (53%) and New York (53%).
With the exception of New Hampshire, New Jersey, Minnesota and Maine, which narrowly backed Harris, the states where opposition to Christian school prayer was strongest supported the Democratic candidate by double digits.
“It’s important to note that teacher-led Christian prayers are just one way that religion can play a role in public schools,” Rotolo notes. “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.'”
When asked about their feelings on allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that referred to God but not to any specific religion, Americans appeared more supportive of the idea (57%).
However, researchers say that “the state-level patterns are similar on both questions.”
States where support for generic school prayers was strongest were the red states of Mississippi (77%), Arkansas (76%), Alabama (74%), Louisiana (74%), South Carolina (74%) and Tennessee (69%).
With the exception of the purple states of Georgia (68%) and North Carolina (64%) as well as the blue state of Delaware (60%), all states where a supermajority of adults favored generic school prayer voted for Trump by double digits.
Smaller majorities of adults in Arizona (59%), Kansas (59%), Idaho (58%), Missouri (58%), Michigan (57%), New Mexico (57%), Ohio (57%), Iowa (56%), Pennsylvania (56%), Virginia (56%), Nevada (55%), Rhode Island (55%), Utah (55%), Alaska (54%) and Maryland (54%) expressed support for generic school prayer.
Most of these states overwhelmingly backed Trump, although Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania are swing states, New Mexico and Virginia narrowly backed Harris, while Rhode Island and Maryland overwhelmingly backed Harris.
Several states were evenly divided on the issue of non-sectarian school prayer.
In both the deep blue state of Connecticut and the light blue state of Minnesota, 51% of adults opposed generic school prayer, while 46% took the opposite position. The only states where a majority opposed generic school prayer were Vermont (55%), Colorado (56%), Washington (56%), New Hampshire (57%), Washington, D.C. (60%) and Oregon (63%). With the exception of New Hampshire, all of the states with the strongest opposition to generic school prayer overwhelmingly voted for Harris.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
