A new study from the Pew Research Center revealed that in many states, the majority of Americans support Christian prayer in public schools, although notoriously liberal and secular states like California, Oregon, and Washington remain strongly opposed.
For context, on June 23, 2025, the Pew Research Center released a report based on its 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed about 37,000 American adults and revealed that in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and many others, the majority of those surveyed supported prayers in schools that explicitly mention Jesus.
According to Pew researcher Chip Rotolo, who authored the organization’s June 23 report, 52% of Americans who were surveyed say that they favor “allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus.” Moreover, 27% of surveyed Americans say they “strongly favor” this decision.
In addition, 46% of those surveyed said that they oppose ” allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus,” and 22% said they “strongly oppose” the decision. However, in some states, including Oregon, Washington, and California, more Americans were opposed to prayer in schools than for it, with a reported 65% of surveyed Americans in Oregon saying they are against it.
Furthermore, according to Rotolo, 16 states were very divided, with “no statistically significant differences in the shares that favor or oppose allowing teachers to lead their students in prayers that mention Jesus.” Rotolo singled out Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, saying, “support for teacher-led Christian prayer in these states is not significantly different from opposition.
Importantly, Rotolo pointed out that a “slightly larger share of Americans” are supportive of “generic prayer” rather than “Christian prayer” in schools, meaning “allowing teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to God but not to any specific religion.” Rotolo noted that in states like Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama, 74% or more of Americans said that they are for allowing generic prayers in schools.
In addition, Pew’s Religious Landscape Study revealed that Americans are “about evenly divided on whether the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation,” adding that, predictably, the group that supports this idea the most are Christians. Furthermore, 78% of evangelical Protestants said “they favor or strongly favor the federal government declaring the U.S. a Christian nation.”
Moreover, the survey showed that about half of Americans (53%) “strongly favor allowing cities and towns to display religious symbols on public property.” However, while the majority of Protestants supported this notion, much lower numbers of Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews said they were supportive of allowing “religious displays on public property.”
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