Half of U.S. adults favor displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools while slightly less, at 48%, oppose the practice, according to a new study by Pew Research Center.
The April survey of 3,592 respondents also found 78% favor student-led prayer in student organizations, 57% favor permitting coaches to lead team prayers and 46% favor teachers leading classroom prayers.
But more than half of Americans (53%) stated opposition to teacher-led prayer, followed by 48% opposed to Ten Commandments displays in classrooms, 42% opposed to coach-led prayer and 21% opposed to student-led prayer.
Support declined even further across most demographic, political and religious groups if student participation was mandated.
For example, “8% of Americans say they favor teacher-led prayer and believe students should be required to participate. Far more (53%) say they favor teacher-led prayer but only if students are not required to participate. An additional 37% say teacher-led prayer should not be allowed at all.”
Strong support for faith-based school activates is nothing new in American history, polling organizations report.
For example, 79% of Americans supported “religious observances in public schools” shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court banned state-sanctioned school prayer in 1962, while 70% opposed a 1963 ruling barring school board-mandated Bible reading. Three quarters of Americans in 1980 supported constitutional amendments codifying spoken prayer in public schools.
“However, support for legislation to ‘require’ prayers in public schools was significantly lower, only 55% in a September 1980 poll, suggesting a shift in public opinion away from allowing the government to require religious participation,” Gallup said.
That support remained around 75% by 2002, Gallup reported that year. “However, in the last few decades consensus appears to have shifted away from the view that government should be able to require such expressions. Furthermore, a majority of Americans say they would be opposed to prayer in their schools if they knew it offended a large proportion of parents.”
But the rise in Christian nationalism stoked by the first Trump administration began to inspire some Americans to push for more government-sanctioned religious activity in public schools.
“For instance, three in 10 say public school teachers should be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers, a practice the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional,” Pew reported in 2021.”Roughly one in five say the federal government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state (19%) and the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God (18%).”
The Supreme Court shifted in that direction, as well, with a 2022 decision backing a high school football coach’s 50-yard-line prayer sessions, and it was only a tiebreaker away from approving a taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma in 2025.
Now the court may be on the cusp of deciding the constitutionality of Ten Commandment displays in public schools.
Earlier this month, plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a Texas law mandating the displays petitioned justices to undo a lower-court ruling upholding the statute. The outcome could decide the fate of similar laws in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
“Large majorities of white evangelical Protestants and Black Protestants favor these forms of religious expression in public schools. The same is true for half or more of Catholics and white nonevangelical Protestants,” Pew reported.
White evangelical support for Ten Commandments displays was reported at 83%, followed by Black Protestants at 64%, Catholics at 56% and white nonevangelical Protestants at 52%. Only 24% of the religiously unaffiliated approved of the displays.
Almost all white evangelicals (96%) favored voluntary student prayer in public schools, compared to 88% of Black Protestants, 85% of white nonevangelical Protestants, 79% of Catholics and 64% of religiously unaffiliated respondents.
Approval of teacher-led prayer, when voluntary for students, also was strong among white evangelicals (80%) but less so among Black Protestants (55%), Catholics (57%) and white nonevangelical Protestants (56%). Only 7% of white evangelicals, 23% of Black Protestants, 10% of Catholics and 6% of white nonevangelical Protestants said students should be required to participate in those prayers.
Support for coach-led prayer was higher among those groups, with white evangelicals (89%), Black Protestants (76%), Catholics (64%) and white nonevangelical Protestants (60%). Religiously unaffiliated Americans were heavily opposed (70%).
Americans across demographic categories showed much higher support for students leading voluntary prayers for student-led groups, Pew found, including white evangelicals (96%), Black Protestants (88%), white Protestant nonevangelicals (85%) and Catholics (64%). Even a majority of religiously unaffiliated respondents (64%) approved of the practice.