Poll: Public broadly supportive of school prayer

Poll: Public broadly supportive of school prayer

Just when you thought the pendulum couldn’t swing further Left, along comes a report that suggests their may be hope for the nation’s most cherished traditions. According to a new survey released by Gallup, prayer and other forms of religious expression in public schools continue to have broad public support.

A solid majority of adults, 61%, favor allowing daily prayer in the classroom, while 37% are opposed. In addition, 75% are supportive of having prayer or other religious expressions as an official component of school graduation ceremonies, and 77% think public facilities should be made available to student religious groups after school.

Those numbers have only dipped slightly since 1999, when 70% of adults supported school prayer, 83% supported religious components of graduations, and 78% wanted school facilities to be open to religious groups.

Unsurprisingly, support varied based on respondents’ personal religious activities, though even many of the non-religious favored allowing religious expression in school. For example, 89% of Protestant Christians supported allowing official prayers at graduation, but so did 44% of those with no religion; 35% of those with no religion supported daily classroom prayer.

Significant gaps existed not just between Christians and the non-religious, but also among different Christian groups, with Catholics much less likely to support religious expression in public schools. In fact, Catholics were less likely than the non-religious to support opening public school facilities to religious groups after school, with 66% backing such a policy compared to 69% of the non-religious.

State-sponsored school prayer was widespread in the United States until 1962, when the Supreme Court case Engel v. Vitale struck down state-sponsored prayer as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Since then, several additional Supreme Court judgments have struck down prayer in other contexts, such as in school graduation ceremonies or prior to school sporting events. Private prayer in schools has always remained legal, and the Court has tolerated “moments of silence” in schools that allow students to pray on their own.

The poll’s wording may be criticized for vagueness; some respondents may interpret questions regarding prayer in class to refer to teacher-led endeavors while others interpret the question as merely referring to allowing students to pray on their own.

The poll is based on survey of 1,032 U.S. adults, conducted from August 7-10. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

This report, by Blake Neff, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

LU Staff

LU Staff

Promoting and defending liberty, as defined by the nation’s founders, requires both facts and philosophical thought, transcending all elements of our culture, from partisan politics to social issues, the workings of government, and entertainment and off-duty interests. Liberty Unyielding is committed to bringing together voices that will fuel the flame of liberty, with a dialogue that is lively and informative.

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