Half of Americans support placing the Ten Commandments in public schools, survey says

A new national survey has found that half of Americans support displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools, a policy that was recently championed and implemented in Texas.

The survey, conducted in April by the Pew Research Center that was recently released, did not include data specific to Texas, but found that residents in the southern region of the U.S. (which includes Texas) were more supportive of religious expressions in public schools than the coastal regions.

"One of the things that's clear here is that many Americans support some religious expression in public schools," Chip Rotolo, the lead author on the survey, said in an interview.

Support for the Ten Commandments in public schools

The Ten Commandments are a moral code central to the Christian and Jewish faiths that can be found in biblical texts. The order of the commandments differs and there are slight differences in the texts between different Christian and Jewish faith traditions.

Nationwide, 50% of adults support displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, while 48% oppose the practice, the Pew survey found.

"It's so striking that there's a 50-50 split," Rotolo said.

The survey broke down regions of the United States into the South, Midwest, West and Northeast. In the southern region of the U.S., slightly more adults - 57% - favor displaying the Ten Commandments, while 41% oppose.

In Texas, Senate Bill 10, which was passed into law last year, requires public schools to display donated copies of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. In April, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana upheld the law after lower court orders had blocked some schools from displaying the Ten Commandments.

The Texas law stipulates size and content of the display, including what text the poster or copy should display. The version of the text written in the Texas law is a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments.

Proponents of the Texas law have said that the Ten Commandments are a part of America's heritage and moral values. Opponents, including parents who sued the state over the law from different religious and nonreligious backgrounds, argued the law violates the First Amendment and imposes Christianity on children.

Support for the Ten Commandments in schools is strongest among white evangelical Protestant adults at 83%. That figure is even higher than support from Republican adults, who support it by 72%.

"If you know what their politics are, you can pretty much perfectly predict what their views are," Rotolo said of religious groups' support of religious expressions in schools.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth region, evangelical Protestants make up the largest percentage of Christians. Evangelical protestant Christians lean heavily Republican, Rotolo said.

Catholics and white Protestant adults who are not evangelical are more split on the Ten Commandments in schools, the survey found. Democrats as a group largely oppose the measure by nearly 70%.

One exception, Rotolo noted, was support for the Ten Commandments among Black Protestant adults, who support the measure by 64%, even though historically the group leans heavily Democratic.

"Black Protestants are one of the only groups that tend to buck the trend of what we might expect, and that's because they are a heavily, highly religious group," Rotolo said.

According to the survey, the sample did not contain enough Jews, Muslims or members of other religious groups that make up a smaller percentage of America to report their opinions separately.

Adults over the age of 50 are also more likely to support displaying the Ten Commandments in schools, while adults between the ages of 18 and 49 are more split, with 56% in opposition.

Rotolo said this was the first time Pew Research specifically asked about the Ten Commandments in a survey.

Support for other prayer in public schools

The survey also polled Americans on other expressions of religion in schools. While many Americans support prayer in public schools, very few think it should be mandatory.

For example, about six in 10 Americans support allowing some form of teacher-led school prayer, but the vast majority think student participation should be voluntary. Only 8% of Americans said that teachers should be allowed to lead classes in prayer and students should be required to participate.

Americans who are religiously unaffiliated, including those who identify as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular," are most likely to oppose prayer in school. Fifty-nine percent of this group said teachers should not be allowed to lead their class in prayer at all.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth region, almost a third of all residents are religiously unaffiliated, according to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey.

Nationwide, almost eight in 10 Americans support allowing public school students to pray voluntarily in student-led groups. Support is strongest in the southern region, and even the majority of religiously unaffiliated adults support voluntary student group prayer.

That could look like praying around the flag in the morning, or an after-school club, Rotolo said.

The survey also examined views on prayer at public school sports events. Most religiously unaffiliated American adults oppose public school coaches leading their teams in prayer.

Democrats are also likely to oppose coaches leading teams in prayer while Republicans support the act. The South also displayed the strongest support of the four regions surveyed, with 65% of adults supporting coaches leading prayer.

In other recent surveys, Pew has found that support for declaring the U.S. a Christian nation has been relatively stable in recent years (about 13% to 17% in recent years), and there has been no large shift, Rotolo said.

However, there has been a shift in how Americans view the influence of religion. While 61% of Americans still say religion is losing influence in public life, 37% say it is gaining influence. That's the highest percentage since 2002, according to a Pew survey that came out in May.

That perception of influence could be related to how often politicians discuss religion or religion's role in politics. Some Americans have anecdotally reported a religious revival among young people, Rotolo said, although Pew research has not seen clear evidence in data.

"It could mean a lot of things," Rotolo said.

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This story was originally published July 7, 2026 at 9:32 AM.