The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states that the country shall have no official religion. At the same time, Christians continue to make up a large majority of U.S. adults – despite some rapid decline in recent years – and historians, politicians and religious leaders continue to debate the role of religion in the founders’ vision and of Christianity in the nation’s identity.

Some Americans clearly long for a more avowedly religious and explicitly Christian country, according to a March 2021 Pew Research Center survey. For instance, three-in-ten say public school teachers should be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers, a practice that the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional. Roughly one-in-five say that the federal government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state (19%) and that the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God (18%). And 15% go as far as to say the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation.

On the other hand, however, the clear majority of Americans do not accept these views. For example, two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) say the Constitution was written by humans and reflects their vision, not necessarily God’s vision. And a similar share (69%) says the government should never declare any official religion. (Respondents were offered the opportunity to reply “neither/no opinion” in response to each question, and substantial shares chose this option or declined to answer in response to all of these questions, suggesting some ambivalence among a segment of the population.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey finds that Christians are much more likely than Jewish or religiously unaffiliated Americans to express support for the integration of church and state, with White evangelical Protestants foremost among Christian subgroups in this area. In addition, Christians who are highly religious are especially likely to say, for example, that the Constitution was inspired by God. But even among White evangelical Protestants and highly religious Christians, fewer than half say the U.S. should abandon its adherence to the separation of church and state (34% and 31%, respectively) or declare the country a Christian nation (35% and 29%).

Politics also is a major factor. Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party are far more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to want to secure an official place for Christianity in the national identity. However, for the most part, Republicans do not directly voice a preference for the integration of church and state. For instance, 58% of Republicans and Republican leaners say the federal government should never declare any religion as the official religion of the United States, while a quarter of Republicans (26%) say that the government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation. By comparison, among Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party, 80% say the government should never declare any official religion, and just 6% want the government to declare the U.S. a Christian nation.

While the above-average level of support for an overtly Christian government among Republicans and White evangelical Protestants may come as no surprise to close observers of American politics, some of the other patterns in the survey are perhaps more unexpected. For example, many Black and Hispanic Americans – groups that are heavily Democratic – are highly religious Christians, and on several of the questions in the survey, they are just as likely as White Americans, if not more likely, to say they see a special link between Christianity and America.

Nearly four-in-ten Black Americans (38%) say public school teachers should be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers, somewhat higher than the 31% of White Americans who say this. And about one-in-five U.S. Hispanics (22%) say the federal government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state, roughly on par with the 19% of White Americans who say this.

These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 1-7, 2021, among 12,055 U.S. adults on the Center’s online, nationally representative American Trends Panel (ATP). These questions about the relationship between church and state can be combined into a scale that sorts respondents into one of four categories – “Church-state integrationists” (who say they would favor the intermingling of religion with government and public life); “church-state separationists” (who favor a wall of separation between religion and state); those who express “mixed” views about these matters; and those who largely express no opinion. When the questions are scaled together this way, they show there is far more support for church-state separation than for church-state integration in the U.S. public at large.

Overall, more than half of U.S. adults (55%) express clear support for the principle of separation of church and state when measured this way. This includes 28% who express a strong church-state separationist perspective (they prefer the church-state separationist view in five or six of the scale’s questions and the church-state integrationist position in none) and an additional 27% who express more moderate support for the church-state separationist perspective. By contrast, roughly one-in-seven U.S. adults (14%) express support for a “church-state integrationist” perspective as measured by the survey.

Slightly fewer than one-in-five U.S. adults (18%) have mixed views – expressing support for church-state separation on some of the survey’s questions and support for increased church-state integration on about as many. And one-in-eight offer no opinion on a majority of these questions.

The survey shows, furthermore, that even in the groups that tend to express the most support for the intermingling of church and state, the “church-state integrationist” perspective is the exception, not the norm. Among White evangelical Protestants, for example, fewer than half (36%) express consistent support for a church-state integrationist perspective, although this is larger than the share of White evangelicals who favor the separation of church and state (26%). An additional 28% have mixed views.

Hispanic Protestants (26%) are among the other groups whose sympathy for church-state integration is higher than average. By contrast, a desire for church-state integration is almost nonexistent among U.S. Jews (1%) and the religiously unaffiliated (2%), who consist of those describing their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” Among self-identified atheists and agnostics, fully 96% fall into the church-state separationist category.

Most Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party (72%) prefer church-state separation, compared with 38% of Republicans – although even Republicans are more likely to express this view than to consistently favor the integration of church and state (25%).

The survey finds support for church-state integration is slightly higher among White respondents (16%) than among Hispanic Americans (11%). But at the same time, White people also are most likely to voice support for church-state separation, whereas Hispanic and Black Americans are more inclined than White adults to express no opinion on these questions. The survey finds little difference on these questions between U.S.-born adults and those born outside the U.S.

Support for separation of church and state is slightly higher among men than women; women are more likely than men to be in the “no opinion” category. College graduates are far more supportive of church-state separation than are those with lower levels of education. Similarly, young adults (ages 18 to 29) are more likely than their elders to consistently favor the separation of church and state.

Support for separation of church and state is lower in the South than in other parts of the country. Still, even in the South, fewer than one-in-five people consistently express a desire for the integration of church and state.

A closer look at the church-state scale

What, specifically, do people in each category desire in terms of the relationship between church and state? On each of the six scale items, majorities of those in the church-state integrationist category express support for the intermingling of religion and government, ranging from 60% who say the federal government should advocate Christian religious values to 88% who favor allowing towns to exhibit religious displays and public school teachers to lead Christian prayers. By contrast, most church-state separationists take the opposite position on all six questions, ranging from 58% who say religious displays should be kept off public property to 95% who say the federal government should never declare any official religion. These patterns are unsurprising, given the criteria for the categories.

But those in the “mixed” category are perhaps more interesting. Most people in this group say they think religious displays should be permitted on public property (71%) and are comfortable with public school teachers leading Christian prayers (60%). But far fewer think the government should stop enforcing separation of church and state (39%) or that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired (29%). And clear majorities say the federal government should never declare an official religion (62%) and should advocate moral values shared by many faiths (61%) rather than Christian values.

Church-state views, or White Christian nationalism?

The questions in the new survey gauging American attitudes on church-state issues are similar (but not identical) to questions used by other scholars to measure what they call “Christian nationalism.”¹ Research on Christian nationalism shows that it is correlated with attitudes about race, immigration, gender roles, the place of the U.S. in the world, and much more.

The new survey also finds a clear connection between views on church-state issues and attitudes on many other social and political topics, including matters of race and immigration. Most people who support separation of church and state are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, think Donald Trump was a “poor” or “terrible” president, say immigrants strengthen American society, and reject the notion that society is better off if people prioritize getting married and having children. More than half of people with a church-state separationist perspective say it is “a lot” more difficult to be a Black person than a White person in the U.S., and that while the U.S. is one of the greatest countries in the world, there are other countries that are also great.

By comparison, people who favor church-state integration are mostly Republicans and Republican leaners, think Trump was a “good” or “great” president, say the growing numbers of immigrants in the U.S. threaten traditional American values, and feel that society would be better off if more people prioritized getting married and having children. Church-state integrationists are far more inclined than church-state separationists to say that it is “no more difficult” to be Black than White in American society (42% vs. 13%), and that the U.S. “stands above” all other countries (40% vs. 15%).

These are just a few examples of the connection between church-state views and attitudes about social and political issues. Similar correlations exist between church-state views and responses to many other questions about race, immigration, gender, and the place of the U.S. in the world.

The data shows, furthermore, that these connections are at least as pronounced – if not more so – among White Americans as among the public as a whole. White adults with church-state integrationist views are much more likely than White church-state separationists to say Trump was a good or great president (by a margin of 59 percentage points), to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party (by 54 points), to say that immigrants threaten traditional American customs and values (47 points), and to say that society is better when people prioritize getting married and having children (42 points). They also are 35 points more likely to say that being Black is no more difficult than being White in the U.S. today, and 32 points more likely to say the U.S. has a unique place above all other countries in the world.

These results are consistent with much of the existing research on Christian nationalism, which demonstrates that among White people, Christian nationalism is linked with support for the Republican Party, enthusiasm for Trump, hostility toward immigrants and denial that racism is pervasive or systemic in America. But the survey also shows that White church-state integrationists are far from alone in their attitudes on these matters. Indeed, majorities of White people with “mixed” church-state views, as well as of those with a “moderate” church-state separationist perspective, also identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and view Trump as an average or better-than-average president. And majorities of White adults in all three categories (church-state integrationists, moderate church-state separationists, and holders of mixed views on church-state questions) reject the idea that being a Black person is a lot more difficult than being a White person in the U.S. today.

In fact, strong church-state separationists are the only group of White respondents who are mostly Democrats, who mostly think Trump was a below average president, and among whom a majority say being a Black person in the U.S. today is a lot more difficult than being a White person. In other words, to the extent that church-state views are connected with other social and political attitudes among White respondents, those with the strongest church-state separationist viewpoint are in some ways more distinctive from other White people than are those with church-state integrationist views.

A closer look at those with ‘no opinion’ on church-state matters

Roughly one-in-eight survey respondents (12% of all U.S. adults) are categorized as having “no opinion” on the church-state scale, because they say “neither/no opinion” or refuse to answer four (39%), five (30%) or all six (31%) of the questions used to create the scale. This means the size of the “no opinion” group is close to the size of the “church-state integrationist” group (12% and 14%, respectively).

So, who are the respondents in the “no opinion” category? Are they really church-state integrationists but reluctant to express that point of view in response to these questions? Are they church-state separationists who are hesitant to share that opinion? Or are they people who are genuinely uncertain about, unfamiliar with or uninterested in church-state issues?

Of course, the survey cannot provide a direct answer because, by definition, these respondents did not express a point of view – one way or the other – on the church-state questions. However, those in the “no opinion” category are distinctive in certain ways. Perhaps most obviously, they are far less likely than the full sample of respondents to be college graduates (15% vs. 33%), and far more likely to have a high school education or less (56% vs. 36%). This is expected, since past research on patterns of survey response has revealed that people with lower levels of educational attainment are more inclined than those with higher levels of education to express no opinion on many kinds of survey questions. Indeed, in addition to the questions about church-state issues, the survey included 36 other questions that were asked of the full sample of respondents; those in the “no opinion” category decline to provide a substantive response to 3.9 of the 36 questions, on average, compared with 1.6 questions left with no substantive response by respondents in other categories, on average.

Compared with the full sample of respondents, those with “no opinion” on the church-state scale also are less likely to be White, non-Hispanic adults, and more likely to be Black or Hispanic. People in the “no opinion” category also are a bit more likely to be under age 65 than are the full sample of respondents.

In terms of their political and religious profile, there is little evidence to suggest that the “no opinion” category harbors a disproportionate share of either “church-state integrationists” or “church-state separationists.” Compared with the full sample of respondents, those in the “no opinion” group are more likely than the full sample to identify as political independents or with a third party and to decline to lean toward either major party (15% vs. 5%), and also to describe themselves as ideological moderates (50% vs. 38%). The religious profile of those in the “no opinion” group closely resembles the religious profile of the full sample of respondents.

God’s favor for the U.S.

In addition to the six questions that make up the church-state issues scale, the survey included a question that asked Americans which of two statements comes closer to their own view: “God favors the United States over all other countries,” or “God does not favor any one country over all the others.”

Overall, seven-in-ten U.S. adults choose the latter option: God does not favor any one country. Just 5% of U.S. adults say they think God favors the U.S. over all other countries, while 25% say neither, express no opinion or decline to answer.²

The accompanying detailed tables provide additional information about how social and demographic groups answered the questions about church-state issues.

The following tables show results for each of the six questions in the church-state separation scale by religious affiliation and other demographic factors, as well as by where people fall on the overall scale.

This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals. Find related reports online at pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion.

Primary Researcher

Gregory A. Smith, Associate Director, Research

Research Team        

Alan Cooperman, Director of Religion Research Besheer Mohamed, Senior Researcher Becka A. Alper, Senior Researcher Kiana Cox, Research Associate Claire Gecewicz, Research Associate Justin Nortey, Research Assistant Joshua Alvarado, Research Assistant                      

Methods Team         

Courtney Kennedy, Director of Survey Research Andrew Mercer, Senior Research Methodologist Nick Bertoni, Senior Panel Manager Ashley Amaya, Senior Survey Research Methodologist Dorene Asare-Marfo, Survey Research Methodologist Arnold Lau, Research Methodologist Nick Hatley, Research Analyst

Editorial and Graphic Design

Michael Lipka, Editorial Manager David Kent, Senior Copy Editor Rebecca Ann Leppert, Editorial Assistant Bill Webster, Senior Information Graphics Designer

Communications and Web Publishing

Stacy Rosenberg, Associate Director, Digital Travis Mitchell, Digital Producer Anna Schiller, Senior Communications Manager Kelsey Beveridge, Communications Associate

Others at Pew Research Center who provided valuable feedback and guidance on this project include Claudia Deane, vice president of research; Scott Keeter, senior survey advisor; Carroll Doherty, director of political research; and Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research.

Pew Research Center also is grateful to Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, authors of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” for their input.

American Trends Panel survey methodology

Overview

The American Trends Panel (ATP), created by Pew Research Center, is a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. Panelists participate via self-administered web surveys. Panelists who do not have internet access at home are provided with a tablet and wireless internet connection. Interviews are conducted in both English and Spanish. The panel is being managed by Ipsos.

Data in this report is drawn primarily from the panel wave conducted March 1 to March 7, 2021. A total of 12,055 panelists responded out of 13,545 who were sampled, for a response rate of 89%. This does not include two panelists who were removed from the data due to extremely high rates of refusal or straightlining. The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 4%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 1%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 12,055 respondents is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

Panel recruitment

The ATP was created in 2014, with the first cohort of panelists invited to join the panel at the end of a large, national, landline and cellphone random-digit-dial survey that was conducted in both English and Spanish. Two additional recruitments were conducted using the same method in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Across these three surveys, a total of 19,718 adults were invited to join the ATP, of whom 9,942 (50%) agreed to participate.

In August 2018, the ATP switched from telephone to address-based recruitment. Invitations were sent to a random, address-based sample of households selected from the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File. Additional recruitments were conducted using the same method, once in 2019 and then again in 2020. Across these three address-based recruitments, a total of 17,161 adults were invited to join the ATP, of whom 15,134 (88%) agreed to join the panel and completed an initial profile survey. In each household, the adult with the next birthday was asked to go online to complete a survey, at the end of which they were invited to join the panel. Of the 25,076 individuals who have ever joined the ATP, 13,545 remained active panelists and continued to receive survey invitations at the time this survey was conducted.

The U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File has been estimated to cover as much as 98% of the population, although some studies suggest that the coverage could be in the low 90% range.³ The American Trends Panel never uses breakout routers or chains that direct respondents to additional surveys.

Sample design

The overall target population for this survey was non-institutionalized persons ages 18 and older, living in the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii.

Questionnaire development and testing

The questionnaire was developed by Pew Research Center in consultation with Ipsos. The web program was rigorously tested on both PC and mobile devices by the Ipsos project management team and Pew Research Center researchers. The Ipsos project management team also populated test data which was analyzed in SPSS to ensure the logic and randomizations were working as intended before launching the survey.

Incentives

All respondents were offered a post-paid incentive for their participation. Respondents could choose to receive the post-paid incentive in the form of a check or a gift code to Amazon.com or could choose to decline the incentive. Incentive amounts ranged from $5 to $20 depending on whether the respondent belongs to a part of the population that is harder or easier to reach. Differential incentive amounts were designed to increase panel survey participation among groups that traditionally have low survey response propensities.

Data collection protocol

The data collection field period for this survey was March 1 to March 7, 2021. Postcard notifications were mailed to all ATP panelists with a known residential address on March 1, 2021.

On March 1 and March 2, invitations were sent out in two separate launches: Soft Launch and Full Launch. Sixty panelists were included in the soft launch, which began with an initial invitation sent on March 1, 2021. The ATP panelists chosen for the initial soft launch were known responders who had completed previous ATP surveys within one day of receiving their invitation. All remaining English- and Spanish-speaking panelists were included in the full launch and were sent an invitation on March 2, 2021.

All panelists with an email address received an email invitation and up to two email reminders if they did not respond to the survey. All ATP panelists that consented to SMS messages received an SMS invitation and up to two SMS reminders.

Data quality checks

To ensure high-quality data, the Center’s researchers performed data quality checks to identify any respondents showing clear patterns of satisficing. This includes checking for very high rates of leaving questions blank, as well as always selecting the first or last answer presented. As a result of this checking, two ATP respondents were removed from the survey dataset prior to weighting and analysis.

Weighting

The ATP data was weighted in a multistep process that accounts for multiple stages of sampling and nonresponse that occur at different points in the survey process. First, each panelist begins with a base weight that reflects their probability of selection for their initial recruitment survey (and the probability of being invited to participate in the panel in cases where only a subsample of respondents were invited). The base weights for panelists recruited in different years are scaled to be proportionate to the effective sample size for all active panelists in their cohort. To correct for nonresponse to the initial recruitment surveys and gradual panel attrition, the base weights for all active panelists are calibrated to align with the population benchmarks identified in the accompanying table to create a full-panel weight.

For ATP waves in which only a subsample of panelists are invited to participate, a wave-specific base weight is created by adjusting the full-panel weights for subsampled panelists to account for any differential probabilities of selection for the particular panel wave. For waves in which all active panelists are invited to participate, the wave-specific base weight is identical to the full-panel weight.

In the final weighting step, the wave-specific base weights for panelists who completed the survey are again calibrated to match the population benchmarks specified above. These weights are trimmed (typically at about the 1st and 99th percentiles) to reduce the loss in precision stemming from variance in the weights. Sampling errors and tests of statistical significance take into account the effect of weighting.

Some analysis in this report is based on questions that were asked on previous ATP waves conducted on Sept. 3-15, 2019, and July 27-Aug. 2, 2020. In these instances, data for the respondents who participated in both waves was weighted following the same procedure as for the full sample. Methodologies for those waves can be found here and here.

Creation of the church-state views scale

The scale reflects responses to six survey questions. In each question, respondents were presented with two contrasting statements, and asked which most closely reflects their own view. Respondents were also given the option of choosing “neither/no opinion.” The pairs of statements are:

Cities and towns in the U.S. should be allowed to place religious symbols on public property OR Cities and towns in the U.S. should keep religious symbols off public property

Teachers in public schools should be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers OR Teachers in public schools should not be allowed to lead students in any kind of prayers

The federal government should stop enforcing separation of church and state OR The federal government should enforce separation of church and state

The U.S. Constitution was inspired by God and reflects God’s vision for America OR The U.S. Constitution was written by human beings and reflects their vision for America, not necessarily God’s vision

The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation OR The federal government should never declare any particular religion as the official religion of the United States

The federal government should advocate Christian religious values OR The federal government should advocate for moral values that are shared by people of many faiths

Before creating the scale, researchers confirmed that the six survey questions described here do, in fact, scale well together (i.e., are highly correlated with each other). Each question was coded from 0 to 2, with 0 points assigned for the church-state separationist response (e.g., “Cities and towns in the U.S. should keep religious symbols off public property” or “The federal government should enforce separation of church and state”), 1 point assigned for “neither/no opinion” responses as well as for those who refused to answer the question, and 2 points assigned for church-state integrationist responses (e.g., “Cities and towns in the U.S. should be allowed to place religious symbols on public property” or “The federal government should stop enforcing separation of church and state”). Cronbach’s alpha for a scale consisting of items coded in this way is 0.76.

To sort respondents into categories, researchers began by putting everyone who said “neither/no opinion/refused” to four or more of the six items into a “no opinion” category. They did not provide enough information to classify their views about church-state issues. Overall, 12% of respondents express “no opinion” on the scale.

Next, the remaining 88% of respondents were sorted into three categories – “church-state integrationists,” “church-state separationists,” and “mixed.” Respondents who offered four or more church-state integrationist answers in response to the six questions were placed in the “church-state integrationist” category. Respondents who offered four or more church-state separationist answers were placed in the “church-state separationist” category.

What about respondents who offered three church-state integrationist answers or three church-state separationist answers? They were sorted based on the number of opposing responses they gave. If respondents gave three church-state integrationist answers and only one or zero church-state separationist answers, then they were placed in the “church-state integrationist” category along with those who gave four or more church-state integrationist answers. However, respondents who gave three church-state integrationist answers and also gave a similar number (i.e., two or three) church-state separationist answers were placed in the mixed category, reflecting their mixed views on these matters. Similarly, respondents who gave three church-state separationist answers were placed in the “church-state separationist” category if they only gave zero or one church-state integrationist answers, but in the mixed category if they also gave two or three church-state integrationist answers.

The remaining respondents – those who gave two of one kind of answer and one or two answers of the opposing kind (with the balance of responses consisting of “neither/no opinion” or refusals) – were placed in the mixed category.

The scale created this way categorizes 14% of U.S. adults as church-state integrationists, 18% as having mixed views on these matters, and 55% as church-state separationists. Because the latter group is so large, it is sometimes divided in this report into two groups. “Strong” church-state separationists are those who give five or six church-state separationist responses and zero church-state integrationist responses; 28% of U.S. adults are “strong” church-state separationists. All other respondents from the larger “church-state separationist” category (27% of U.S. adults) can be considered “moderate” church-state separationists. The church-state integrationist category is too small to similarly analyze “strong” and “moderate” categories.

Sample sizes and margins of error

The following tables show the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups analyzed in this report.

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

Dispositions and response rates (for March 1-7, 2021, survey)

© Pew Research Center, 2021