Prayer remains a regular practice for many people in the United States, although frequency differs by religious tradition, age, gender, education, and race or ethnicity. The Pew Research Center’s 2025 Religious Landscape Study reports that 44% of U.S. adults pray daily or more often, while 32% pray seldom or never.
Contents
- How often U.S. adults pray
- Prayer frequency across Christian traditions
- Prayer by religious identity
- How prayer patterns have changed since 2007
- Prayer by age, gender, and education
- Prayer across racial and ethnic groups
- Prayer, grace, and scripture reading
How often U.S. adults pray
The broadest measure in the Pew Research Center’s 2025 Religious Landscape Study divides U.S. adults into three frequency groups. Forty-four percent say they pray daily or more often. Another 23% pray weekly or a few times a month. The remaining 32% say they pray seldom or never.
The study also reports a meaningful difference between religiously affiliated and all U.S. adults. Among religiously affiliated U.S. adults, 58% pray daily or more often. Across all U.S. adults, the figure is 44%, a 14-point gap. These figures describe reported prayer frequency for the 2023-24 measurement period represented in the study, rather than the number of prayers someone says or the amount of time spent praying.
For Christian living, this distinction matters. “Daily or more often” identifies a recurring pattern, but it does not describe whether prayer is private, communal, spoken, silent, structured, spontaneous, brief, or extended. The statistics are therefore most useful for understanding frequency at a population level.
Prayer frequency across Christian traditions
Prayer frequency varies among Christian groups in the United States. The Pew Research Center’s 2025 Religious Landscape Study reports the following shares who pray daily or more often:
| Christian group | Daily or more often |
|---|---|
| Latter-day Saints | 73% |
| Evangelical Protestants | 72% |
| Historically Black Protestants | 72% |
| Protestants overall | 64% |
| Christians overall | 60% |
| Orthodox Christians | 53% |
| Catholics | 51% |
| Mainline Protestants | 45% |
The highest reported levels in this group of Christian categories are among Latter-day Saints, at 73%, and evangelical Protestants and historically Black Protestants, both at 72%. Protestants overall stand at 64%, while Christians overall stand at 60%. Orthodox Christians are at 53%, Catholics at 51%, and mainline Protestants at 45%.
These categories should not be treated as interchangeable. “Protestants overall” includes more than one Protestant tradition, while evangelical, mainline, and historically Black Protestant categories describe different groupings. The reported percentages show differences in the survey categories; they do not explain why those differences appear.
Prayer by religious identity
The same study places Christian prayer frequency within a wider religious landscape. Among U.S. adults in the listed religious groups, the shares who pray daily or more often are 67% for Muslims, 46% for Hindus, 34% for adults in other religions, 22% for Jewish adults, and 22% for Buddhist adults.
Among religiously unaffiliated adults, 12% pray daily or more often. Within that broad category, the figures are 1% for atheist adults, 3% for agnostic adults, and 17% for adults who say their religion is “nothing in particular.” These are reported identity categories, and the different results show why the unaffiliated population should not be summarized as one uniform group.
The comparison also provides context for the 44% figure for all U.S. adults. Daily prayer is reported by people across religious identities, not only by members of Christian congregations. At the same time, the study shows substantially different reported frequencies among the groups measured.
How prayer patterns have changed since 2007
The Pew Research Center’s 2025 Religious Landscape Study compares selected 2007 results with results from 2023-24. Across all U.S. adults, daily prayer fell from 58% in 2007 to 44% in 2023-24, a 14-point decline.
The reported changes for Christian groups are more varied in size:
- Daily prayer among Catholics fell from 58% in 2007 to 51% in 2023-24, a 7-point decline.
- Daily prayer among Protestants fell from 69% in 2007 to 64% in 2023-24, a 5-point decline.
- Daily prayer among evangelical Protestants fell from 78% in 2007 to 72% in 2023-24, a 6-point decline.
- Daily prayer among mainline Protestants fell from 53% in 2007 to 45% in 2023-24, an 8-point decline.
- Daily prayer among historically Black Protestants fell from 80% in 2007 to 72% in 2023-24, an 8-point decline.
- Daily prayer among Latter-day Saints fell from 82% in 2007 to 73% in 2023-24, a 9-point decline.
The study also reports changes outside Christianity. Daily prayer among Buddhists fell from 45% in 2007 to 22% in 2023-24, a 23-point decline. Among religiously unaffiliated adults, it fell from 22% in 2007 to 12% in 2023-24, a 10-point decline.
The dates are important when reading these comparisons. The older figure refers to 2007, while the newer figure refers to 2023-24 and is reported in the 2025 study. These are historical comparisons, not forecasts of future prayer frequency. The figures also describe changes in reported survey responses; they do not establish a cause for the change.
Prayer by age, gender, and education
Prayer frequency differs by age in the study. Among U.S. adults ages 18-29, 28% pray daily or more often. The share rises to 39% among adults ages 30-49, 52% among adults ages 50-64, and 55% among adults ages 65 and older.
This age pattern shows that the reported daily-prayer share is higher in the older age groups measured than in the youngest group. It does not mean that every individual’s prayer life follows the same path, and it does not measure how prayer frequency changes within one person over time.
The study also reports a gender difference: 50% of U.S. women pray daily or more often, compared with 37% of U.S. men. By education, 46% of U.S. adults with less than a college education pray daily or more often, compared with 39% of U.S. college graduates.
Here is the age comparison in a compact form:
| U.S. adult group | Daily or more often |
|---|---|
| Ages 18-29 | 28% |
| Ages 30-49 | 39% |
| Ages 50-64 | 52% |
| Ages 65 and older | 55% |
Together, these figures show that prayer frequency is not distributed evenly across demographic groups. They should be read as survey percentages for the study’s U.S. adult population, not as benchmarks that an individual Christian must meet.
Prayer across racial and ethnic groups
The Pew Research Center’s 2025 Religious Landscape Study reports that 64% of Black U.S. adults pray daily or more often. The corresponding shares are 47% of Hispanic U.S. adults and 34% of Asian U.S. adults.
These percentages are another reminder that national averages can conceal differences among population groups. They do not describe the beliefs, traditions, or prayer styles of every person within a racial or ethnic category. They simply report the share in each listed group who say they pray daily or more often.
The Black adult figure is also one of the demographic results that stands above the 44% figure for all U.S. adults. The Hispanic adult figure is above that national measure as well, while the Asian adult figure is below it. Because the supplied results report percentages rather than population counts, they should not be used to estimate how many people are represented without additional information.
Prayer, grace, and scripture reading
Prayer is one part of a broader set of reported religious practices. The study finds that 33% of U.S. adults often or always say grace before meals. This measure is related to prayerful practice, but it is not the same as the daily-prayer measure. A person may report saying grace and report a different overall prayer frequency.
Scripture reading outside religious services is also measured separately. Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults read scripture outside religious services at least monthly, including 22% who do so weekly or more often. Sixty-one percent seldom or never read scripture outside religious services.
The wording of these categories matters. “At least monthly” includes people who read weekly or more often, while “weekly or more often” is a narrower frequency group. The figures should not be added together because the categories overlap.
The study additionally reports reading of other holy texts, devotions, or inspirational literature. Twenty percent of U.S. adults do this at least weekly, 8% do it once or twice a month, and 11% do it several times a year. Sixty percent seldom or never read these materials.
These reading figures help distinguish several practices that are sometimes grouped together in everyday conversation. Daily prayer, saying grace, reading scripture, and reading devotional or inspirational material are measured as separate behaviors. The results therefore offer several ways to understand spiritual routines without treating any one activity as a complete measure of a person’s prayer life.