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50 free Prayer trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Prayer is the one practice almost every religion shares, and each tradition has built its own vocabulary around it. This quiz ranges across all of them: the Lord's Prayer and its debated doxology, the five daily prayers of Islam and the call that announces them, the rosary and the Angelus, the Shema and the Kaddish, Tibetan prayer wheels and flags, Hindu mantras and the Sikh Ardas. Some questions are gentle (how many daily prayers in Islam, what 'amen' means); others will stretch even seminary graduates (which Greek word in the Our Father nobody can quite translate, who really wrote the 'Prayer of Saint Francis', how many notes go into the Western Wall each year). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual prayers and practices, so the numbers and attributions are dependable. It suits Sunday school teachers, comparative religion students and pub quiz setters who want a round that is respectful, accurate and genuinely surprising.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Lord's Prayer appears in which two New Testament gospels?
Matthew and Luke
The two versions differ, and the Matthean form is the one most Christians actually recite.
Q 02How many petitions does the Lord's Prayer contain?
Seven
The first three address God; the remaining four concern human needs such as daily bread and forgiveness.
Q 03The closing doxology 'For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory' is absent from which text?
The earliest manuscripts of Matthew
Protestants usually add it; the first-century Didache does include a doxology, so the habit is ancient even if the words are not original.
Q 04What is the Latin name of the Lord's Prayer, taken from its first two words?
Pater Noster
A church on the Mount of Olives displays the prayer on tiled panels in well over a hundred languages.
Q 05The rare Greek word 'epiousios' in the Lord's Prayer is usually translated into English as what?
Daily
It modifies 'bread', and scholars still argue about what it originally meant.
Q 06How many obligatory daily prayers does Islam prescribe?
Five
They run from before sunrise to night, each with its own name and its own window of time.
Q 07Which of the five daily Islamic prayers is performed directly after sunset?
Maghrib
Its call to prayer also signals the moment to break the fast during Ramadan.
Q 08Muslims face the direction of which structure when performing salah?
The Kaaba in Mecca
According to tradition the earliest Muslims prayed toward a different city before the qibla was changed.
Q 09What is the name of the ritual washing required before Islamic prayer?
Wudu
Each unit of prayer, a rak'ah, then follows a set sequence of standing, bowing and prostration.
Q 10Salah ranks where among the Five Pillars of Islam for Sunni Muslims?
Second
Only the shahada, the declaration of faith, comes before it.
Q 11The Islamic call to prayer, delivered from a minaret, is called what?
Adhan
A shorter follow-up call, the iqama, then summons those already inside the mosque to line up.
Q 12Who is traditionally regarded as the first muezzin in Islam?
Bilal ibn Rabah
He was a freed slave of Abyssinian heritage, chosen for his voice.
Q 13Which extra line appears only in the dawn adhan?
Prayer is better than sleep
The line, as-salatu khayrun mina n-nawm, is a nudge to anyone tempted to stay in bed.
A Catholic rosary is arranged in groups of ten Hail Marys. What is each group called?
Q 21Which organisation adopted the Serenity Prayer in 1941 and made it famous?
Alcoholics Anonymous
Members first called it simply 'the AA prayer'; Hallmark put it on graduation cards from 1962.
Q 22In what year was the 'Prayer of Saint Francis' first published?
1912
It appeared anonymously in a small French Catholic magazine, La Clochette, and cannot be traced to Francis of Assisi at all.
Q 23Which British PM paraphrased the Prayer of Saint Francis on the Downing Street doorstep in 1979?
Margaret Thatcher
Mother Teresa also made it part of the morning prayers of the Missionaries of Charity.
A decade
Each set is preceded by an Our Father and traditionally followed by a Glory Be, and five sets make up a session.
Q 15Which pope added the Luminous Mysteries to the rosary in 2002?
John Paul II
The addition raised the total number of mysteries from 15 to 20.
Q 16Tradition holds that the rosary was given by the Virgin Mary in 1208 to which saint?
Dominic
The apparition is said to have taken place in the church of Prouille in France.
Q 17The Hail Mary is built from two greetings to Mary recorded in which gospel?
Luke
The angel's words at the Annunciation are joined to Elizabeth's at the Visitation.
Q 18The Hail Mary is central to which Catholic devotion, said three times a day to a bell?
The Angelus
Millet's famous painting shows two peasants pausing in a field to pray it at dusk.
Q 19During Eastertide, which Marian prayer replaces the thrice-daily Angelus?
Regina Coeli
The pope leads whichever is in season from his window over St Peter's Square every Sunday at noon.
Q 20Which Protestant theologian composed the Serenity Prayer in the early 1930s?
Reinhold Niebuhr
A twelve-step fellowship picked it up from a 1941 newspaper obituary and spread it worldwide.
Q 24The Shema, the central declaration of Jewish faith, begins with a verse from which book of the Bible?
Deuteronomy
It is traditional to recite it morning and evening, before sleep, and as one's last words.
Q 25What small case do Jews fix to their door frames, following the Shema's command?
Mezuzah
The command to bind the words on arm and head is fulfilled by tefillin.
Q 26The Amidah, the core of Jewish services, is also called the Shemoneh Esreh, a name meaning what number?
Eighteen
Confusingly, the weekday version now contains nineteen blessings.
Q 27The Mourner's Kaddish is recited for how long after the death of a parent?
Eleven months
Remarkably, the text never mentions death; it is a hymn praising God.
Q 28Most of the Kaddish is written in which language?
Aramaic
It was the everyday language of the Jewish people when the prayer was composed, and it requires a minyan of ten to recite.
Q 29Kol Nidre, chanted on the eve of Yom Kippur, is technically not a prayer but what?
A legal formula annulling vows
Its name means 'all vows'; the cantor sings it three times, and Max Bruch turned the melody into a cello piece.
Q 30Roughly how many written prayer notes are placed in the cracks of the Western Wall each year?
More than a million
Twice a year they are collected and buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.