Prayer Trivia
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98 free Prayer trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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.
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Q 01The Lord's Prayer appears in which two New Testament gospels?
Matthew and Luke
Matthew and Luke give different versions: Luke's is shorter and comes when a disciple asks, 'Lord, teach us to pray', while churches recite Matthew's longer one.
Q 02Jesus teaches the Lord's Prayer as part of which famous address?
The Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount offers it as a model of brevity: Jesus has just told his listeners not to heap up empty phrases, since God knows what they need before they ask.
Q 03The Lord's Prayer doxology 'For thine is the kingdom' is missing from which text?
The earliest manuscripts of Matthew
The earliest manuscripts of Matthew end the prayer at 'deliver us from evil'; the doxology entered later copies, which is why the Latin Bible and Catholic tradition leave it off the prayer.
Q 04What is the Latin name of the Lord's Prayer, taken from its first two words?
Pater Noster
Pater Noster means 'Our Father', and the rapid, mechanical way the prayer was often recited gave English the word 'patter'.
Q 05The rare Greek word 'epiousios' in the Lord's Prayer is usually translated into English as what?
Daily
Daily is the traditional rendering, but the word appears nowhere else in Greek, and the Latin Bible turns it into 'supersubstantial' in one gospel and 'daily' in the other.
Q 06How many obligatory daily prayers does Islam prescribe?
Five
Five was a bargain, in the traditional telling: on his night journey Muhammad was first given fifty prayers a day, and Moses kept sending him back to ask for fewer.
Q 07Which Islamic prayer is performed directly after sunset?
Maghrib
Maghrib's call is the signal that ends each day's fast in Ramadan, so the evening meal, iftar, traditionally starts with dates the moment it sounds.
Q 08Muslims face the direction of which structure when performing salah?
The Kaaba in Mecca
The Kaaba in Mecca is a focal point, not an object of worship, and mosques everywhere mark its direction with a wall niche called a mihrab.
Q 09What is the name of the ritual washing required before Islamic prayer?
Wudu
Wudu covers the face, arms, head and feet, but the same Quranic verse allows a dry substitute where there is no water: wiping the face and hands with clean earth.
Q 10Salah ranks where among the Five Pillars of Islam for Sunni Muslims?
Second
Second: only the shahada, the declaration of faith, comes first in the hadith where Gabriel, appearing as a stranger in white, asks Muhammad to tell him what Islam is.
Q 11The Islamic call to prayer, delivered from a minaret, is called what?
Adhan
Adhan won out over a bell and a horn: in the Sunni account, the first Muslims weighed both before settling on a human voice to announce the prayer.
Q 12Who is traditionally regarded as the first muezzin in Islam?
Bilal ibn Rabah
Bilal ibn Rabah had been enslaved until Abu Bakr bought his freedom; when a human voice was chosen to announce prayers, Muhammad told him to stand up and give the call.
Q 13In Sunni practice, the line 'Prayer is better than sleep' is added to the call for which prayer?
Fajr
Fajr, the dawn prayer: the extra line nudges anyone tempted to stay in bed, and Shia calls to prayer leave it out.
Q 21Which organisation adopted the Serenity Prayer in 1941 and made it famous?
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous members found it in a 1941 newspaper obituary and at first simply called it 'the AA prayer'.
Q 22'Make me an instrument of your peace' is credited to which saint?
Francis of Assisi
Francis of Assisi never wrote it: the prayer first appeared, unsigned, in a small French Catholic magazine in 1912, almost seven centuries after his death.
Q 23Which British PM quoted 'Where there is discord, may we bring harmony' on the Downing Street doorstep in 1979?
Margaret Thatcher
Q 14On a Catholic rosary, what is each of the five main sets of Hail Marys called?
A decade
A decade is ten Hail Marys, and while saying them the person praying meditates on a single 'mystery', one event from the lives of Jesus and Mary.
Q 15Which pope added the Luminous Mysteries to the rosary in 2002?
John Paul II
John Paul II added the 'mysteries of light' from Jesus's public ministry because the older sets passed straight from his childhood to his Passion.
Q 16Tradition holds that the Virgin Mary gave the rosary to which thirteenth-century saint and founder of a preaching order?
Dominic
Dominic is named by a tradition set at Prouille in France, but historians trace the story to the preaching of a Dominican friar some 250 years after his death.
Q 17The Hail Mary is built from two greetings to Mary recorded in which gospel?
Luke
Luke records both greetings, Gabriel's and Elizabeth's; the closing plea, 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners', was added by the Church centuries later.
Q 18The Hail Mary is central to which Catholic devotion, said three times a day to a bell?
The Angelus
The Angelus gave Millet's famous painting of two praying peasants its name: he first called it 'Prayer for the Potato Crop', then added a church steeple and retitled it when the buyer backed out.
Q 19Which Marian prayer do Catholics say three times a day during the Easter season only?
Regina Coeli
Regina Coeli, 'Queen of Heaven', takes over from Easter to Pentecost, and the pope's Sunday noon address from his window is renamed after it for the season.
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.
Margaret Thatcher said the lines on the steps of No. 10 and credited them to a saint, but the prayer they come from first appeared, unsigned, in a French magazine in 1912.
Q 24The Shema, the central declaration of Jewish faith, begins with a verse from which book of the Bible?
Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy supplies the opening line, 'Hear, O Israel'; by tradition these are also a Jew's last words, as when Rabbi Akiva is said to have died reciting them under Roman torture.
Q 25What small case do Jews fix to their door frames, following the Shema's command?
Mezuzah
A mezuzah hangs at a slant in many homes as a compromise: the medieval sage Rashi wanted it upright, while his grandson argued it should lie flat.
Q 26The Amidah, the core of Jewish services, is also called the Shemoneh Esreh, a name meaning what number?
Eighteen
Eighteen blessings gave the prayer its name, yet the weekday version has nineteen: one more was added in rabbinic times and the old name simply stuck.
Q 27The Mourner's Kaddish is recited for how long after the death of a parent?
Eleven months
Eleven months, not twelve: tradition held that only the wicked are judged for a full year, so children stop a month early rather than imply that of a parent.
Q 28Rather than Hebrew, most of the Kaddish is written in which language?
Aramaic
Aramaic was the vernacular most Jews spoke when the Kaddish took shape, and a prayer addressed to the whole congregation was said in words everyone knew.
Q 29Kol Nidre, chanted on the eve of Yom Kippur, is technically not a prayer but what?
A legal formula annulling vows
A legal formula annulling vows, it covers only promises made to God, yet hostile Christian writers long cited it as proof that a Jew's oath could not be trusted.
Q 30Written prayers left at which holy site are cleared twice a year and buried?
The Western Wall
The Western Wall's notes are pulled from between the stones before Rosh Hashanah and Passover, then given a ritual burial alongside old holy books rather than thrown away.