An Alabama legislator is FFRF Action Fund’s “Theocrat of the Week” for his incessant push to install prayer in secular public schools.
Alabama state Rep. Reed Ingram launched his prayer efforts last year to supposedly honor the “Judeo-Christian values upon which the United States was founded.” This year, he is leading two separate bills in the Legislature to integrate prayer into the school day.
In 2025, Ingram introduced an unsuccessful bill that would have required every public school in the state to recite during each school day the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer representative of Judeo-Christian values. The bill would also have given the state superintendent the power to withhold 25 percent of a district’s funding for violations of the prayer policy. Birmingham City Schools alone could have lost up to $40 million in funding if found in violation of the policy.
After his failure last year, Ingram has now introduced two new versions of his prayer bill in different committees, the House Committee on Education Policy and the House Committee on State Government. The bills would put the issue to a statewide vote as a constitutional amendment. During a committee meeting, Ingram said, “We didn’t know if the bill was gonna be dead or not, so leadership advised that it may be safer to go ahead and drop another bill in an abundance of caution.”
The House Committee on State Government supported the bill, HB 511, and the legislation has now passed the full House by a 94–3 vote. The bill’s provisions are not identical to last year’s legislation but still egregiously overstep state-church lines. If HB 511 became law, every public school board would be forced to adopt a policy requiring K-12 schools to say the Pledge of Allegiance. School boards would also need to adopt a policy allowing schools to conduct a student-initiated and student-led prayer each school day. Students would not be “forced” to participate in the pledge or prayer, though the bill says nothing about coercion or peer pressure. The financial penalties for failing to comply with the prayer policy are not included in this version of the bill, though superintendents would still be allowed to investigate violations.
When there were attempts to change the bill’s language so that the prayer was replaced with a moment of silence, Ingram said, “We want the students to hear it. A moment of silence is walking in the woods, it’s not a prayer bill and that’s the reason I tabled it.” He also claims that the prayer would be nondenominational and not specific to a particular religion.
In a committee hearing, Ingram described the prayer initiative as being “like meals in school.” He explained, “We supplement the meals, because parents sometimes don’t have the opportunity to feed their kids.” Some families don’t have the time to go to church but want their child exposed to religion, the legislator argued.
Ingram also claimed that the legislation is not about forcing religion. He said, “I’m not trying to cram religion down anyone’s throat or make it to where they’re mandated to do anything. A lot of times, kids don’t have the option to pray and they don’t know what prayer means.”
“It’s just being exposed to what this country was built on,” Ingram added. “In God we trust.”
HB 511 currently sits in the Senate Committee on Education Policy. If the bill passes, state voters will decide the issue through a constitutional amendment.
The Alabama Legislature and voters, if the issue is taken to the ballot, should reject Ingram’s theocratic attempts to install prayer in public schools.
FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues.