AU's 2025 Student Contest is Now OPEN

AU’s annual contest encourages students to reflect on why religious freedom and church-state separation are important to them and their communities—and what they can do to ensure religious freedom is a shield that protects the rights of everyone to practice religion according to their own beliefs, or not practice at all, as long as they don’t harm others.

This year’s contest focuses on religious and nonreligious advocacy for the separation of church and state.

Topic: Religious and Nonreligious Advocacy for the Separation of Church and State

Background: The separation of church and state is often decried as anti-religion by detractors, but, in reality, it unites and protects people of all faiths and none. The United States has a long history of religious and non-religious people advocating for this core constitutional principle and for religious freedom for all. Lately, we’ve seen many diverse coalitions coming together to protect the separation of church and state across the nation.

The prompt: How and why do religious and/or non-religious groups, on their own or together, advocate for the separation of church and state? How have they been successful, and what does their example mean for present and future advocacy for the separation of church and state?

Tips for your submission:

Winning submissions must respond to all elements of the prompt.
Your submission could delve deep into one example or cover multiple; and could analyze a historical case or contemporary advocacy, or both.
Your submission should describe the actors, their motivations, their actions, and the results of their advocacy.
You are encouraged but not required to incorporate personal experience as an advocate or personal perspective on how your own religious or nonreligious beliefs inform your commitment to the separation of church and state.
Your submission can reference current events, legal cases, U.S. history, primary sources, personal experience, and other sources.
Creativity is encouraged! Winning submissions will have a unique and compelling voice or perspective.

Who Can Participate

The contest is open to high school students and undergraduate students attending any 2- or 4-year college or university including trade & technical schools. Students must live in the United States including the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories. Employees and board members of Americans United, and members of their immediate families are not eligible to participate.

Participants can submit either an essay or a video, not both. Students are only eligible for one prize.

Criteria

Submissions will be judged on creativity and adherence to the topic above and additional criteria below. Submissions must be received by 11:59PM PT on Monday, November 3rd.

Essays:

The essay contest is now closed.

Videos:

The content should be clear, creative, demonstrate genuine engagement with the topic, and be the student’s original work.
No experience or expertise is needed; videos can be as simple as talking into the camera, or more elaborate such as animated, documentary-style, fictional narrative, recording of performances such as music or poetry, or something else.
Length must be between 2-4 minutes.
Landscape (16:9) or portrait (9:16)
Videos can be sent as a YouTube Video Set as Unlisted, Audience set as “Not Made for Kids.” Music for YouTube must be public domain or it will be automatically removed from YouTube during their upload/review process.
Videos can also be sent via Vimeo, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive links.

Prizes

First Place

$1,500 for high school essay winner
$1,500 for high school video winner
$1,500 for college essay winner
$1,500 for college video winner

Second Place

$1,000 for high school essay winner
$1,000 for high school video winner
$1,000 for college essay winner
$1,000 for college video winner

Third Place

$500 for high school essay winner
$500 for high school video winner
$500 for college essay winner
$500 for college video winner

Note that this is a scholarship opportunity for current students but the prize money does not need to be spent on academic expenses.

In addition, the first place essays will be printed in Church and State magazine and all the winning essays will be published on AU’s website. The first place videos will be played at the Summit for Religious Freedom and all the winning videos will be published on AU’s digital media channels including but not limited to the website, YouTube, and TikTok.