By Stephen Prothero
I know it's uncouth to say, "I told you so," but in this case I did.
Three years ago, in my book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn't, I described the United States as a nation of religious illiterates. Though Americans are deeply religious, I argued, they know very little about their own religions, and even less about the religions of others.
I based this conclusion on scattershot data — a Gallup question here, an anecdote there, and a quiz I gave to my Boston University students — because there was no comprehensive national survey of U.S. religious literacy. Last week, however, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released the first nationwide survey of American religious knowledge, based on interviews with 3,412 adults who answered 32 questions on the Bible and the world's religions.
Not surprisingly, the nation as a whole flunked. Respondents got only 16 out of 32 questions right on average, for a score of 50%.
The release of this study has been catnip for atheists and agnostics, who rose to the top of the class on this survey. Non-believers answered, on average, 21 questions correctly, or five above the national average. Their score — 66%, or a D in my book — isn't much to write home about, but it does show that people who think religion is poison know more about it than people who think it is the antidote to our ills.
If atheists and agnostics are in heaven over these results, there is weeping and gnashing of teeth among Roman Catholics, who finished in the back of the class on this survey, with only 15 questions right on average. Prior studies have shown that Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes are doing little to educate American Catholic children about their faith, and this study confirms that Catholic religious education is badly broken. Fewer than half of the Catholics surveyed (42%) were able to name Genesis as the first book in the Bible.
Read all at:
It's time to teach religion in schools - USATODAY.com
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