William Short
October 12, 2010
Trial in Gulf oil spill cases postponed
October 14, 2010The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a nationwide poll from May 19 through June 6, sampling 3,412 Americans age 18 and older. They were trying to find out how knowledgeable Americans were about their own religion and that of other peoples.
This had nothing to do with the practice of religion or how holy as person is but dealt solely with religious knowledge.
The results were very interesting. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons scored the highest on the survey of religious knowledge. They outperformed evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.
On average, Americans correctly answered 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey.
Atheists and agnostics averaged 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons averaged 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole averaged 16 correct answers; Catholics scored 14.7.
Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that Americans are among the most religious people in the developed world.
Nearly 6-in-10 U.S. adults say that religion is “very important” in their lives, and roughly 4-in-10 said they attended worship services at least once a week.
However, the survey showed that many Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own. Many people also think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are stricter than they really are.
The survey also found widespread confusion over the line between teaching and preaching in public schools.
The single question that respondents most frequently got right was whether the U.S. Supreme Court rulings allow teachers to lead public school classes in prayer. Nine-in-10 (89 percent) correctly said the court did not allow this.
However, among the questions most often answered incorrectly was whether the court permitted public school teachers to read from the Bible as an example of literature. Fully two-thirds of people surveyed (67 percent) also said “no” to this question, although the Supreme Court has clearly stated that the Bible may be taught for its “literary and historic” qualities, if it is part of a secular curriculum.
On a third question like this, just 36 percent of the public knew that comparative religion classes could be taught in public schools. These blocks of questions suggest that many Americans think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are tighter than they really are.
On the other hand, most Americans could answer correctly at least half the survey’s questions about the Bible.
For example, 71 percent know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. More than 6-in-10 (63 percent) correctly named Genesis as the first book of the Bible. More than half know that the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – is not one of the Ten Commandments.
About 45 percent of Catholics in the United States do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion is not a mere symbol but actually become the Body and Blood of Christ. More than half of Protestants (53 percent) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly 4-in-10 Jews (43 percent) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.
It seems like religious people need to brush up on our knowledge of religion. We know that God is not going to judge us by how much we know about religion, but by how much we love. However, all of us would be better witnesses of our faith if we have a better understanding and knowledge of it.
