Americans religiously illiterate, speaker says
Last Friday, the religious studies department welcomed Steven Prothero, historian of American religion and chairman of the religious studies department at Boston University, to give a lecture on religious illiteracy in America.
“Steven Prothero speaks to students, and the public alike, in a provocative but highly understandable fashion which informs students about a significant dilemma in American religious life in an inspiring way – one that we believe will assist our students in moving forth into an increasingly complicated spiritual world with new insights,” said Charles S. Prebish, Redd chair in religious studies at USU.
In his lecture, Prothero focused on points from his most recent book, “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – And Doesn’t,” which was one of the hottest selling religion books in America in 2007.
“The U.S. is one of the most religious countries on earth, yet Americans know almost nothing about their own religion, and even less about other religions,” Prothero said.
Prothero said while there are many surveys on religious beliefs, few examine Americans’ religious knowledge. The little amount of information that has been gathered is very surprising, he said. He said survey results show most Americans cannot name the first book in the Bible, only about one-third know Jesus is credited with delivering the sermon on the mount, one in 10 people believe that Joan of Ark was Noah’s wife, and many think Sodom and Gomorrah were a happily married couple. Also, when asked to name the great religions of the world, only half were able to name Judaism, and only half were able to name Buddhism, he said.
“This is obviously a religious problem,” he said. “There is a lot of pondering among Catholics about Catholic illiteracy. There is a lot of discussion among Jews about Jewish illiteracy, and there is a tremendous amount of discussion among Evangelical Christians about biblical illiteracy. One of the surprising things I include in my book is that Evangelical Christians don’t do much better on Bible literacy questions than other Christians. Evangelicals will talk about the Bible, but they don’t know too much about it.”
While he doesn’t have any statistics or proof to back it up, Prothero said he believes Mormons are actually an exception to this rule.
“I’m not trying to solve the problem of American Jews or American Catholics,” he said. “The way I am looking at this is as a civic problem, a problem that is a challenge to American democracy, a challenge to a political system that relies on educated citizens to make informed decisions about public policy questions and about the candidates they want to vote for.”
Prothero also said religious illiteracy is a civic problem in two strains, both from a domestic front and a foreign front.
He described the domestic front as a contemporary situation.
“The Bible is the scripture of American politics,” Prothero said.
Politicians are drawing on religion in every aspect of their political arguments, he said, and they use religion and the Bible to address abortion, homosexuality and many other issues. He said in one of her recent speeches, Hillary Clinton linked illegal immigration to the good Samaritan story.
On the side of the foreign front, Prothero said Americans have engagements in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where most Americans don’t understand the religion.
“We are overwhelmingly religious (in this country), and we have a president who will speak very publicly about his own faith, and yet we are operating our foreign policy as if we are in a purely secularized environment, as if religion were utterly irrelevant to people around the world, as if it didn’t matter, as if we acted purely on the basis of our economic and political needs. And I think that this is very dangerous,” he said.
Prothero said he believes in places such as Sri Lanka, people are to some extent killing each other because of their condescending religious views.
“It is not just about who has access to rice … or who wants to become the next president,” he said. “It has to do with religion and certain views about (religious aspects).”
Prebish said, “In an increasingly globalized world, knowing about the religious beliefs and practices of other people enables us to move forward in our personal and professional pursuits in a fashion that both understands and respects the complex world views and values of those individuals with whom we intersect.”
Prothero said he also believes there is an intimate connection between basic literacy and religious literacy. Up through the 1830s, Americans who learned how to read did so through the Bible, he said. There was quite a good understanding of the Bible until the 1960s. Many people credit this change to the fact that people tried to push God out of American life when they banned prayer in school.
Prothero, though, asserts that religious people are actually at fault. He said he believes the ‘Bible Wars’ are a perfect example. During the ‘Bible Wars,’ Catholics and Protestants fought over which Bible would be used in schools. They couldn’t agree and believed using no Bible at all was better than using the other religion’s Bible.
He said he also believes religious illiteracy became more prevalent when Evangelism moved from head to heart.
“Religion became less about knowing the stories and more about feeling and mortality,” he said.
The focus of religion began to change, and Prothero said he believes strongly that knowing about religions of the world is a key aspect in success in every corner of life.
“You can’t speak language in general. You have to speak Spanish or English. It’s the same with religion,” he said. “There isn’t just a general religion.”
-amy.m.mattson@aggiemail.usu.edu