Religious Illiteracy

A day behind as I am on The Daily Show, I was catching the rerun from last evenings show and saw Jon Stewart's interview with Boston University's Stephen Prothero, who penned the book, Religious Illiteracy. I was amazed and appalled by the stats shared in the interview (i.e. that in an interview, intelligence agents were not able to appropriately identify Al Queda's Islamic affiliation... folks, that shouldn't be a guess (and an incorrect one at that) if you have declared war.

From the book description:

The United States is one of the most religious places on earth, but it is also a nation of shocking religious illiteracy.

Only 10 percent of American teenagers can name all five major world religions and 15 percent cannot name any.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most of life's basic questions, yet only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible.

Despite this lack of basic knowledge, politicians and pundits continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missed—or is interpreted—by the vast majority of Americans.

Sickening, but I recall from a college course called "Death and Dying" which was a survey course on how various religions viewed death, dying and various associated metrics. Everyone was all good and fine with the concept of religion as "myth" for the term of the class until, that is, we got to Christianity. Those who hadn't spoken a word all term suddenly had a lot to say... accusing the professor, me and anyone who argued that facets of Christianity were mythic stories based in faith (just like every other religion). That was true of all other "fake" religions, I suppose, but as we all know, Christianity is the real religion and our blaspheming the back-to-back creation stories as a leap of faith and mythologic in scope was not to be tolerated.

I might be an agnostic, heathen unworthy of the Rapture, but I can name the five major world religions, and a few more... I'm also fairly confident that I can come up with a few of the main gospels off the top of my head... and the first book of the bible... yeah, I can name that, too... along with the first few words, too. And folks, it doesn't start off with "Once upon a time..."

But part of Prothero's main argument is that if we are going to politicize religion, and it is unavoidable, perhaps the fine citizens of the United States, and especially those in government positions, should know at least the basics. And the basics, in my opinion, is not even sufficient, but it is a start.