Are Americans Ignorant About Religion?

[BoredOutOfMyMind]

Are Americans Ignorant About Religion?

March 12, 2007 issue - Steve Prothero is the kind of professor who makes you want to go back to college. During an hour lecture of his Boston University course "Death and Immortality," 200 students sat rapt last week as his train of thought led him from the Docetics (early Christians who believed that Jesus was all-God, not flesh), to reincarnation, to Disney World, to Hindu cremation rituals, to Plato's account of Socrates' trial (the day's assigned reading), to "Beauty and the Beast," to a hypothetical suicidal bunny, to a discussion of the merits of exile versus death for a man such as Socrates. To describe Prothero as "quick-witted" or his interests as "interdisciplinary" wouldn't quite do him justice. Prothero is a world-religions scholar with the soul of a late-night television comic.

This month, HarperSanFrancisco will publish Prothero's new book "Religious Literacy," a work whose message is far more sober than its author's affect. In spite of the fact that more than 90 percent of Americans say they believe in God, only a tiny portion of them knows a thing about religion. When he began teaching college 17 years ago, Prothero writes, he discovered that few of his students could name the authors of the Christian Gospels. Fewer could name a single Hindu Scripture. Almost no one could name the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Prothero, who went to Yale in the early 1980s and speaks of his all-night bull sessions on politics and religion with reverence, realized that to re-create that climate in his classroom, his students first had to know something. And so he made it his job to (1) figure out what they didn't know and (2) teach it to them. He began giving religious literacy quizzes to his students, and, subsequently, to everyone he knew. Almost everybody failed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17439043/site/newsweek/

[BoredOutOfMyMind]

This article will appear in Newsweek.

[Praxeas]

Originally Posted by BoredOutOfMyMind

This article will appear in Newsweek.

Is that why it says March 12th when today is the 4th?

[BoredOutOfMyMind]

Originally Posted by Praxeas

Is that why it says March 12th when today is the 4th?

Sigh, comment on the article, will you?

[stmatthew]

I would say that the vast majority of "christians" are not taught enough to know much about religion. We are not the norm on these discussion boards.

[BoredOutOfMyMind]

Originally Posted by stmatthew

I would say that the vast majority of "christians" are not taught enough to know much about religion. We are not the norm on these discussion boards.

Many Apostolics are not of much knowledge of what they believe either.

[berkeley]

Originally Posted by BoredOutOfMyMind

Many Apostolics are not of much knowledge of what they believe either.

Thas true..

[ManOfWord]

From a different viewpoint, but still on topic, I find that people know quite a bit about "religion." What I mean is that people know quite a bit about religiosity. They know religion as an intolerant, arrogant, everyone else is wrong but us, group. In part, we can thank the media for that.

In my over 20 years of pastoring, I have not had any concept or any message get more attention than "religion vs relationship." Everyone, without exception, when presented with that scenario, states that they would choose relationship over religion. Most people understand that religion has been the cause of more wars than anything in the history of the world.

However, I do agree with the author of this article that, what he is referencing, people are very ignorant of. I just began teaching a "bible study" on the roots and beginnings of Islam and its teachings from its inception until today's radicalism. It is amazing what people don't know. But I guess that is our job as "educators" to overcome ignorance.

Romans 1:28 - And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Originally Posted by ManOfWord

From a different viewpoint, but still on topic, I find that people know quite a bit about "religion." What I mean is that people know quite a bit about religiosity. They know religion as an intolerant, arrogant, everyone else is wrong but us, group. In part, we can thank the media for that.

In my over 20 years of pastoring, I have not had any concept or any message get more attention than "religion vs relationship." Everyone, without exception, when presented with that scenario, states that they would choose relationship over religion. Most people understand that religion has been the cause of more wars than anything in the history of the world.

However, I do agree with the author of this article that, what he is referencing, people are very ignorant of. I just began teaching a "bible study" on the roots and beginnings of Islam and its teachings from its inception until today's radicalism. It is amazing what people don't know. But I guess that is our job as "educators" to overcome ignorance.

John 8:31 - Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.